Larry Summer's Makes the First Move to Co-Opt Trump Nationalism

I am not a big fan of Donald Trump mercantilist nationalism.

He confuses backroom globalism with pure global free trade (pure globalism) and attacks all globalism as if it were all the same.

That said, it is fascinating to see Larry Summers, former US Treasury Secretary and former president of Harvard, in other words a total establishment elitist, make a move to attempt to co-opt Trump's nationalistic theme.

Summers writes in FT:

It is clear after the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s victory in the Republican presidential primaries that voters are revolting against the relatively open economic policies that have been the norm in the US and Britain since the second world war...

What is needed is a responsible nationalism — an approach where it is understood that countries are expected to pursue their citizens’ economic welfare as a primary objective but where their ability to harm the interests of citizens elsewhere is circumscribed. International agreements would be judged not by how much is harmonised or by how many barriers are torn down but whether citizens are empowered.

This does not mean less scope for international co-operation. It may mean more. For example, tax burdens on workers around the world are a trillion dollars or more greater than they would be if we had a proper system of international co-ordination that identified capital income and prevented a race to the bottom in its taxation. Taxes are only the most obvious area where races to the bottom interfere with the achievement of national objectives. Others include labour and financial regulation and environmental standards.
Reflex internationalism needs to give way to responsible nationalism or else we will only see more distressing referendums and populist demagogues contending for high office.

First, although there is confusion in the revolt against globalism by Trump and the masses. The revolt if  properly tracked back is not about "open economic policies" but crony policies, managed trade. one world order social justice plots and one world order migration policies.

Summrs is being dishonest here in his characterization of "open economic policies" as the epicenter of the current dissatisfaction. But he must do this to promote the establishment agenda of tax co-ordination, crony financial regulation, crony labor regulations, and crony environmental regulation--which he calls for in his two closing paragraphs of his essay.

The "responsible nationalism" that Summers advocates is really backroom globalism dressed up in a transgender skirt with a 5 o'clock shadow showing.

-RW