ⓐⓡ⊞ⓘⓞ Neoliberalism & Globalization: Trump & Trade.

in the year 2018 neoliberalism means
different things to different people and it shouldn't there should be at this point one will articulated understanding of what neoliberalism means at least at the elite academic level and preferably around the world even in the lowly news media and so on and there really isn't neoliberalism has become a punching bag for the left-wing but nobody even knows in what direction they're punching I don't know what can I mix metaphors here it's an invisible punching bag it's a it's a somewhat blurry punching bag that nobody's quite sure no one's quite sure where they're striking a blow because there isn't a common understanding certainly not with any depth of what neoliberalism means or what it is that they're they're criticizing neoliberalism is absolutely worthy of criticism it is I think one of the most successful ideologies in the history of humankind it's certainly the most successful political ideology within my lifetime and it is an ideology that is now starting to go into fashion however it's not on the verge of some kind of dramatic collapse nobody is presuming that neoliberalism is going to go through it's going to be discredited the way the Soviet Union was discredited it's hard to even imagine what that what that would mean but certainly neoliberalism has started to raise some questions that may spark different people interpret the world to to come up with some new answers it may as a paradigm finally go to fashion or be discarded but it is saddening to see that the critics of neoliberalism still this day are so incapable of even articulating what it is or identifying with any position what it is they're they're morally objecting to so it's remain a kind of you know lame area of political science discourse now when you say that somebody is a critic of something I think on a linguistic and cultural level we tend to presume that they really have a very high level of expertise and the thing is they're criticizing that they're conversant in it that they're there they know the genre very well if I tell you that I'm a jazz critic right away you assume quite a high level of appreciation for jazz on my part if I tell you that I'm a critic of the fine arts of painting or what-have-you again simply by virtue of being critic of this field you assume I'm really immersed in it and the reality is the people who describe themselves as critics of neoliberalism are very much the opposite they're people who feel morally superior to neoliberalism and you take absolutely no interest in really understanding what it is in its own terms who have no sympathy with the people on the other side of the aisle why it was they for their part sincerely an idealistic alee supported an advanced neoliberalism they certainly don't read the literature of liberalism they don't read any of the foundational texts in the art form they're not conversant even with what it is they're criticizing politically so you know you may say that this is a problem across the board I don't think it is I mean to be honest with you I think this is an unusual example of political science not just as an academic discipline as a phenomenon political commentary on our society I don't know thumbing the ball when everyone knows this is really one of the one of the major of talking points one of the major challenges intellectual and political challenges of our time so I received an email actually a message within patreon from a supporter pay $1 a month support this channel if you want to pop up asking me in effect what my opinion was on Donald Trump's latest moves moves from Donald Trump that if says some extent threaten the status quo in terms of I don't know global trade hierarchies the assumptions of the globalization of free trade that have been one pillar of neoliberalism but I would emphasize free trade Accords of this kind they they are one element of neoliberalism there they're very far from the only element there's more to it than just that well that's that's most what we're gonna focus on in this video it's really important to point out it's really important I've said this many times many different contexts sympathy is an analytical tool don't sympathize with people just for the sake of being a sympathetic human being because think sympathy is somehow morally superior to a lack of sympathy if you really want to study what and in the Vietnam War or in the American bombing of Cambodia it's important that you know enough that you can look at the decisions made by Richard Nixon Nixon was the president in it States and you could say yeah I understand how if I were in his position I might have made that it's a I might have done something like that it's it's not useful to behave as they say many of the critics of liberalism do as if oh I'm at a great distance from this topic I couldn't possibly I would never date you I would never touch this with a ten-foot pole no roll up your sleeves get your hands dirty learn enough and get close enough to the subject matter then you can sympathize with the decision-making going on the other side especially with it with a with a mass ideological and political phenomenon like neoliberalism now it's true if I were in the position of power that Tony Blair was in in England for such a long time I wouldn't have made any of this agency pain terrible decisions politically I don't have sympathy for you know elite level executive level neoliberal world leaders and Tony Blair's is a very important example of one however I can also look at his political career look at the assumptions