Just What The Hell Is Trump & Tucker Carlson's School Of Economic Thought?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

To begin with, as Mvd has pointed out, politicians do what is necessary for advancement, those that don't like Ron Paul or even to a large extent Paul Ryan, find themselves pushing stuff that the broad electorate won't sink their teeth into at all.


To answer the previous questions, it is nationalist economics on the broad scale, but not in terms of nationalized industries, central planning and or even encouraging monopolies.


It is economic nationalism like that of Hamilton or Clay. The protectionism, the infrastructure, the soft money etc. This is then combined with the deregulation, trust busting and the tax cuts. The tax cuts are political at this point, that is a Republican indentity issue and the deregulation is another bone to the current Republican orthodoxy. The Trust busting is a Bismarckian move, or a Teddy Roosevelt move if you prefer his example like Tucker does. Release some of the pressure and balance the market with renewed competition to avoid the situation getting worse and a communist revolution happening. That is the whole line of thinking that Tucker used to justify his defense of TR and trust busting. At its core that approach, is the most "traditional conservative" response one can see in the current era. The type of action that Bismarck would have taken. "Calm the masses and restore some balance, otherwise my head will be on a pike."

If you go back to the 1870's, you will see in some writings, the Republican platform on economics described as being sort of a "pro-business nationalism". We are not used to this because we are used to pro-business meaning advancing the interests of global business concerns and thus free trade and immigration, combined with less regulation and tax cuts. Those days are gone because that demographic is gone that pushed for that and it hasn't been delivering the goods.

What we are seeing with Trump and tucker is a natural evolution based on current economic conditions and the current demographics that dominate the Republican Party.

It is not incoherent any more than expecting people to move to look for work and then tell them to rely on churches and family for help instead of the government. It is just glossed over. Free traders love to ret-con the American System out of existence for instance and almost no one talks about Frederich List anymore.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Most politicians don't adhere to a coherent school of thought. I don't even think we have a definitive list of schools of economic thought. There is overlap everywhere. At best you could say that politicians believe in certain macroeconomic concepts or ideas (when it fits them). Macroeconomics is a lot more abstract than some people think. In advanced macroeconomics you basically learn to solve DSGE models or RCK models . Now obviously these models can have policy implications, but it's way more abstract than what most policymakers face.

Nationalist economics, it's the economic thought of right-wing nationalist parties throughout Europe (Le Pen, Wilders, Danish People's Party, The Finns, SD and elements of the AfD

I am specifying nationalist and not populist as the progress party in Norway and UKIP have more traditional economic views.

But all of this is irrelevant because Trump's economic thought is not being put into action (apart from protectionism) due to people in his cabinet.

In what way is Trump's economic thought not being put into action? He quite literally campaigned on large tax cuts and deregulation. He vowed to defend medicare and social security, but I don't think he ever said something on other welfare programs. And his tax plan was even more insane that the tax cut he got through.

While Carlson is critical of swift technological change I also doubt whether he's as ''statist'' as some of these parties can be.

1.Disagree, there is a rough consistency with Democrats to mainstream and heterodox economic schools, there is no consistency on the right.  Part of this inconsistency on the right is due to their intellectual dishonesty: they are Monetarist anti-deficit hawks when a Democrat is President, they are 'deficits don't matter' Modern Monetary Theorists when a Republican is President, part of the inconsistency though is there is no economic school anymore that has answers for mainstream right wing politicians and voters. (Other than plutocracy if you want to consider that an economic school.)

For Democrats,
Liberals like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton (and Justin Trudeau and others around the world as well) are clearly rough adherents of mainstream neo-classical economics.

Progressives like Bernie Sanders and OAC are clearly rough adherents of Post Keynesian economics.

2.Donald Trump at various times promised everything to almost everybody.  He campaigned on repealing Obamacare but replacing it with a system that was 'cheaper and more comprehensive.'

He also promised major resources to fight the opioid epidemic.  So, he did comment on other social programs.  

He also promised about 4 different tax plans, including a plan that would raise taxes on the wealthy while cutting them on the poorest.  His only consistency was that he repudiated at one time or another all his tax plans with the exception of corporate tax cuts.

In regards to some of the deregulation, some of that was pushed by the Republican Congress and not so much by Trump.

There is certainly an old European style economic nationalism to some of Trump's policies in regard to tariffs, but at other times, he has said and acted (for instance with Mexico) that many of the threatened tariffs were just being used as leverage to renegotiate trade deals or to attempt to negotiate trade deals.

