I disagree with the short form implication of this sentence "Leftists around the world have for many years railed and rallied against free-trade and globalisation." So I looked online at what one of the most articulate leftists, Noam Chomsky had to say about globalization in 2016 regarding the The Trans-Pacific Partnership...that globalization in itself is not bad, but what most leftists were against was a specific form of globalization ("Devices that allow corporations, but of course not people, to sue governments..."):
"Globalisation can take all kinds of forms. For example, if there were anybody that believed in free markets they might take Adam Smith seriously. Adam Smith pointed out that the fundamental element of free markets is the free circulation of labour. We don’t have that. We have sharp restrictions on the movement of labour, and so, it not only means that working people can’t come to the United States to work, it means that privileged professionals, such as lawyers or CEOs, can set up protectionist barriers to prevent competition from abroad. Plenty of lawyers and doctors from abroad who are highly skilled could easily meet U.S. professional standards but of course they aren’t allowed in because professionals can protect themselves.
Globalisation could be designed so that it’s beneficial to the general population or it could be designed so that it functions along the lines of the international trade agreements, including the Uruguay Round, the WTO Agreement, NAFTA, the current Atlantic and Pacific agreements, which are all specifically designed as investor rights agreements, not even trade agreements.
Very high protection for major corporations, for big pharmaceuticals, media conglomerates, and so on, and very high barriers through intellectual property rights. Devices that allow corporations, but of course not people, to sue governments action that might potentially harm their profits. That is a particular form of globalisation designed in the interest of the designers. The designers are concentrations of private power, linked closely to state power, so in that system they are consequences of globalisation." https://chomsky.info/globalization-inequality-and-political-alienation/
I see what’s going on as essentially an economic ‘shock doctrine’ (yes I’m using Naomi Kleins Phrase). Western countries (America in particular) have deluded themselves for the last 40 years or so that they can outsource all their manufacturing jobs, let globalisation run rampant and everything will be great.
But of course, here comes the long overdue reality check. It will be painful and messy at first I except, but give it 5-10 years, everything will settle down again and the new ‘victors’ of this economic paradigm will emerge (very likely working class industries rather than more office jobs).
I’m not saying I like what Trump is doing, but I am saying its a necessary correction to the fantasy land we’ve been living in for the last 40 years.
The message re tariffs was clear enough; so how come the geniuses managing people's investments are suddenly pretending it is all a big surprise a full five months after the election? What did they expect?
It certainly has roiled the markets but there are now about fifty countries (including EU, UK, Taiwan, India and Indonesia) negotiating for tariff free trade with the US. Perhaps that was that the objective all along.
Most people didn't have a rational reasons for voting for Trump, and it's ridiculous to say that they did. they voted on a motion, and hatred of people different to them.
There were many different reasons, some rational as we have many different people. There are many "they's". But I'm curious: What do you think is rational about any of his policies?
Calling Trump's ideas policy is a little like calling being stabbed in the chest open heart surgery. Trump is transactional yes, but he only sees winners and losers – he never sees that there might be a mutually beneficial agreement.
And I can't help thinking that those people who still approve of his policies are either fascist, fascist adjacent, or facist curious.
I'm not surprised that people didn't realise what was coming though – let's face it he lies so much is difficult to tell what the hell he's going to do.
MAGA voting in Trump in 2016 is widely noted as the biggest “F You” in history to the elite. And good job too I say. Additionally, it was in fact very likely to result in rarking up people who did not give a rats about the white working class. Sure, maybe a bit of pain to the MAGA people, but satisfyingly worth it.
This time it’s different. The tariffs business is going to land a sledgehammer on the working class. This is going to be maybe their second biggest blow after hammering them in the 1980s and 1990s by not lifting a finger to support them as they lost their jobs. This will be absolute crap to watch.
It’s not going to be that pretty here either, most likely, and it comes at a time when the coffers are pretty empty.
Different elite. The educated elite, rot their souls, were the ones who have now been shafted twice. (big smile emoji, big smile emoji) The elite MAGA voted for was a .01% or whatever thug.
Okay, it was crap too, but I basically am pissed that none of us countries that benefited from globalisation did anything about the people who lost out. I build robots here in Auckland. I am acutely aware that they lift productivity - which costs jobs. The university elite (I am one) didn’t do anything to support people exposed to globalisation in NZ. I live in South Auckland, and my neighbours did okay, so we dodged a bullet. But the MAGA crowd in the US did not. So they voted in a thug to drain the swamp? Good job I say.