he had when he came into office look at what he values as a person I can even look at you know the sort of unexamined assumptions he has about the role and function of government and who he asks for advice which policy can positions even considers and how political priorities are set in his administration and I can see how it is that the pattern of governance emerges from these factors I can sympathise in that sense even if I sympathize with the sense of a sense of revulsion for the subject matter of being examined here but yes neoliberal leaders like Tony Blair uh you know I feel that I've lived you an incredibly bleak period of human history this way I know that may sound like an exaggeration I've heard some conservatives and right-wingers say this is the greatest time you know to be alive I only hear conservative saying that it's it's real why why is it anyway it's only conservatives say that only conservatives seem to say that our culture is on the brink of imminent collapse these things seem to go together the idea that we're currently in a golden age and that it's incredibly fragile and you know it's gonna collapse any point there's a certain kind of paranoid style to conservative political discourse these but you know growing up with Bill Clinton in power I mean you know I do have memories earlier than Bill Clinton but I mean to go from Bill Clinton to George W Bush and now you know George W Bush to Barack Obama and now from Barack Obama to - you know Donald Trump yeah in many ways I do feel of the through an incredibly bleak period in politics and you know look I'm going to throw out some examples here but the underlying bleakness is frankly the feeling that in politics that that nobody cares and you know perhaps that is much more depressing than being in a society or in a period of time when it seems like everyone's a fanatic so you guys know I just recently read a book about the history of the English Civil War 1640s but only 16 30s 40s 50s the war and its consequences go on and on you know in the 17th century are reading this history and people seem so passionate about politics they seems so passionate about very basic foundational concepts and in politics like the role of parliament and the role of the King and the role of the law and the role of democracy and you know to what extent should voters be represented just cuz they're human beings to what extent does it based on how many I'm within are they pay taxes or whether not they supported the right side in the war we're really basic concepts people seem to be tremendously passionate about and at the same time fanatical about and at the same time they're they're stabbing each other over there a lot of knife fights a lot of duels to the death you know breaking into the stuff cuz people were really passionate about politics and you know now I'm live with your period of history I mean this is one of the foundational concepts in neoliberal political ideology one of the fundamental ideological claims of neoliberalism was that the globalization sorry I guess they can say the global liberalisation of trade which is referred to as globalization would lead to lasting peace as never before because as one country became deeply involved in the manufacturing process and financial investment process of another there would be an ineluctable progress towards passivism on both sides so the idea is here in as much as Germany is reliant on oil exports from Russia then Germany becomes very reluctant to do anything that would provoke a war with Russia now this is true it's true it's just giving an incredibly flattering description to what's really a very bleak and demoralizing situation there are human rights and democracy in Russia is maybe a 1 out of 10 and by the way sorry these are unofficial ratings there is a ratings agency Freedom House is the name of a charity it's existed for a very long time and they give an annual ranking to every country in the world for how democratic they are and how good or how bad the human rights situation is they give a score I think it's from one to five not one to ten but you can look it up what is the rating this year for for Russia how close are they to getting a zero in terms of the quality of humorous democracy however country like Russia is definitely a few points up compared to Saudi Arabia you know in Russia they have some democracy and some human rights but not remotely enough well guess what Germany is not in a position to criticize Russia precisely because of this form of economic interdependence though that is the type of term you see I mean if you read Pro neoliberal tax from the early period where these ideas were being sincerely and hopefully profound it I mean nearly neoliberalism promised you know the end of slavery and the end of war you know there were there were people who were really sincere believers in this it also promised the end to non-tariff trade barriers it's a little bit more technical but you know if you care about economics you might care about that you know the globalization of trade was supposed to bring about a new era of both peace and prosperity and indeed of rising salaries for the poor increasing and improving you know human rights now there are some truth to their claims there really is I mean it's really worth examining how the world has changed between 1990 and in 2018 and I think there are some accomplishments that we've got to give the neoliberals credit for but precisely what they've described here so positively the flipside to is a incredibly depressing okay so you have economic interdependence between Germany