On the campaign trail, Trump sometimes said that he didn't oppose free trade agreements, just ones that he 'didn't negotiate personally.'

Of course, tariffs are a form of tax and protectionism is a form of regulation, so he is anti tax in some ways, pro tax in other ways, and for cutting regulations in some ways and for increasing regulations in other ways.  These things need not be contradictory (a candidate could run on a platform, for instance, of lowering some taxes and paying for them by increasing tariffs) but Trump is clearly appallingly ignorant on economics and trade (a former Canadian negotiator with the original free trade agreements said that 'it's not really accurate to call Trump a liar, he's just 'appallingly ignorant'') so, to argue that his views comprise anything approaching an economic school of thought really makes no sense.

Trump has repeatedly expressed a near mercantilist interpretation of trade and how it benefits countries. While Trump isn't one for academic theories yes, and while he has given "lip service to liking trade", it is abundantly clear that Trump views the world has having a finite amount of wealth and that you are either gaining that wealth at the expense of others or you are being screwed out of it. In so doing Trump has rejected the teachings of Ricardo and most subsequent mainstream economists who advocate the principles of comparative advantage and specialization.

Apply it to the real world, we have had a crap ton of people displaced in the name of GDP growth and economic efficiency, by politicians and their esteemed learned economists praying to the alter of creative destruction and specialization. These people have typically received lip service and empty promises of help at best, and at worst a lecture, demeaning put down and admonition to abandon their homes, their families, their churches and their world to seek the much lauded pot of gold on the other side of the mountain.

I experienced this first hand during the early 2000s recession, and my family heeded the advice, only to find that their was no magical good paying jobs over the mason dixon line. I will tell you this, there are times I get angry, there are times I get nostalgic and there are days I want back the life that I would have had if we had not heeded that advice. You can only push people so far, until they they are tired of being starved to death, tired of being left to die on the beaches.

I took micro and macro economics in college, it was one of my favorite courses. But I can tell you this also, it doesn't matter how big the positive feedback loop is in academia, or however many textbooks the mainstream of economists can print to self pleasure each other. At some point, the theories and the policies built off of them have to translate to the people on the ground, because like I said above you can only push people so far. If the mainstream and the establishment fail to address problems, people will look to the extremes to people like Trump and Bernie. If the textbook doesn't provide the answer, one should be little surprised after 30 years of economic torture and economic terrorism that the response of many is to bring out the zippo lighter to it.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Most politicians don't adhere to a coherent school of thought. I don't even think we have a definitive list of schools of economic thought. There is overlap everywhere. At best you could say that politicians believe in certain macroeconomic concepts or ideas (when it fits them). Macroeconomics is a lot more abstract than some people think. In advanced macroeconomics you basically learn to solve DSGE models or RCK models . Now obviously these models can have policy implications, but it's way more abstract than what most policymakers face.

Nationalist economics, it's the economic thought of right-wing nationalist parties throughout Europe (Le Pen, Wilders, Danish People's Party, The Finns, SD and elements of the AfD

I am specifying nationalist and not populist as the progress party in Norway and UKIP have more traditional economic views.

But all of this is irrelevant because Trump's economic thought is not being put into action (apart from protectionism) due to people in his cabinet.

In what way is Trump's economic thought not being put into action? He quite literally campaigned on large tax cuts and deregulation. He vowed to defend medicare and social security, but I don't think he ever said something on other welfare programs. And his tax plan was even more insane that the tax cut he got through.

While Carlson is critical of swift technological change I also doubt whether he's as ''statist'' as some of these parties can be.

1.Disagree, there is a rough consistency with Democrats to mainstream and heterodox economic schools, there is no consistency on the right.  Part of this inconsistency on the right is due to their intellectual dishonesty: they are Monetarist anti-deficit hawks when a Democrat is President, they are 'deficits don't matter' Modern Monetary Theorists when a Republican is President, part of the inconsistency though is there is no economic school anymore that has answers for mainstream right wing politicians and voters. (Other than plutocracy if you want to consider that an economic school.)

For Democrats,
Liberals like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton (and Justin Trudeau and others around the world as well) are clearly rough adherents of mainstream neo-classical economics.

Progressives like Bernie Sanders and OAC are clearly rough adherents of Post Keynesian economics.

2.Donald Trump at various times promised everything to almost everybody.  He campaigned on repealing Obamacare but replacing it with a system that was 'cheaper and more comprehensive.'

He also promised major resources to fight the opioid epidemic.  So, he did comment on other social programs.  