I certainly recall Clinton's speech on that issue. I also recall him talking about $17 ph jobs (these days $40 ph jobs) for those with 1 or 2 year post school diplomas. I imagine this included tradespeople.
Over the last 30 years that group has done pretty well in much of the western world. They are there drivers of all the new Ford Rangers. Invaribalt they en their own houses and often have a rental or two. They certainly havant missed out on the wealth creation of the last few decades.
But there is a group who has missed out. J D Vance's relatives, those who don't have a high school diploma or a 1 or 2 year tertiary diploma. Maybe 20% of the population are in this category. The same experience here. they are left with minimum wage or slightly more than that in NZ, less than $30 ph.
Trump is selling them a mirage. The well paid jobs this group did 30 or 40 years ago are gone. A Chris points out, those jobs are not coming back.
The solution. Get more training, get skills, it is the only pathway out of poverty.
Sense thanks Wayne. But it wasn't politicians who sent the well paying jobs away was it? Although they did facilitate it. It was the owners of large companies. And I suspect they will continue to chase cheap labour all over the world. It's not difficult these days is it? so yes, it's definitely a mirage.
For a number of years from 1987 to 1994 I taught Public International Trade Law at Auckland Law School. I was (and still am) a great supporter of liberalisation of trade because of the economic benefits of comparative advantage which trade fosters. As an MP, I advised Jenny Shipley that best outcome she could get from APEC 1998 held in Auckland was tho get China into the WTO. To boost China, and thus everyone else.
One the examples I used in my university teaching was that in the 1960's and 1970's the US encouraged developing Asian nations to industrialise by the US having very low tariffs to industrial goods. It enabled the Asian nations to use their comparative advantage of lower wages to progressively move up the value chain and become richer. Thus also insulating Asia from the appeal of communism. As the Asian nations got richer they would be able to buy more US high value goods (aircraft, computers, services).
It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. However, US low skilled workers in low value goods lost their jobs as these sectors became dominated by Asian countries. Most people adapted, got more skills and better jobs. But some didn't. Hence JD Vance's extended family and community. So while most people in the US benefitted from this specialisation in trade and manufacturing, there was a significant group who didn't.
It is enough to be in a skilled trade or similar. In short, those with NCEA 2 and a trade Certificate or a similar Diploma in tech or services are doing OK.
It is those who don't get NCEA who are missing out. They are either unemployed or are on a minimum wage job. However, this group is at least 20% of the work age population, so it is pretty big group to miss out. And they probably commit 90% of all crime, especially violent crime.
In the past they could get quite good jobs in process industries. Not so much these days.
I've often said we probably turn out too many University graduates, And not enough plumbers, but technology changes and plumbing is becoming more modular and less skilled.
I do remember the guys I worked within the University holidays when I was a kid, they were getting quite big-money for quite shitty work often. Nowadays shitty work doesn't pay. I used to think that perhaps that sort of thing should get a premium given its effects on your health and general constitution. I saw guys who were essentially broken physically by the sort of work they were doing and I thought they damn well deserved high pay.
"Of course the United States manufactured things, but the reality did not match the vision in Trump’s mind. The president clung to an outdated view of America – locomotives, factories with huge smokestacks, workers busy on assembly lines. [Gary] Cohn assembled every piece of economic data available to show that American workers did not aspire to work in assembly factories . . .
Mr. President, can I show this to you?” Cohn fanned out the pages of data in front of the president.
“See, the biggest leavers of jobs – people leaving voluntarily – was from manufacturing.”
“I don’t get it,” Trump said.
Cohn tried to explain: “I can sit in a nice office with air conditioning and a desk, or stand on my feet eight hours a day. Which one would you do for the same pay?”
Cohn added, “people don’t want to stand in front of a 2,000 degree blast furnace. People don’t want to go into coal mines and get black lung. For the same dollars or equal dollars, they’re going to choose something else.”
Trump wasn’t buying it.
Several times Cohn just asked the president, “why do you have these views?”
“I just do,” Trump replied. “I’ve had these views for 30 years.” “That doesn’t mean they’re right,” Cohn said. “I had the view for 15 years I could play professional football. It doesn’t mean I was right.”
I'm not a great fan of Cohen, but he does make a point. He does ignore though, that not everybody is suited to work in an office. And those at the bottom of the heap in the US are probably a bit worse off than they are in New Zealand. People might in fact choose to stand on their feet all day in front of a blast furnacy rather than be on their feet all day at McDonald's.
