I find this a very odd comment, and as one who has subscribed to The Economist for 20+ years would be interested in hearing it explained.
The depth and breadth of its reporting is hard to match.
I wonder what you would consider an outstanding print (incl. online) news source.
Yes. Pro- and anti- is determined by the precise details, not based on some relative comparison between the two options.
We’re both agreed that Trump is (facially) in the anti- camp.
Trump was previously in power. He enacted anti- measures and put them into place. Others came in, inheriting those anti- measures, and left them in place. Harris would leave them in place.
Trump (facially) would add further anti- measures. Harris, as said, would stay at the current level of anti-.
Those are both anti- leaning positions. A pro- leaning position would be to rollback the measures or even add pro- measures as well.
This election is about relative levels of worker protectionism and other left-leaning policy. Trump is (facially) more left leaning but they’re both on the side of government intervention into the market, in favor of the average man.
Untargeted, across the board tariffs aren’t pro worker, they’re pro inflation, pro lower growth (anti worker), and pro taxes on lower and middle income consumers.
Sage - ok, now that we’ve addressed matters of rhetorical logic, let’s rewind the tape a bit. Here’s a history of US China trade relations.
Now consider Trump’s proposal for a 10-20% tax on all imports. That’s far more significant than anything done in the past quantitatively and yes qualitatively. There’s a bipartisan consensus to get tougher on China, and part of that involves trade. There is no such consensus on starting a trade war with the rest of the world, but Presidents have wide discretion to raise tarriffs so under Trump a trade war is what we’ll get. The US Chamber of Commerce’s statement has no sense of proportion and proportion matters a lot.
Wanting to stick it to China for national security reasons is one thing. Advocating 10 or 20% tariffs on all imports is highly inflationary, stagflationary, regressive, and truly anti-trade - it’s a self-administered supply shock. There’s a very big difference between these two sorts of policies and the US Chamber of Commerce is blowing smoke. This is bothsidesism taken to an absurd degree.
The Economist for the most part is an unbiased paper with a good reputation, and I was speaking with hyperbole. However, it does have a commitment to being centrist to an extreme degree, one that it’s open about, and sometimes their take on American politics is one I don’t trust. Here is a previous discussion about an older article:
I expressed my criticism there as well, while acknowledging that it’s overall a good paper. This being the Pit, I initially exaggerated my criticism a tad.
I don’t know, personally I’d say that the complete absence of a traditionally right wing, pro-business party is fairly concerning and may be the largest element of concern - especially for a business group.
At the end of the day, the business of America is business. If we give up on that, you’ve got a lot of distance to shift to become whatever it is that the average factory worker and barista thinks they want out of the government and the world. Large shifts are generally not comfortable nor pleasant and especially not when guided by people who don’t know and understand things.
Agreed, sort of. All other OECD democracies have center right parties, setting aside Hungary. If I was a citizen of those countries I could imagine voting for them. The Republican Party experienced a policy collapse this century, shifting to a stance of pure obstructionism under Democratic Presidencies and mindless tax cuts under Republican ones, (setting aside GW Bush where there was an internal policy debate on deficits. The good guys lost, but at least there was a debate). In Europe conservative parties acknowledge the reality of global warming.
Since 2016, the GOP drifted into Nazi-adjacent fascism which makes them something other than center right. No the GOP are not Nazis IMHO. But they no longer push back at Nazis either. And when your main campaign plank is mass deportation and you oppose electoral democracy, yeah I say you’re a fascist. Think Mussolini, not Hitler.
For more on the Nazi problem I’ll link to this roundup by the Nation magazine. If it were just Mark Robinson, the self-described black Nazi running for the governorship of North Carolina, that could be a fluke. But there’s also Tucker Carlson interviewing a self-described historian who likes Hitler and dislikes Churchill. From the article:
But the GOP’s white nationalist problem extends beyond the Trump/DeSantis race. On Wednesday, Media Matters reported that Matteo Cina, a Fox News staffer and former writer for Texas Governor Gregg Abbott, repeatedly posted anti-Semitic messages on TikTok. One Cina post argued that “it is hard to talk about the Holocaust and rising anti semitism [sic] without discussing Jewish presence in banking.” Arizona Representative Paul Gosar has extensive ties to the racist far right. In 2021, he spoke at a white nationalist rally hosted by Fuentes. Earlier this year, Hunter Walker of Talking Points Memo reported that Gosar’s digital director, Wade Searle, can be linked to an “extensive digital trail” on white supremacist websites, including those that support Fuentes.
Now there are crazies on both sides of the political divide. The difference is that the center-left self-polices while the center-right does not. That makes a huge difference.
But, yes, I’m a center-left capitalist. No contradiction there. By European standards I’m a centrist, since I could imagine myself voting for a center-left or center-right party, depending upon the election.
I blame the anti-Americans at Fox News and think that adoption of instant runoff voting during the primaries would be a step in the right direction.