Terms like “progressive” can be defined in a variety of ways. One common theme is that progressives are relatively optimistic that governments can solve economic problems.
We normally think of conservative Republicans as being on the other end of the spectrum, opposed to government meddling in the economy. President Trump is a bit unusual in that he is a Republican who is skeptical of the free market. He used a combination of subsidies, bullying and tariffs to try to bring back manufacturing jobs.
Overall, this approach was not successful. Some manufacturing jobs were created (in 2017-18) in companies supplying the booming fracking industry, but large subsidies given to firms like Foxconn were not effective, and the trade war negatively impacted manufacturing in 2019, even before Covid-19.
None of this was a surprise to a Chicago school economist like me. But what did progressives expect to come out of the Trump administration’s industrial policy”? After all, progressives believe that activist governments can solve problems.
This Ezra Klein tweet caught my eye:
I’m sure that progressives would deny any responsibility for failures such as the Wisconsin Foxconn plant. They might argue that Trump didn’t know how to do industrial policy. That’s a fair point; Foxconn is not their fault. But a similar fiasco occurred under the Obama administration.
Governments simply are not very good at creating economic growth. Some of the more famous cases of industrial policy are not what many people assume. The most successful parts of the Chinese economy are the private firms, not the big state-owned enterprises. Some of the most successful Japanese firms got that way by ignoring the recommendation of government bureaucrats. Germany has one of the world’s most successful manufacturing sectors, without relying heavily on subsidies and tariffs. (They do have good technical training programs.)
When I first heard that the Trump administration planned to bring back jobs though a mix of subsidies, bullying and tariffs, I was immediately skeptical. The fact that many progressives seemed nervous that he might succeed tells us a lot about the way they believe that economies work. There was no need for them to be “nervous” that Trump would bring back manufacturing jobs with subsidies.
This also explains why I’m not a progressive.
READER COMMENTS
Kevin
Oct 22 2020 at 3:04pm
Bravo, Scott…but let’s not let the “progressives” off the hook for their history of scientific racism and eugenics.
KevinDC
Oct 22 2020 at 3:20pm
I disagree with this, Kevin. Not that I dispute the ugly history of racism and eugenics in the progressive movement – but I very much dispute that modern day progressive specifically should be on the hook for it. People should be on the hook for the ideas they embrace and advocate – nobody should be on the hook for the ideas embraced and advocated by their intellectual ancestors from a century before. Guilt by historical association isn’t a worthy method of argument.
Jon Murphy
Oct 22 2020 at 3:40pm
I agree with your sentiment, Kevin. However, one should note that many of the current policies advocated by Progressives were originally eugenic policies. Things like minimum wage, immigration restrictions, “safe spaces”, and the like all were originally eugenic policies. They advocate the same policies but change the reasoning.
KevinDC
Oct 22 2020 at 5:00pm
Agreed, Jon. Thomas Leonard argued that point persuasively in his book Illiberal Reformers – many of the policies the Progressive movement advocated for in the early 20th century were so advocated by that generation of Progressives specifically because they believed those policies would serve racist and eugenicist ends. But I still don’t think it’s fair to use that as a means of interpreting modern Progressives.
Early 20th century progressives argued for increasing the minimum wage explicitly on the grounds that the disemployment effect of the minimum wage would be most heavily concentrated among racial minorities and other marginalized groups – and for them the disemployment of these groups was a feature, not a bug. Modern Progressives, meanwhile, dispute the idea that raising the minimum wage will have disemployment effects, and think that such wage gains will most help minorities and marginalized groups. So yes, they are both advocating the same policy but for different reasons – but it seems to me that the “different reasons” portion of that matters a great deal. I think the modern Progressives are right about their goals and wrong about policy effects, and I think Progressives from a century ago were right about policy effects but wrong about their goals. That’s a very important distinction, and I don’t think it’s right to treat the two groups alike.
Consider this deliberately extreme example – person A wants to implement rent control because they genuinely believe (wrongly, in my opinion) that doing so will help provide affordable housing for the needy. Person B also wants rent control, because they believe that Jewish people dominate the rental industry and they want to use the law to prevent Jews from gaining wealth. You could say of these two “sure, they might have different reasons, but they still advocate the same policy,” but morally, I think these people are light years apart and we shouldn’t put A on the hook for B’s beliefs.
Jon Murphy
Oct 22 2020 at 8:23pm
Oh yes. I agree wholeheartedly with everything you’ve said.
But to square your point with Kevin (the original poster, henceforth KevinOP), A should not be “on the hook” for B’s policy, but should be on the hook for explaining why the policy they advocate wouldn’t have the negative effects of B.