Trump’s brain is… oh, wait. That’s a thing he categorically doesn’t have. But somewhere in that tiny stinking echo chamber wobbling on his fat neck, there is a single idea playing over and over. And it’s the idea of vengeance. He seems to believe that every other country in the world just walked into America and stole its industry. He doesn’t understand that it was America’s own industrialists who walked. They went sniffing around the poorest countries in the world with the cheapest workforces and took their manufacturing there. Not for a better product but for a bigger profit. For themselves. It’s these American industrialists and corporations who have killed off America’s manufacturing and brought its working poor population to its knees. All done for greed. For the shimmer of oligarchy. Trump trying to punish the countries who took on its dirty work is like a guy slamming his dick in the car door all day and yelling incoherently for the door apologize.
In addition to the Bruce Spingsteen song is that by James McMurtry - "We Can't Make it Here Anymore" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Eqt2v1uYU. The first lines were very gutwrenching when we saw just what he was singing about as we went onto a freeway onramp in LA.and we wondered whether "thank you for your service" were just sounds in the breeze.
I disagree with the short form implication of this sentence "Leftists around the world have for many years railed and rallied against free-trade and globalisation." So I looked online at what one of the most articulate leftists, Noam Chomsky had to say about globalization in 2016 regarding the The Trans-Pacific Partnership...that globalization in itself is not bad, but what most leftists were against was a specific form of globalization ("Devices that allow corporations, but of course not people, to sue governments..."):
"Globalisation can take all kinds of forms. For example, if there were anybody that believed in free markets they might take Adam Smith seriously. Adam Smith pointed out that the fundamental element of free markets is the free circulation of labour. We don’t have that. We have sharp restrictions on the movement of labour, and so, it not only means that working people can’t come to the United States to work, it means that privileged professionals, such as lawyers or CEOs, can set up protectionist barriers to prevent competition from abroad. Plenty of lawyers and doctors from abroad who are highly skilled could easily meet U.S. professional standards but of course they aren’t allowed in because professionals can protect themselves.
Globalisation could be designed so that it’s beneficial to the general population or it could be designed so that it functions along the lines of the international trade agreements, including the Uruguay Round, the WTO Agreement, NAFTA, the current Atlantic and Pacific agreements, which are all specifically designed as investor rights agreements, not even trade agreements.
Very high protection for major corporations, for big pharmaceuticals, media conglomerates, and so on, and very high barriers through intellectual property rights. Devices that allow corporations, but of course not people, to sue governments action that might potentially harm their profits. That is a particular form of globalisation designed in the interest of the designers. The designers are concentrations of private power, linked closely to state power, so in that system they are consequences of globalisation." https://chomsky.info/globalization-inequality-and-political-alienation/
I see what’s going on as essentially an economic ‘shock doctrine’ (yes I’m using Naomi Kleins Phrase). Western countries (America in particular) have deluded themselves for the last 40 years or so that they can outsource all their manufacturing jobs, let globalisation run rampant and everything will be great.
But of course, here comes the long overdue reality check. It will be painful and messy at first I except, but give it 5-10 years, everything will settle down again and the new ‘victors’ of this economic paradigm will emerge (very likely working class industries rather than more office jobs).
I’m not saying I like what Trump is doing, but I am saying its a necessary correction to the fantasy land we’ve been living in for the last 40 years.
By the way, unlike Neoliberal ‘shock doctrine’ the Americans knew exactly what they voting for in Trump.
Tom: " Americans knew exactly what they voting "
The message re tariffs was clear enough; so how come the geniuses managing people's investments are suddenly pretending it is all a big surprise a full five months after the election? What did they expect?
It certainly has roiled the markets but there are now about fifty countries (including EU, UK, Taiwan, India and Indonesia) negotiating for tariff free trade with the US. Perhaps that was that the objective all along.
