FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Professor Nolt’s Message to China: Trump’s Tariff Policy Is Based on His ‘Industrial Policy’
Sept. 18, 2018 (EIRNS)—James Nolt, a New York University professor and a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, offered China an alternative explanation in trying to understand President Donald Trump’s so-called “trade war,” in an article posted by China’s CGTN television network. Nolt indicates that it is understandable that Chinese leaders are “annoyed and bewildered” by Trump’s tactics. He opines:
“What Trump wants is not more reform in the direction of liberal principles—what he wants is to preserve what he considers key American industries. He does not want free trade, he wants managed trade.”
However, he continues, Trump cannot say this explicitly, because
“in American politics free trade is a necessary mantra. Advocating government managed trade is an anathema, especially in the Republican Party.”
What Trump wants is known as an “industrial policy,” which was once supported by some Democrats in the 1970s and 1980s, like Sen. Richard Gephardt, Nolt writes. He does not mention it, but these were the so-called “smokestack Democrats” who worked with both labor and industry in the FDR tradition, building American industry, a policy faction that was torn apart by the FBI and the DOJ through sting operations to entrap politicians in corruption traps, such as Brilab and Abscam in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The LaRouche organization was essentially alone in exposing and opposing this filthy FBI operation against the American System. The Democratic Party was left as a conglomeration of “identity politics” incompetents.
Nolt concludes that
“Former Democrat Trump probably harks back to industrial policy previously advocated by Democratic leaders,” adding that he “disdains liberal policies in favor of negotiated results. This is the inspiration behind his campaign rhetoric that so resonated with industrial workers in Middle America, perplexing bicoastal liberals like candidate Hillary Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Trump speaks a language no longer in fashion in either party: It is somewhat cryptic to the uninitiated. It must be translated for those ignorant of American political history.”