He also promised about 4 different tax plans, including a plan that would raise taxes on the wealthy while cutting them on the poorest.  His only consistency was that he repudiated at one time or another all his tax plans with the exception of corporate tax cuts.

In regards to some of the deregulation, some of that was pushed by the Republican Congress and not so much by Trump.

There is certainly an old European style economic nationalism to some of Trump's policies in regard to tariffs, but at other times, he has said and acted (for instance with Mexico) that many of the threatened tariffs were just being used as leverage to renegotiate trade deals or to attempt to negotiate trade deals.

On the campaign trail, Trump sometimes said that he didn't oppose free trade agreements, just ones that he 'didn't negotiate personally.'

Of course, tariffs are a form of tax and protectionism is a form of regulation, so he is anti tax in some ways, pro tax in other ways, and for cutting regulations in some ways and for increasing regulations in other ways.  These things need not be contradictory (a candidate could run on a platform, for instance, of lowering some taxes and paying for them by increasing tariffs) but Trump is clearly appallingly ignorant on economics and trade (a former Canadian negotiator with the original free trade agreements said that 'it's not really accurate to call Trump a liar, he's just 'appallingly ignorant'') so, to argue that his views comprise anything approaching an economic school of thought really makes no sense.

Trump has repeatedly expressed a near mercantilist interpretation of trade and how it benefits countries. While Trump isn't one for academic theories yes, and while he has given "lip service to liking trade", it is abundantly clear that Trump views the world has having a finite amount of wealth and that you are either gaining that wealth at the expense of others or you are being screwed out of it. In so doing Trump has rejected the teachings of Ricardo and most subsequent mainstream economists who advocate the principles of comparative advantage and specialization.

Apply it to the real world, we have had a crap ton of people displaced in the name of GDP growth and economic efficiency, by politicians and their esteemed learned economists praying to the alter of creative destruction and specialization. These people have typically received lip service and empty promises of help at best, and at worst a lecture, demeaning put down and admonition to abandon their homes, their families, their churches and their world to seek the much lauded pot of gold on the other side of the mountain.

I experienced this first hand during the early 2000s recession, and my family heeded the advice, only to find that their was no magical good paying jobs over the mason dixon line. I will tell you this, there are times I get angry, there are times I get nostalgic and there are days I want back the life that I would have had if we had not heeded that advice. You can only push people so far, until they they are tired of being starved to death, tired of being left to die on the beaches.

I took micro and macro economics in college, it was one of my favorite courses. But I can tell you this also, it doesn't matter how big the positive feedback loop is in academia, or however many textbooks the mainstream of economists can print to self pleasure each other. At some point, the theories and the policies built off of them have to translate to the people on the ground, because like I said above you can only push people so far. If the mainstream and the establishment fail to address problems, people will look to the extremes to people like Trump and Bernie. If the textbook doesn't provide the answer, one should be little surprised after 30 years of economic torture and economic terrorism that the response of many is to bring out the zippo lighter to it.

I recognize this, though these economic dislocations are caused by many other factors than free trade.  They include:
1.Technological change
2.Decline of private sector unions
3.Increasing monopsony through non compete clauses.

Trump pays lip service to caring about workers, so he can't even really be called an 'economic nationalist' except for wealthy U.S corporate interests who gain through tariffs.  


Edit: you had mentioned 'pro business nationalism.'  That leads right back to the days when nearly everybody but the nobles were serfs.

If Trump actually cared about workers or workers' rights and unions, he would never have appointed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/05/21/supreme-court-backs-employers-over-workers/355923002/

This is the problem that I've referred to before with the Trump/Republican cult: they don't even realize when the rhetoric from Trump and the Congressional Republicans doesn't match what they actually do.  From my perspective, it's hard to have sympathy for people who are actively assisting in slitting their own throat, while also falling for believing that the scapegoats Trump and Congressional Republicans (and Republican governors and State Legislators) throw up to them are the real cause of their problems.


Also, Gordon Ritchie was the Canadian free trade negotiator who referred to Trump as ''appallingly ignorant.''

But you missed my point, if these problems and dislocations had been addressed, at lot of these people would not have turned to Trump. Politics has a way or reshuffling to address the present issues and when some of them are not being addressed, someone will fill that void. You can either decide whether it is a respectable leader or a monster coming to devour your soul.

