A Hard Break from China
Protecting the American Market from Subversion by the CCP
Protecting the American Market from Subversion by the CCP
Reclaiming control of U.S. trade policy
On this special episode of the American Compass podcast, Senator Marco Rubio joins Oren Cass for a wide-ranging discussion of conservative economics and the common good.
Levy a tariff on all imports that rises until trade is balanced
Make American goods more attractive to foreigners than American assets
Balance trade by requiring importers to purchase credits from exporters.
On this episode of Policy in Brief, Oren Cass is joined by American Compass policy director Chris Griswold to discuss how U.S. trade fell so far out of balanceāand some ideas for how to rebalance it.
āBad competitivenessā results in weakening demand, which either reduces global production or requires surging debt to maintain demand and production at its existing level. Perhaps that rings a bell, because it is the world we live in.
President Reagan negotiated a quota on Japanese imports that bought Detroit time to retool and spurred massive foreign investment in a new manufacturing base in the South.
American Compassās Oren Cass argues that the CHIPS Act marks an inflection point for America turning away from globalization and revitalizing domestic industry.
American Compass executive director Oren Cass argues that demanding perfect legislation is a convenient excuse for voting no, and a standard by which everyone would always vote no.
American Compass executive director Oren Cass makes the case against rolling back tariffs on China in response to inflation.
American Compass executive director Oren Cass makes the case that revitalizing the American industrial base requires moving beyond globalization.
The basic quandary for economists in this debate is that they stake their claims to expertise and deference on their fieldās purported rigor, but they can uphold their own standards only under artificial conditions inapplicable to policymaking. As a result, their workās defensibility bears an inverse relationship to its relevance.
It is hard, nay impossible, to find a more sophisticated conservative critique of globalization than that articulated by Oren Cass. Perhaps because Cass was once a card-carrying member of the economic establishment himself, he has an exceptionally clear sense of some of the problematic assumptions that have underpinned that establishmentās high level of support for globalization over the past three decades.
When the former high priests of globalization admit itās not working, the time has come not only to ask why theyāve changed their minds, but also why they were so wrong for so long. Oren Cassās exposĆ© of the abuses of classical economic theory offers a valuable starting point. But the problems lie even deeper and extend much further.
In his essay, Oren Cass correctly argues that a well-functioning capitalist system requires a ābounded marketā within a nation-state that imposes interdependence on labor, capital, and consumers. Frictionless capital mobility across borders, in contrast, decouples the interests of investors from their country and their workers.
Analyzing the effects of any long-run macroeconomic trend is admittedly a difficult affair. After all, typically more than one big trend is happening at a time, which means that isolating the impact of any particular force requires careful and thoughtful empirical analysis.
American Compass research director Wells King explores the history of the Unipartyās push for globalization at all costs and the fallacies undergirding their arguments.
Oren Cass is right to note that modern economists largely misunderstand Adam Smith. But the misunderstanding runs deeper and traces even further back than editorializing in 20th-century textbooks. For more than two centuries, scholars have ignored the relationship between Smithās political philosophy and economic analysis.
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