and Russia so Russia invades the Ukraine outright starts slaughtering and torturing people and yes ever a detailed specific accounts of crimes against humanity of atrocities committed by Russian forces in the Ukraine that will give you nightmares they're horrifying sometimes by Russian troops themselves and by mercenaries employed by the Russians it is it is complex on the ground there who is working for whom but everyone knows Russia is is predominantly responsible for what's been going on on that part of the Ukraine okay so because economically you're dependent on Russian oil in Germany in France and so on you're not gonna stand up and do the right thing now look sorry and on a huge scale this is the situation with Saudi Arabia and what is Saudi Arabia on a scale of one to ten for democracy and human rights who is gonna stand up and say to Saudi Arabia no you have to you have to meet this minimum standard democracy and human rights there there was an assumption in neoliberalism that is part of this unraveling progress of the world that the minimum standards of democracy human rights scientific and technological progress will all pull up the countries that were at the bottom of the rankings that countries like Saudi Arabia and and you know Russia no longer communist Russia post-communist Russia would just be would be pulled up to top of the ranks now technologically this has happened I mean scientifically and technologically a country like Saudi Arabia has made unbelievable progress a country like China has made unbelievable progress but how much pressure has there been on China to meet minimum standards of human rights democracy nil zero if anything and one of my professors here professor Google Wong wrote a book about this I could do a book review of it I could not um some people say there's even a disincentive that not only is there no positive incentive to meet these higher standards whether globalization and neoliberalism provide an incentive going the other way so the question deserves to be asked if Donald Trump is now going to bring about a collapse of that globalized free trade system if this is the first step towards a new era of politics being fundamentally protectionist more tariff based so anti global free trade being anti anti free-trade anti-immigration anti-refugee more a matter of isolated national units protecting their own interests instead of engaging in free trade even when it's not in their interest because on a mathematical level guys we could just look up you can Google right now us you know balance of payments deficit I mean in terms of the value of what the United States is exporting versus the value of what its importing there have always been reasons to be alarmed about globalization and the impact it has the United States there have always been reasons to be alarmed about the North American Free Trade Agreement the free trade agreement that America has just with Mexico and the impact that's had on the America this isn't new it's really not these questions have been on the table for a long time and because of the faith in neoliberalism especially amongst governing elites nobody's been coming up with new answer those questions so yes it is possible that Donald Trump could signal at the start of a new era of coming up with new answers to those old questions it's also possible that he's just a bump in the road and as soon as Donald Trump is out of power the next person is elected is going to restore all these free trade agreements and it'll go back to the the status quo that was unquestioned that was unquestioned for example by Obama and unquestioned by you know George W Bush before so on and so forth um if we have this breakdown of international economic interdependence if we have a move more towards self-reliance either for nations economically or what's more likely for national blocks smaller blocks of nations I mean obviously the Netherlands is not gonna try to be self-reliant but maybe you're gonna have smaller clusters of some of those countries with trade barriers around them obviously the United States and Canada will be very likely to form a trade bloc under themselves but probably excluding Mexico evidently they're already you know breaking off bringing up the possibility of a lot of other international trade agreements mmm past present future if you move more into that world is it possible that this will be a net benefit for human rights or indeed animal rights this is one of the reasons I got this question is it possible that when the United States ceases making money exporting meat Europe and China you're gonna get a reconsideration these things well it's not impossible I mean you know we live in a very peculiar era when scrutiny and political participation have never been cheaper and have never been easier and yet public indifference is at an all-time high it's it's tremendously depressing to live in a period of time where the late motif of politics is nobody cares it's not just the case the people in the United States don't care about human rights in Saudi Arabia you know people in Canada don't care about human rights on First Nations reserves they don't care about human rights of the Cree and the chief way people in the United States nobody seems to care about the fact that human rights in Florida I'm sorry but Florida it really is a good example in states where the quality of government has deteriorated to an absolutely terrifying point you can come up with with all kinds of examples of that it's also true I mean there's indifference both local and international breakdown of law and order and basic