Yes the rhetoric is not going to match up with the actions (as if that is anything new to politics or a novelty created by Trump), because
1) Trump is incompetent
2) Trump is lazy
3) Congress exists on a previous political paradigm and is thus behind the curve in realizing that change has occurred and finally
4) Big money still reigns supreme and dictates the conversation in the Congress and the politically established types.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Most politicians don't adhere to a coherent school of thought. I don't even think we have a definitive list of schools of economic thought. There is overlap everywhere. At best you could say that politicians believe in certain macroeconomic concepts or ideas (when it fits them). Macroeconomics is a lot more abstract than some people think. In advanced macroeconomics you basically learn to solve DSGE models or RCK models . Now obviously these models can have policy implications, but it's way more abstract than what most policymakers face.

Nationalist economics, it's the economic thought of right-wing nationalist parties throughout Europe (Le Pen, Wilders, Danish People's Party, The Finns, SD and elements of the AfD

I am specifying nationalist and not populist as the progress party in Norway and UKIP have more traditional economic views.

But all of this is irrelevant because Trump's economic thought is not being put into action (apart from protectionism) due to people in his cabinet.

In what way is Trump's economic thought not being put into action? He quite literally campaigned on large tax cuts and deregulation. He vowed to defend medicare and social security, but I don't think he ever said something on other welfare programs. And his tax plan was even more insane that the tax cut he got through.

While Carlson is critical of swift technological change I also doubt whether he's as ''statist'' as some of these parties can be.

1.Disagree, there is a rough consistency with Democrats to mainstream and heterodox economic schools, there is no consistency on the right.  Part of this inconsistency on the right is due to their intellectual dishonesty: they are Monetarist anti-deficit hawks when a Democrat is President, they are 'deficits don't matter' Modern Monetary Theorists when a Republican is President, part of the inconsistency though is there is no economic school anymore that has answers for mainstream right wing politicians and voters. (Other than plutocracy if you want to consider that an economic school.)

For Democrats,
Liberals like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton (and Justin Trudeau and others around the world as well) are clearly rough adherents of mainstream neo-classical economics.

Progressives like Bernie Sanders and OAC are clearly rough adherents of Post Keynesian economics.

2.Donald Trump at various times promised everything to almost everybody.  He campaigned on repealing Obamacare but replacing it with a system that was 'cheaper and more comprehensive.'

He also promised major resources to fight the opioid epidemic.  So, he did comment on other social programs.  

He also promised about 4 different tax plans, including a plan that would raise taxes on the wealthy while cutting them on the poorest.  His only consistency was that he repudiated at one time or another all his tax plans with the exception of corporate tax cuts.

In regards to some of the deregulation, some of that was pushed by the Republican Congress and not so much by Trump.

There is certainly an old European style economic nationalism to some of Trump's policies in regard to tariffs, but at other times, he has said and acted (for instance with Mexico) that many of the threatened tariffs were just being used as leverage to renegotiate trade deals or to attempt to negotiate trade deals.

On the campaign trail, Trump sometimes said that he didn't oppose free trade agreements, just ones that he 'didn't negotiate personally.'

Of course, tariffs are a form of tax and protectionism is a form of regulation, so he is anti tax in some ways, pro tax in other ways, and for cutting regulations in some ways and for increasing regulations in other ways.  These things need not be contradictory (a candidate could run on a platform, for instance, of lowering some taxes and paying for them by increasing tariffs) but Trump is clearly appallingly ignorant on economics and trade (a former Canadian negotiator with the original free trade agreements said that 'it's not really accurate to call Trump a liar, he's just 'appallingly ignorant'') so, to argue that his views comprise anything approaching an economic school of thought really makes no sense.

Trump has repeatedly expressed a near mercantilist interpretation of trade and how it benefits countries. While Trump isn't one for academic theories yes, and while he has given "lip service to liking trade", it is abundantly clear that Trump views the world has having a finite amount of wealth and that you are either gaining that wealth at the expense of others or you are being screwed out of it. In so doing Trump has rejected the teachings of Ricardo and most subsequent mainstream economists who advocate the principles of comparative advantage and specialization.

Apply it to the real world, we have had a crap ton of people displaced in the name of GDP growth and economic efficiency, by politicians and their esteemed learned economists praying to the alter of creative destruction and specialization. These people have typically received lip service and empty promises of help at best, and at worst a lecture, demeaning put down and admonition to abandon their homes, their families, their churches and their world to seek the much lauded pot of gold on the other side of the mountain.