Knowing what you were voting for is not the same thing as knowing exactly what will happen
Nobody took Trump at his word. Few cared about or understood tariffs. He has been fickle at best with any policy - changing directions without notice. Americans "voted for him" for the same reason they voted for our minime Trumps. "The right dominates the online media ecosystem, seeping into sports, comedy, and other supposedly nonpolitical spaces" https://www.mediamatters.org/google/right-dominates-online-media-ecosystem-seeping-sports-comedy-and-other-supposedly?fbclid=IwY2xjawJgCJpleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHnMngg09516fxJH6T0ds6INov4hQuzJ5zsyQqZD_nYIOm81rmPOiPWG-a_1__aem_hM7OVysGBxuw8gTgecGFJw
In addition to conspiracies, wealthy billionaires, a neoliberal Democrat party, and right-wing trolls, inflation was a primary motivator as it was here (and in every election globally in the last 5 years). And then Trump only won by 1.5% of the popular vote. His approval rate has fallen 10%, according to the latest Ipsos poll. https://www.reuters.com/default/trump-approval-falls-43-lowest-since-returning-office-reutersipsos-poll-finds-2025-04-02/
Or they had perfectly rational well thought out reasons for voting for trump (whether you agree with them or not)
Most people didn't have a rational reasons for voting for Trump, and it's ridiculous to say that they did. they voted on a motion, and hatred of people different to them.
Extraordinary, Guerilla!
The arrogance required to state so unequivocally the reasons why millions of people voted the way they did is colossal.
A little intellectual humility is in order, I think.
There were many different reasons, some rational as we have many different people. There are many "they's". But I'm curious: What do you think is rational about any of his policies?
And btw, if you think voting against the ‘woke’ stuff is a right wing conspiracy i suggest listening to Sam Harris podcast ‘the reckoning’
Read my original comment
Calling Trump's ideas policy is a little like calling being stabbed in the chest open heart surgery. Trump is transactional yes, but he only sees winners and losers – he never sees that there might be a mutually beneficial agreement.
And I can't help thinking that those people who still approve of his policies are either fascist, fascist adjacent, or facist curious.
I'm not surprised that people didn't realise what was coming though – let's face it he lies so much is difficult to tell what the hell he's going to do.
The silver lining to the trade wars may be the destruction of MAGA, resulting in a radical readjustment of US democracy.
MAGA voting in Trump in 2016 is widely noted as the biggest “F You” in history to the elite. And good job too I say. Additionally, it was in fact very likely to result in rarking up people who did not give a rats about the white working class. Sure, maybe a bit of pain to the MAGA people, but satisfyingly worth it.
This time it’s different. The tariffs business is going to land a sledgehammer on the working class. This is going to be maybe their second biggest blow after hammering them in the 1980s and 1990s by not lifting a finger to support them as they lost their jobs. This will be absolute crap to watch.
It’s not going to be that pretty here either, most likely, and it comes at a time when the coffers are pretty empty.
Yeah, let's give the fingers to the elite by voting for an elite.
Different elite. The educated elite, rot their souls, were the ones who have now been shafted twice. (big smile emoji, big smile emoji) The elite MAGA voted for was a .01% or whatever thug.
"Good job". What was good about that "job"?
Okay, it was crap too, but I basically am pissed that none of us countries that benefited from globalisation did anything about the people who lost out. I build robots here in Auckland. I am acutely aware that they lift productivity - which costs jobs. The university elite (I am one) didn’t do anything to support people exposed to globalisation in NZ. I live in South Auckland, and my neighbours did okay, so we dodged a bullet. But the MAGA crowd in the US did not. So they voted in a thug to drain the swamp? Good job I say.
Asking Trump to drain the swamp is like asking the Creature From The Black Lagoon to drain the lagoon.
Different swamp but.
Trump is a denizen of New Jersey and Brooklyn who pays off mobsters.
Denizens of that other swamp are weasels.
I certainly recall Clinton's speech on that issue. I also recall him talking about $17 ph jobs (these days $40 ph jobs) for those with 1 or 2 year post school diplomas. I imagine this included tradespeople.
Over the last 30 years that group has done pretty well in much of the western world. They are there drivers of all the new Ford Rangers. Invaribalt they en their own houses and often have a rental or two. They certainly havant missed out on the wealth creation of the last few decades.
But there is a group who has missed out. J D Vance's relatives, those who don't have a high school diploma or a 1 or 2 year tertiary diploma. Maybe 20% of the population are in this category. The same experience here. they are left with minimum wage or slightly more than that in NZ, less than $30 ph.
Trump is selling them a mirage. The well paid jobs this group did 30 or 40 years ago are gone. A Chris points out, those jobs are not coming back.
The solution. Get more training, get skills, it is the only pathway out of poverty.
Sense thanks Wayne. But it wasn't politicians who sent the well paying jobs away was it? Although they did facilitate it. It was the owners of large companies. And I suspect they will continue to chase cheap labour all over the world. It's not difficult these days is it? so yes, it's definitely a mirage.
I rather rushed the comment, hence the mistakes.
