skip to main |
skip to sidebar
 |
| Stephan Lessenich |
The ‘openness’ of liberal democracy is part and parcel of the Western world’s self-description. However, this openness has always been functionally dependent on building effective shields against the outer world. While the rising prosperity of the advanced capitalist societies rested on, among other things, the establishment of a free trade regime systematically biased towards their own economic interests, the institutionalisation of ‘social peace’ in the relations between capital and labour was actually an effect of exporting social unrest to the peripheries of the capitalist world system. And democracy itself was effectively stabilised by redistributing substantial parts of a hitherto unknown dynamic of economic growth – a dynamic resulting from the steady rise in productivity of a capitalist economy which was structurally able to externalise large parts of the social and ecological costs of its mode of production onto third parties, specifically the labouring classes and the natural environments of the so-called developing countries.
 |
| Christoph Scherrer |
President Donald Trump has been portrayed as a protectionist. His immediate cancellation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) upon assuming the presidency, as well as his support for the border adjustment tax proposed by the Republican leadership in Congress, seems to confirm this portrayal of his foreign economic policy leanings. However, a different conclusion emerges from a closer reading of Donald Trump’s business interests, of his trade agenda as published in the 2016 Annual Report on the Trade Agreements Program by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), and of American trade negotiation history. Trump will use large trade deficits to pressure trading partners to open up their markets. Companies which are successful in exporting to the US market from those countries will be scared by protectionist announcements and will therefore most likely pressure their governments to give in to the demands of the Trump administration.
In other words, the Trump administration will further the liberalisation of cross-border economic activities. From the perspective of development economics, one could call it protectionism, because it is about protecting the interests of the most advanced US corporations which operate on the basis of intellectual property rights and access to large-scale data.
Donald Trump is not engaged in businesses that face import competition. His real estate business in the US is quite dependent on the flow of foreign finance. He has made ample use of foreign banks to finance his projects. His business abroad is based mostly on fees for branding, that is fees for using his name in different projects. His lawyers are, therefore, trying to secure trademark protection for his name in as many countries around the world as possible. Therefore one can assume that the free flow of capital and the protection of brand names are important for him as a businessman.