I experienced this first hand during the early 2000s recession, and my family heeded the advice, only to find that their was no magical good paying jobs over the mason dixon line. I will tell you this, there are times I get angry, there are times I get nostalgic and there are days I want back the life that I would have had if we had not heeded that advice. You can only push people so far, until they they are tired of being starved to death, tired of being left to die on the beaches.

I took micro and macro economics in college, it was one of my favorite courses. But I can tell you this also, it doesn't matter how big the positive feedback loop is in academia, or however many textbooks the mainstream of economists can print to self pleasure each other. At some point, the theories and the policies built off of them have to translate to the people on the ground, because like I said above you can only push people so far. If the mainstream and the establishment fail to address problems, people will look to the extremes to people like Trump and Bernie. If the textbook doesn't provide the answer, one should be little surprised after 30 years of economic torture and economic terrorism that the response of many is to bring out the zippo lighter to it.

I recognize this, though these economic dislocations are caused by many other factors than free trade.  They include:
1.Technological change
2.Decline of private sector unions
3.Increasing monopsony through non compete clauses.

Trump pays lip service to caring about workers, so he can't even really be called an 'economic nationalist' except for wealthy U.S corporate interests who gain through tariffs.  


Edit: you had mentioned 'pro business nationalism.'  That leads right back to the days when nearly everybody but the nobles were serfs.

If Trump actually cared about workers or workers' rights and unions, he would never have appointed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/05/21/supreme-court-backs-employers-over-workers/355923002/

This is the problem that I've referred to before with the Trump/Republican cult: they don't even realize when the rhetoric from Trump and the Congressional Republicans doesn't match what they actually do.  From my perspective, it's hard to have sympathy for people who are actively assisting in slitting their own throat, while also falling for believing that the scapegoats Trump and Congressional Republicans (and Republican governors and State Legislators) throw up to them are the real cause of their problems.


Also, Gordon Ritchie was the Canadian free trade negotiator who referred to Trump as ''appallingly ignorant.''

But you missed my point, if these problems and dislocations had been addressed, at lot of these people would not have turned to Trump. Politics has a way or reshuffling to address the present issues and when some of them are not being addressed, someone will fill that void. You can either decide whether it is a respectable leader or a monster coming to devour your soul.

Yes the rhetoric is not going to match up with the actions (as if that is anything new to politics or a novelty created by Trump), because
1) Trump is incompetent
2) Trump is lazy
3) Congress exists on a previous political paradigm and is thus behind the curve in realizing that change has occurred and finally
4) Big money still reigns supreme and dictates the conversation in the Congress and the politically established types.

This doesn't explain why the same people who voted for Trump also voted for Congressional Republicans who are virtually all Randian anti worker.

There wasn't complete overlap for instance Trump outran Republicans in some localities. A good example would be that Trump outperformed Toomey in Scranton, while Toomey did better in the Philly burbs.

Granted these differences were minor relatively and a large number of people who did vote for Republicans also voted for Trump obviously.

Political affiliation is dictated largely by culture and identity. That is why a large number of these people were already Republicans. They became Republicans during the Bush years because of social issues and later on because of the immigration issue and so on. With them already there as Republicans they then had a set of issues that was not being addressed by the established Republican politicians and Trump filled that void while checking all the other boxes on the critical litmus tests (Abortion, guns etc).

Most of my original post was explaining how Trump won the primary relative to the other sixteen Republicans who also sought the nomination.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Yeah, those protectionist, nationalistic, vaguely enterprise-friendly Republicans are incomprehensible.

Just what the hell is Abraham Lincoln's school of economic thought?

American School. High protective tariffs and subsidies coupled with internal improvements. Basically the same economic philosophy as Clay and, earlier, Hamilton.

Oh yeah, 100% in agreement. That's the correct answer to my sarcastic, rhetorical question. Which I actually thank you for posting, since I'm not sure people actually would all know about this.

I'd also like to note Trump loves "infrastructure" too. Makes it amusing when people call him a Jacksonian, because Andrew Jackson would HATE him.

After reading your post the second time over I now see the sarcasm. I'm pretty bad when it comes to detecting it over text, so my bad

The comparison between Jackson and Trump was always superficial and mostly based on the fact that they both ran "populist" campaigns championing the "common man" over "the elites". Any resemblance ends there

Elites used to be nationalist and hierarchical conservative, whereas the common man was individualistic, egalitarian and classically liberal (to an extent).

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This thread is a sign of how pervasive and successful the media’s attempt to redefine ‘traditional conservatism’ to include being staunchly pro-free trade etc. has been.

Protectionism is historically a conservative position.

Not just the media, but academia as well.