Trump's tariffs do one thing right: capitalism changes | Avram C Alpert

TIt will not work to understand Donald Trump's general tariffs that are based exclusively on economic theory. As the US President himself said: “Chronic trade deficits are no longer just an economic problem, but a national emergency that threatens our security and our lifestyle.” That may be the reason why, how many economists emphasized, there is simply no good economic case for its plans.

But only a few commentators understood that facts and numbers are not the jumping point of the tariffs. As always, the economy is part of a wider political vision. The tariffs help Trump to say his claim that a lifestyle is threatened and that he can protect it alone.

In fact, the political importance of Trump's tariffs is in the idea: “Protectionism”. He not only tells people that he will improve the economy. He signals that he will protect a lifestyle, self-or above all-if others violate it by theoretically creating factory-paid factory jobs that could maintain local communities. (No matter that the key to an industry's ability to maintain communities that are practices of the workers who are organizing Trump.) On the campaign lane, he said: “Whether the women like it or not, I will protect them.” He now says the same thing about the country as a whole.

Such non -economic reasons for economic policy are nothing new. They are part of what the sociologist Max Weber described as “spirit of capitalism”. Weber argued that capitalists had to justify a claim unique in human history: profit is good. Philosophers had argued the opposite for thousands of years. For example, Jesus told his disciples that it was more likely for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven.

But with capitalism, the pursuit of profit became good. How did that justify it? Weber said “Spirit” comes into play here. At ideas of work as a sacred value in Protestantism and Calvinist ideas, he pointed out how the monetary success proved that they were among the few of God's chosen. These spiritual views showed a work ethic and made capitalist excess tasty. At least for a time.

If capitalist greed gets uncomfortable, new spirits arise. In order to understand Trump's protectionist spirit, we have to understand this previous story.

After the great depression, people saw that they could lose everything, no matter how hard they worked, and the work moral spirit lost its power. In his place, social democratic states gave capitalism a new collectivist spirit. Social democracy limited the surplus and provided moral logic by offering stability through a linked system of jobs and lifelong public services.

This collectivist spirit began to collapse in the 1960s under the pressure of stagflation, oil shocks and criticisms of conformist, consumerist lifestyle. In response to this, the spirit of capitalism turned back. After two scientists of this transitional period, Luc Boltanski and ève Chiapello, this was broken by brilliantly integrated: it was about nomads, connections, flexibility and creativity.

It was no longer the office of the Staßen Cabin; It was now the exciting creative entrepreneur who knows no loyalities and is at home in the chaos of the disorder. Hence Silicon Valley. Hence the destroyed production base, in which jobs were converted into poverty traps with low wages and in which Trump now finds many of his most loyal supporters. Hence his protectionist vision of a new spirit of capitalism.

There are some merits in this request to help those who have lost themselves, but as Weber noticed, the spirits of capitalism can mask more financial wishes. Trump also pushes massive tax reliefs for the rich and hopes that tariffs can offer rhetorical attraction without radically changing the social order.

The tariffs say: We will protect your community by violating those who benefit from their pain and became rich through globalization. Therefore, Trump accused “globalists” for the break -in of the stock exchange after the tariffs have been announced: “Many [those selling stocks] Are globalist countries and companies that don't do it so well … Because we take back things that were taken from us many years ago. “However, this ignores how jobs have been lost and the communities are imposed.

Trump is right that capitalism does not need greed and injustice in a time in a time to show it. But the problem with a protectivist spirit is that it implies that some are protected while others are injured. This will only create new cycles of dismay – as we already see with the tariff erupa trauma and the draconian immigration policy.

What we need is a democratizing spirit that is not about protecting some and violating others, but leading us to ensure that all people can live a decent and meaningful life in a chaotic world. For this there is economic policy such as fair trade, sensible industrial policy, more representation of employees on company board members and cooperative companies.

But Democrats also have to learn from Trump and emphasize the spirit. You have to show that your democratic vision is not only technocratic, but also as powerful and confirmed as the feeling of being protected.

The desire for this spirit may be why the rallies of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have drawn records. Most visitors say they are not there to hear the guidelines they already know. They are there for the “community” and to experience the “next to the next to the closest to the closest of America in America in which they actually want to live”, which works for all of us. If the Democratic Party can catch this spirit, they will not only win elections; You could only end decades of destruction.