human rights in in Mexico so it's not easy to say that because the problem is far away people aren't different to it when you have examples of this profound indifference within each of these countries you know of course even within the United Kingdom or what have you where both the governing elites and you know the hoi polloi the mass the mass of regular humanity and voters fundamentally do not care even though now they can have access to information instantly and for free over the internet you can find exactly the information on exactly that topic you don't have to go down to an archive in a downtown major city and leaf through government publications I used to do that stuff I was like you know the technology of getting the information and have foreign opinion is incredibly simple even the technology of sending in your opinion if you want to write a letter to Parliament if you want to contact you know your remember what have you if you want to protest if you want to give a deposition at City Hall everything has become infinitely easier than it was just a few decades ago and yet the motivation is utterly lacking so if Donald Trump now I don't know let's say he starts the ball rolling for you know a general collapse in international trade agreements and for that collapse to happen what you really need is a shift in attitude amongst ruling elites where they stop looking at an abstract greater good of assuming that infinite deregulated free trade is good for all parties and they instead start looking at their own workers their own unemployment the value of what they're producing at the value of what they're exporting versus what they're importing and start saying okay how can we how can we make balance of payments how can we optimize our economy not necessarily in a protectionist way protectionism is one response to that but just basically where they start looking out for their own their own national self-interest instead of working on the dogmatic assumption that unnatural oh sorry unlimited free trade is going to benefit all parties more than any specific interventions or guidelines tariffs or what have you if you have that kind of a shift then you're going to have the decline both of actual economic interdependence and you're gonna have the decline of the ideology whose one crucial part of neoliberalism you're gonna have the decline of the ideology that economic cooperation itself is the engine for the improvement of democracy and human rights a great example this you gotta be old enough to remember it when Bill Clinton went to China Bill Clinton made a long trip to China long journey and at that time one of the big issues in China was the status of Tibet and the lack of human rights for Tibetans and whether or not to that whatever get its independence Bill Clinton was the first president in States to give the Chinese ie two to admit that Tibet was a province of China prior to that every person in a state said no we don't we don't recognize Tibet as part of China the Tibet at some right to exist as an independent country that had been wrongfully annexed by by China in terms of international law and Bill Clinton shrugged his shoulders and said okay Tibet will forever remain a part of China in terms of the words given by Bill Clinton himself and by people who were in his office and again down to the newspapers and so on the pleasing illusion that everyone's fun was no no there's no point in barricading them there's no point in cutting them off from international trade to punishing them there's no point in treating communist China the way the United States was treating communist Cuba as if sorry it's a total hypocrisy right there's no point imposing on China the same kind of isolation from world trade that they keep as there's no point in isolation the way forward is to engagement that through exactly trade to I mean that that's the engagement we're talking about here we're not talking about you know anyway we're not talking about taking Chinese members of parliament and giving them a guided tour of Congress and explaining to them how elections work we're not talking about the kind of engagement were just saying that by the the free flow basically of money investment technology and you know economic integration that's what really happened one of the great examples this is from the Economist magazine the Barbie doll would be quote unquote made in China but it was an American company and all the the designing was done in America and all the parts would be sent to China including even the paint they'd just be assembled and painted and put in the package and shine and then sent back to America the breakdown of where the the components came from a remarkably large percentage of the value of the iPhone the Apple iPhone actually goes to Germany because so many of the fine components are made in Germany and then shipped to China and assembled you know the meet the extent to which economic production manufacturing has been integrated internationally since then it's unbelievable and it's true this integration this form of economic interdependence creates a disincentive for war it also creates a disincentive for any kind of political scrutiny of one country against another I think there's an argument to be made it also leads to a disincentive for in domestic policy for governments taking responsibility for their own economy for example for the plight of their own workers and this is a new you can go back to the 1980s and people were already saying oh if we have free trade with Mexico then car manufacturing factories car factories are gonna close down