In other words, modern Progressives should have to explain why the policies which were embraced on eugenic grounds as recently as the 70s and 80s are now not.
Mark Z
Oct 22 2020 at 7:16pm
I agree, most common policy positions, including ones I don’t like – immigration restriction, mandatory union membership, harsh drug laws, etc. – are generally defended today by their proponents for reasons other than racism, whether left or right. Tempting as it may be to try to ‘turn the tables’ on progressives and make the same genetic fallacies they often try to use with respect to school choice or other right of center policies, it should really only serve the purpose of reminding them that genetic fallacies aren’t good arguments, which people tend to understand when they’re on the receiving end.
Everyone should be honest and admit that, whether one agrees or not, proponents of school choice, higher minimum wage laws, or opponents of legalizing heroin are probably not motivated by racism in their efforts.
Scott Sumner
Oct 22 2020 at 6:41pm
I think the best way to handle this issue is that if they complain some classical liberal in the 1700s was racist (hardly unusual at the time), then point out the history of progressives on eugenics, prohibition, minimum wage, etc.
Alan Goldhammer
Oct 22 2020 at 3:07pm
It was a lot of years ago that I went to a speech by Clyde Prestowitz who was making the rounds as a Japan trade hawk. He would later write a book on how the US was giving the future away to Japan conglomerates. Well that turned out as well as Kevin Hassett’s Dow 36000 prediction. One of the interesting things that Prestowitz didn’t comment on but I had read about was the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry did not want Honda to embark on making cars. It was suggested they stick to motorcycles and let Toyota and Datsun (now Nisan) focus on the auto export market. Well we know how that turned out. Scott notes this in his blog comment.
robc
Oct 22 2020 at 3:45pm
The Dow 36000 prediction has one advantage of Japan one. It will eventually be true.
Russ Abbott
Oct 22 2020 at 3:42pm
I prefer to define progressivism in terms of goals rather than means. Most seem to relate to equality: equality of opportunity, equality of treatment independent of race, less inequality of wealth, equality of access to health care, equality of access to the means to vote and equality of the relative value of those votes (e.g., anti-gerrymandering), etc.
If understood in those terms are you still not progressive?
Scott Sumner
Oct 22 2020 at 6:43pm
I’m a utilitarian, so natural I share many of the ultimate goals. It’s more about means to an end.
Mark Z
Oct 22 2020 at 6:57pm
I think the issue with such abstract definitions of political ideologies is that they’re untethered from political reality. If I believe that the best way to achieve equitable living standards is through free markets and minimal government, am I progressive? Not really, no progressive would acknowledge me as such. Most progressives would also acknowledge that such single-minded focus on equality is wrong. Afterall, we could achieve all these goals by making everyone equally poor and deprived of healthcare and opportunity. I assume even progressives put some weight on well-being and individual freedom, no? And thus are willing to trade some equality for some increase in living standards? Merely defining an ideology by abstract principles like equality leads to a practically meaningless definition. It’s like asking if you like individual freedom, and declaring that if you do, you must be a libertarian.
BC
Oct 25 2020 at 2:49am
“equality of opportunity, equality of treatment independent of race”
That may have defined liberalism in the 1960s but not progressivism in the 2020s, which has goals related to equality of outcomes rather than race-neutral treatment and processes. For example, progressives strongly oppose college admissions policies that ignore race. Ditto for corporate hiring and recruitment policies.
Michael Sandifer
Oct 22 2020 at 4:40pm
Unfortunately, my impression is that the vast majority of progressives are economically naive. The good intentions are certainly there, and the ends are admirable, but the means by which they want to achieve the ends are typically very misguided. The Green New Deal is a good example of this.
That said, I’m proud to be a progressive, as I share the ultimate ends, and it’s not as if conservatives are less economically naive. This fascist era we’re living in has also exposed the fact that most self-stylized libertarians were nothing of the sort. Libertarianism has mostly been a scam, from the 20th century forward, at least. That’s not to say there aren’t serious libertarians. Many write for this blog, but they are in a tiny minority.
Also, progressivism is more than just about economics and concerns about resource distribution. It’s also about social progress.
And practically, politcally, of the options available, which include a now openly fascist Republican Party, the joke that is the Libertarian Party, and a deeply politically dysfunctional, highly corrupt, and out-out-touch Democratic Party, the latter clearly has the cleanest dirty shirt of the parties that will ever matter.
Anonymous
Oct 23 2020 at 9:46pm
“This fascist era we’re living in has also exposed the fact that most self-stylized libertarians were nothing of the sort. Libertarianism has mostly been a scam, from the 20th century forward, at least.”
