/biz/ - Business & Finance

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION CHANGE OF COURSE: CAPITALISM IS OVER

What is the Biden administration’s international economic agenda?

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan (@JakeSullivan46) kicks off a @BrookingsInst talk on the New Washington Consensus.

>https://twitter.com/toddntucker/status/1651634719031795721

Elements of new thinking:

- Markets don't always allocate capital in socially optimal ways
- Trade liberalization shouldn't be pursued for its own sake
- Privileging finance over real economy was a mistake
- Economic integration doesn't lead to alignment on other values
- Climate crisis and economic inequality change everything
- Trickle down, labor union squashing, tax cuts, deregulation, corporate concentration made things worse
- China shock wasn't adequately anticipated or addressed
- Combined result endangered democratic stability
- Capacity to build, produce, and innovate is core to Biden agenda
- First step to an American Foreign Policy for the Middle Class: Investing at home through a Modern American Industrial Strategy
- Industrial policy as a word went away, but practice did not, eg DARPA
- Total industrial $$ will top $3.5 trillion
- Clean energy supply chains are in danger of being weaponized like oil in the 20th century, national gas in 2022
- We want our allies to join us, even as we unapologetically invest in home
- We are nowhere near saturation point on CE
- We are leveraging IRA as a source of cooperation with EU, Canada, Japan, India, and others
- Our most important cooperation is not limited to most advanced economies, includes Brazil, Angola, and others
- Our tariff rates are low historically and relatively, so can't be focus
- IPEF chapters will include clean energy, supply chain resilience, anti corruption and tax fairness
- Some COVID supply crises would have been avoided had it been in place
- "These aren't traditional trade deals," some say. That's the point.
- The era of hoping for after the fact distributional fixes is over.