For a number of years from 1987 to 1994 I taught Public International Trade Law at Auckland Law School. I was (and still am) a great supporter of liberalisation of trade because of the economic benefits of comparative advantage which trade fosters. As an MP, I advised Jenny Shipley that best outcome she could get from APEC 1998 held in Auckland was tho get China into the WTO. To boost China, and thus everyone else.
One the examples I used in my university teaching was that in the 1960's and 1970's the US encouraged developing Asian nations to industrialise by the US having very low tariffs to industrial goods. It enabled the Asian nations to use their comparative advantage of lower wages to progressively move up the value chain and become richer. Thus also insulating Asia from the appeal of communism. As the Asian nations got richer they would be able to buy more US high value goods (aircraft, computers, services).
It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. However, US low skilled workers in low value goods lost their jobs as these sectors became dominated by Asian countries. Most people adapted, got more skills and better jobs. But some didn't. Hence JD Vance's extended family and community. So while most people in the US benefitted from this specialisation in trade and manufacturing, there was a significant group who didn't.
It is enough to be in a skilled trade or similar. In short, those with NCEA 2 and a trade Certificate or a similar Diploma in tech or services are doing OK.
It is those who don't get NCEA who are missing out. They are either unemployed or are on a minimum wage job. However, this group is at least 20% of the work age population, so it is pretty big group to miss out. And they probably commit 90% of all crime, especially violent crime.
In the past they could get quite good jobs in process industries. Not so much these days.
I've often said we probably turn out too many University graduates, And not enough plumbers, but technology changes and plumbing is becoming more modular and less skilled.
I do remember the guys I worked within the University holidays when I was a kid, they were getting quite big-money for quite shitty work often. Nowadays shitty work doesn't pay. I used to think that perhaps that sort of thing should get a premium given its effects on your health and general constitution. I saw guys who were essentially broken physically by the sort of work they were doing and I thought they damn well deserved high pay.
"Of course the United States manufactured things, but the reality did not match the vision in Trump’s mind. The president clung to an outdated view of America – locomotives, factories with huge smokestacks, workers busy on assembly lines. [Gary] Cohn assembled every piece of economic data available to show that American workers did not aspire to work in assembly factories . . .
Mr. President, can I show this to you?” Cohn fanned out the pages of data in front of the president.
“See, the biggest leavers of jobs – people leaving voluntarily – was from manufacturing.”
“I don’t get it,” Trump said.
Cohn tried to explain: “I can sit in a nice office with air conditioning and a desk, or stand on my feet eight hours a day. Which one would you do for the same pay?”
Cohn added, “people don’t want to stand in front of a 2,000 degree blast furnace. People don’t want to go into coal mines and get black lung. For the same dollars or equal dollars, they’re going to choose something else.”
Trump wasn’t buying it.
Several times Cohn just asked the president, “why do you have these views?”
“I just do,” Trump replied. “I’ve had these views for 30 years.” “That doesn’t mean they’re right,” Cohn said. “I had the view for 15 years I could play professional football. It doesn’t mean I was right.”
I'm not a great fan of Cohen, but he does make a point. He does ignore though, that not everybody is suited to work in an office. And those at the bottom of the heap in the US are probably a bit worse off than they are in New Zealand. People might in fact choose to stand on their feet all day in front of a blast furnacy rather than be on their feet all day at McDonald's.
Trump’s brain is… oh, wait. That’s a thing he categorically doesn’t have. But somewhere in that tiny stinking echo chamber wobbling on his fat neck, there is a single idea playing over and over. And it’s the idea of vengeance. He seems to believe that every other country in the world just walked into America and stole its industry. He doesn’t understand that it was America’s own industrialists who walked. They went sniffing around the poorest countries in the world with the cheapest workforces and took their manufacturing there. Not for a better product but for a bigger profit. For themselves. It’s these American industrialists and corporations who have killed off America’s manufacturing and brought its working poor population to its knees. All done for greed. For the shimmer of oligarchy. Trump trying to punish the countries who took on its dirty work is like a guy slamming his dick in the car door all day and yelling incoherently for the door apologize.
In addition to the Bruce Spingsteen song is that by James McMurtry - "We Can't Make it Here Anymore" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Eqt2v1uYU. The first lines were very gutwrenching when we saw just what he was singing about as we went onto a freeway onramp in LA.and we wondered whether "thank you for your service" were just sounds in the breeze.
That song says it all. Thanks for sharing.
Meantime, it seems only US tariffs are bad, but not those imposed by China, India, the EU or Canada etc?
Trump's demand is reciprocity.