General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I Simply Do Not Understand Obama's Support Of The TPP. [View all]pampango
(24,692 posts)praise. Making the case for tariffs by asserting they won't hurt the economy much is not very convincing.
Of course, a policy that does not hurt the economy much can be a good thing if, for instance, it redistributes income towards the middle class. As well as Hartmann documented the fact that Smoot-Hawley did little harm to the economy, he did not address the issue of whether it did any good for the middle class. (0Obviously, FDR did not think that it did or,he would have retained them.) Perhaps he did this in another article.
"Ronald reagan was a globalist too. I am more interested in our national interests, instead of viewing the entire world just to make more wealth for a few individuals."
And Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge were anti-globalist, high-tariff, republican presidents. While Coolidge and Hoover differed with Reagan on tariffs, what all 3 of them had in common was that they were great friends of the 1% and all adopted policies that cut taxes, weakened unions and deregulate the corporate world.
Even with high tariffs by 1929 (and 8 years of republican rule), US income inequality was the worst in our history and the middle class had been decimated. The 1% has proven they can amass great wealth in any tariff environment, as long as taxes are low, unions are weak and regulations are nonexistent or ineffective.
I think that being anti-globalist, if it is of the Hoover/Coolidge variety, is not necessarily a good thing. (There are plenty of anti-globalists on the far right in the US and Europe today who are modern "Hoover-stlye" friends of the 1%.)
Conversely being a globalist, if it is of the FDR/European variety, is not necessarily a bad thing. FDR in his day and Europeans in the last few decades have shown that "globalists" can create progressive societies.