I’m curious why you think this? Most libertarians I know are staunchly anti-Trump. Certainly their candidates are. Or are you saying left-wing are the fascists? But Libertarians don’t seem to be cozying up too much to cultural revolution type rhetoric either.
Michael Sandifer
Oct 27 2020 at 2:56pm
My comments were not about libertarians you know, nor about authors on this blog. And fascism is a right-wing, not a left-wing ideology, always.
Kevin Erdmann
Oct 22 2020 at 6:36pm
Maybe shorthand for politics today is:
Conservatism remains religious.
Progressivism is secular Old Testament.
Liberalism is secular New Testament.
Phil H
Oct 23 2020 at 2:15am
“I’m sure that progressives would deny any responsibility for failures such as the Wisconsin Foxconn plant… But a similar fiasco occurred under the Obama administration.”
I think this is a strong argument. I think of myself as progressive and I agree that it’s our duty to take a clear-eyed look at what it can achieve and what it can’t.
But I’m still in awe of what it can. The existence of the USA, with its remarkably good constitution, looks to me like an example of how government done right is the *only* way to make a successful economy. A more recent example that I found very striking was the reform of coal mines in China. They basically shut down all the small mines, where corner-cutting was more rampant, and deaths per year promptly halved.
So I see the failures, but I see the successes, too, and the successes still seem more striking to me.
Steve
Oct 23 2020 at 7:42am
I’m not sure it is such a strong argument. Any specific government failure tells us nothing. By the same token couldn’t a progressive point to one of many failed businesses that were entirely privately funded? Neither side can prove anything in this way.
The cross-sectional observations (Chinese private firms are more successful the SOEs, market-oriented economies are more successful than command-and-control economies, etc.) are much more helpful. But they don’t have the ease of a smoking gun to use a rhetorical cudgel.
RPLong
Oct 23 2020 at 9:28am
Steve, I don’t think Scott Sumner was drawing conclusions from a specific government failure. I think he was highlighting that failure as a specific case of a more general insight that he picked up from being a Chicago-schooled economist.
I think he highlighted specific failures for their ability to show him how people think:
For my part, I thought this was quite an insightful blog post. Trumpists and progressives seem to view the mechanics of the economy similarly, despite disagreements about in which specific ways the government “ought to” bully, subsidize, and tax the economy.
Scott Sumner
Oct 23 2020 at 11:45am
Yes, you correctly described what I was trying to do in the post. It wasn’t about Foxconn.
Thomas Hutcheson
Oct 23 2020 at 10:15am
Ideally, “Progressive” would be that branch of Liberals who pursue redistribution from high consumption to low consumption people with little (or mistaken) regard for efficiency, “Libertarians” would be those who pursue efficiency with little (or mistaken) regard for redistribution. “Neoliberals” (moi 🙂 would be those who get the trade-off exactly right.
Tom West
Oct 24 2020 at 4:58pm
I have always thought of Libertarians as those who pursue maximum Liberty with little regard for efficiency or redistribution, although most Libertarians would claim that maximizing freedom usually maximizes efficiency as well.
Niko Davor
Oct 23 2020 at 12:31pm
This is a comically uncharitable characterization. bullying? really? The Trump Administration did push a lot of deregulation and market friendly initiatives; Sumner is deliberately scorning those.
Casey Mulligan writes a more reasonable believable judgement of Trump on trade + tariff related issues: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/i-am-a-tariff-man-comparing-presidents-reagan-and-trump/
Anonymous
Oct 23 2020 at 9:49pm
I disagree that it is uncharitable. He was publicly attacking the companies and threatening PR damage as well as targeting them for unspecified further action, as I recall.
Niko Davor
Oct 24 2020 at 11:20am
A bully is someone who wields power in a way that you resent. Every President in recent memory has wielded power and enraged and engendered resentment among some demographic in the US. I presume Trump is the one leader that really enrages and engenders resentment in you, Scott Sumner, and the other writers on this blog. It’s not hard to find people during the Obama years who felt the same way about Obama, and had valid reasons. I presume you and Scott Sumner don’t care about the people who were enraged and resentful towards Obama and cursing their tvs/laptops/radios, you are focused on your own enragement and resentment towards Trump.
BC
Oct 25 2020 at 3:06am
Scott, what is your view of China’s Belt and Road Initiative? Should we expect lots of bridges and roads to nowhere and lots of kickbacks for Chinese (and other) government officials involved in those projects? If the US government were to announce a similar infrastructure initiative, I would definitely expect the former. (Kickbacks might be replaced by campaign contributions and more legal forms of bribery.)
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