Sometimes countries make big and fateful choices, and one is coming soon. Eighty years after the birth of postwar liberal internationalism, with its system of alliances among democracies, trade liberalization, and international law, Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign aims to recreate the policies of Franklin Roosevelt’s isolationist predecessors and opponents.
Lifting the name and ideology of the “America First Committee” — a group organized to oppose military aid for Britain as it fought alone in 1940 — Trump’s program implies rupturing NATO and other core alliances, and ending aid to Ukraine. Matching this political retreat, it attempts to resurrect the economic isolationism Herbert Hoover ran on in 1928, proposing tariffs of 10% or 20% on all goods — energy, cars, peaches, OTC medicine, all the rest — and of 60% on Chinese-made goods.
And sometimes big choices go badly wrong. American isolationism in the 1920s and 1930s helped make World War II possible. The “America First Committee” policies, had the U.S. adopted them in 1940, might have caused its loss. Hoover’s 1930 tariff hikes, advertised as a way to keep U.S. wages high and jobs at home, provoked retaliations and a deepened economic contraction, leaving exporters bankrupt and workers unemployed. These ideas’ return in 2024 presages a time in which American influence falls abroad, the cost of living soars at home, the U.S. and global economies grow more volatile,
and the risks of world politics rise.
The right response to bad and dangerous ideas is to reject them and propose something better. Vice President Harris has made a very good start on this as nominee. Politically she has chosen continuity, underlining the importance of NATO and U.S. alliances generally, and maintaining military aid to Ukraine. Economically, from an August economic speech to the first volley of her September debate victory over Trump, she has replaced the soft, “blur-the-differences” approach Hillary Clinton took in 2016 by opposing President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Biden administration adopted in early 2023 with a direct attack on Trump’s Hooverite tariff obsession. Here’s the speech version, which calmly and precisely explains Trumpism’s cost for working families:
“He wants to impose what is, in effect, a national sales tax on everyday products and basic necessities that we import from other countries. That will devastate Americans. It will mean higher prices on just about every one of your daily needs: a Trump tax on gas, a Trump tax on food, a Trump tax on clothing, a Trump tax on over-the-counter medication. … Donald Trump’s plan would cost a typical family $3,900 a year. At this moment when everyday prices are too high, he will make them even higher.”
Here, Harris accurately describes Trumpist economic isolationism and connects it to a core public concern. The next step is to offer a choice between Trumpism’s risks and resentments on one hand, and on the other a plan to lower costs for families, strengthen relations with America’s friends, and help workers raise their pay and improve their jobs. To envision what it might
be, keep the basics in mind, assess the places in which “Bidenomics” fell short, and look at a model of the way clear and simple language can help organize thought and policy.
