Meet the leaders of neoconservative economic populism in the Trump era | Wilnesh News

For former Wall Street Journal writer Saurabh Ahmadi, the goal of new populist economics is to reverse the hollowing out of the American middle class that he believes has put a lot of stress on American families. , and these pressures fuel the outrage of today’s culture.

Al-Ahmairi sees tapping into what he calls a swath of voters who are culturally conservative but want more social stability in their lives as a political imperative in a Republican Party that he says increasingly represents “lower America.”

He argued that these voters believed in the traditional gender labels of male and female but also accepted the economic benefits of the New Deal. They love Social Security and support unions—especially the unions of which they belong. They want a stable financial foundation for their lives, something they don’t have in a service-based economy.

Al-Ahmairi believes it was former President Donald Trump’s calls for a smaller America that led to his growth in polls among Latino and African-American voters — a trend that had been undermining him for months. Experts inside the Beltway are confused.

It also suggests that the Trump coalition in 2024 may be broader than many in Washington or Wall Street expect.

To solidify this new coalition, Al-Ahmairi said conservatives first need to embrace unions, if not the political leadership of the current union movement. He envisioned a re-enactment of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 to create a broad, cross-sector labor bargaining system more like the European model.

He also wants to see the minimum wage raised in the non-union sector – which he would do by empowering regional “wage boards”, a revival of the New Deal framework used to negotiate wages between workers and companies.

He will push for more restrictions on immigration, including eliminating the H-1B visa, which he believes companies use to bring in “indentured servants,” workers whose immigration status is tied to their employers, greatly reducing their ability to drive Higher wages.

Here is a list of conservative populist economic proposals, some of which may be seriously considered in a second Trump administration.

Al-Ahmairi believes that tariffs and immigration restrictions are effectively two sides of the same coin, necessary to curb corporate power that has controlled the flow of goods and labor for decades.

According to this view, tariffs can help conservatives regain control of the movement of goods, while immigration restrictions can help them regain control of the movement of labor—which ultimately benefits American workers.

Al-Ahmairi would like to see the economy regulated by state industrial policy — a government effort to steer the economy that has long been anathema to free-market conservatives.

“It’s important to build things,” Ahmari said. “We’ve learned since the war in Ukraine and the pandemic that you can’t just have a services economy. If we can’t make shells, masks and ventilators, we’re going to be vulnerable.”

Oren Kass, founder of the populist economic think tank American Compass, said the new agenda is more than just a policy framework, it is part of the demographic sea change taking place in the Republican Party.

He believes that a generational change is taking place within the Republican Party, led by a small group of young, ambitious Republican senators: J.D. Vance (Ohio), Marco Rubio (Florida), Josh Hawley (Missouri) State) and Tom Cotton (Ark.).

He told me that the generational shift taking place among elected officials is also reflected in the congressional staffers, policy experts and media figures who form the basis of the conservative movement in Washington.

“When you look at 25- to 40-year-olds, all the most motivated, capable, promising people on the right of center are moving in this direction,” Kass said.

“While this may be invisible to CNBC viewers, if you’re in the middle of happy hour in Washington, D.C., this is already happening.”

Kass counts several well-respected conservative economic thinkers among his allies.

In former President Donald Trump’s orbit, they include former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who joined American Compass’s board of directors in 2021.

If the presumptive Republican nominee is elected in November, Lighthizer is widely expected to play a leading role in shaping Trump’s economic policies in his second term.

James Pessokokis is a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and a supporter of the old-school Reagan Consensus economic policies.

But, like Cass, he also sees the Republican Party undergoing rapid change.

“I’m deeply skeptical of the entire movement because it’s fundamentally based on reacting to voters rather than trying to come up with good policy,” Pessokoukis told me in a recent interview.

“Economic policy doesn’t come from good economics, it comes from political and cultural wars and what your base wants,” he said.

One of the sharpest criticisms of Trump’s new populism from traditional conservatives is that its policies tend to lead to inflation.

At a time when high inflation is taking a heavy political toll on Democratic President Joe Biden, with voters largely turning a blind eye to an otherwise strong economy, any efforts that might increase costs for consumers could be seen as politically dangerous.

There has also been a strange twisting of the political spectrum, with the new populists on the right promoted by Trump and the economic populists on the left finding common cause.

Neoconservative economists have found common ground with the Biden administration on a range of issues, including industrial policy efforts such as his infrastructure bill (which they say is too environmentally friendly but a healthy move), the CHIPS Act’s push for the semiconductor industry expenses, etc.

“We need to recognize that our corporate tax cuts (in 2017) didn’t seem to lead to any meaningful investment growth. But if you take the CHIPS Act, boom, you have $60 billion in investment,” Kass said .

They like Biden’s focus on antitrust enforcement, particularly against Big Tech, which they say is unfair to conservatives. They also like the Biden administration’s move to eliminate private-sector non-compete agreements, hurting workers’ ability to find well-paying jobs.

Al-Ahmairi even calls himself a “Kahn conservative,” a nod to Lena Kahn, Biden’s FTC chair and a leading left-wing antitrust thought leader.

This has led to Venn diagram politics, where populists from the left and right can unite on specific issues.

That could be a welcome change for voters, many of whom say they are exhausted by ongoing political gridlock in a country where civil society is bogged down by ideological divisions.

It could also offer something more concrete: a roadmap for gaining legislative support for bold policy ideas in a second Trump administration.

In March, for example, Vance teamed up with liberal Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse to introduce the Stop Subsidizing Big Mergers Act, which would end tax-free mergers that senators say consolidate corporate power. and taxpayer subsidies.

The two politicians listed the types of tax-free mergers they want to block in the future, including Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of What’s App in 2014 and AT&T’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner in 2018.

Vance raised eyebrows in Washington in February when he said the FTC’s Kahn was “doing a pretty good job” — a rare compliment from conservatives for the Biden administration.

But the praise comes in a new and different context emerging in Washington that many on Wall Street and corporate boardrooms don’t yet fully understand.