in Detroit and move to Mexico and in many cases this was literally true word like the the factory was disassembled the parts of the factory the machinery were moved to Mexico placed a new factory and and started manufacturing the same car parts just across the border right so sorry I remember I read an article that went into detail but a factor of this was absolutely literally true the machinery itself was relocated to Mexico a new factory was built ins and so on whether the jobs go to Mexico or the jobs go to China this is an oil story this criticism of neoliberalism isn't isn't something new but the question is will people now start coming up with new answers will governments and you know specifically most of these countries government really is an oligarchy it's controlled by a small elite it's controlled by people like like Donald Trump will people start caring more about you know the the National wheel which includes very much you know the the the status of the poor or they continue to subscribe to a specific version of laissez-faire economics that unlimited freedom of investment import export and trade will lead to an optimal situation for the rich and the poor alike even when we have such glaringly obvious evidence that this isn't the case and when as in the case of China Saudi Arabia and even Russia it's proven that in politically in terms of democracy and human rights the real world outcome of neoliberal globalization is not that the exchange of Technology leads to all of the boats floating up on a rising tide to rising higher and higher levels of human rights and democracy on the contrary with this tends to lead to is a race to the bottom where countries are not just competing for the lowest wages for internationally competitive manufacturing conditions what-have-you but we're also human rights and democracy itself if anything there's an incentive for these to remain at a minimal level or at a very low level indeed where there is no pressure on Thailand to have elections when Thailand went from being a democracy skater ship there is no pressure on Russia for it to meet minimum standards of democracy human rights so on for Saudi Arabia and China and guess what guys as I think I've already mentioned back in the year 2000 when the United States had a phony rigged election the election of george w bush there was absolutely no pressure on the united states to meet any kind of minimum standards of democracy and human rights either so it cuts both ways okay if you want to ask me a question like this and get a 25 minute answer hit me up on patreon pay $1 to support the they exist this channel I know the first thing has asked me this question may not be happy with my answer but hey satisfaction is not guaranteed but getting a thought-provoking answer is guaranteed and I got to tell you guys I appreciate the the question I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this before I made this video I searched my own channel for the word neoliberalism other than remarkably few videos expressly about this topic I think many have mentioned it and I'm burdened with the awareness although I opened this video complaining I have all this experience in academia meeting and talking to people with PhDs and seeing their publications seeing their their articles interview seeing how in academia very very few of the professors even their formal writing and research are really capable of addressing neoliberalism in a meaningful way I know that remarkably few of the professors are able to give this kind of spontaneous conversation about Neil neoliberalism as implications so I do feel a little bit of a shred of responsibility to take what I know and share it it was clear to me even when I was an undergraduate that you know neoliberalism its origin its nature and its future fate was going to be one of the most important for my generation and it still is when you're living through that time it's really easy to trivialize these people it's really easy to laugh at someone like Tony Blair and think that his ideas don't matter because he's such a fool it's easy to laugh at george w bush and think oh well all this will be over in eight years look how many how many decades have you got left any of us it's sad but you know this is your time this is your generation this is the fate of your world and I you know I think you need to have the honesty and and the the vulnerability to look at what's come and gone with people like Tony Blair the opportunity that's come and gone with with someone like like Barack Obama someone like George W Bush and realize this is it I mean you know this is your world this is your generations you know contribution to politics and so on you can sit back in indifference you can sit back with sneering contempt you could exercise this sense of phony moral superiority as I think most of the critics of neoliberalism do and say oh well you know many Americans you say oh well he's not my president they talk as if they feel no connection this or you know you need to have the humility to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty get involved have some sympathy for the devil realize what's motivating the people on the other side what their illusions and delusions are and maybe what their their sincere sincere goals are and you have to take up the heartbreaking work of trying to make a difference in a world that is fundamentally indifferent more indifferent than ever before despite having more access to information more access to government than ever before that's the road we've got cut out for us in what remains the 21st century