Features » April 4, 2008

The Upside of Nationalism (cont’d)

The Patriot Corporation Act, a bill sponsored by Obama, would provide tax advantages and federal contracting preferences to companies that maintain their operations and employment base in the United States. This renewed effort to legislatively distinguish—and target—companies based on geographic employment and tax decisions started in 2002 with two little-noticed bills.

Back then, Connecticut tool company Stanley Works was making plans to exploit a tax loophole and officially reincorporate in Bermuda to avoid paying U.S. taxes. The story spurred a local outbreak of economic nationalism, and, in response, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) passed a high-profile amendment banning federal contracts from going to companies that perform such “inversions,” as they are called.

At the same time, Reps. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas) forced a House vote on their bill to ban the government’s Export-Import Bank from continuing to subsidize companies that are simultaneously reducing their domestic workforce and increasing their foreign workforce.

Both initiatives were ultimately killed, as was Sanders’ follow-up in the Senate in 2007, when he authored legislation to prohibit companies that announce mass domestic layoffs from receiving H-1B visas that allow them to import foreign workers at lower wages. The rise of economic nationalism could help these kinds of spending limitation bills make a big comeback—and not just in Congress.

In January, Oklahoma Rep. Rebecca Hamilton (D-Oklahoma City) introduced a bill to prohibit her state from contracting with any company that has shut down domestic facilities and opened up foreign ones, unless that company agrees to comply with American wage, safety and human rights standards. Hamilton has smartly wrapped her initiative in the immigration issue. She notes that one of the root causes of illegal immigration is corporate exploitation of foreign countries’ poor standards, which forces many people to cross the border in search of better conditions.

“The state of Oklahoma is basically targeting Hispanic people and other immigrants when we should be targeting the companies that take advantage of lax border enforcement to exploit lower-wage workers in both countries,” Hamilton says.

That message and her bill are easily replicable, and may serve as a national model in state legislatures across the country.

Neutral ‘nationalism’

Admittedly, the term “nationalism” can elicit legitimate fear. The impulse to prioritize the home nation over everything else has an ugly side, one that at least some members of the media seem interested in stoking, as shown by the recurring hysteria over Obama’s multinational and religious heritage. Indeed, in February, Time’s Mark Halperin advised Republicans to “emphasize Barack Hussein Obama’s unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism.”

But as with most impulses, nationalism is really value neutral. It can be used for both horrific and terrific causes, and today’s political tectonics suggest the chance for the latter to ascend over the former.

Progressive populism has proven to be an electoral force nationwide. Congress and state legislatures are designing an agenda that turns today’s economic nationalism into a legislative program.

Last month, a coalition of progressive groups launched a national antiwar campaign to make the public see Iraq War spending as the cause of the recession and underinvestment here at home—a nationalist, America-first message at its core. And because the war is sending so much money overseas, Republicans attempting to appease their “fiscal conservative” base could be increasingly unwilling to obstruct measures that reduce corporate welfare and redirect taxpayer resources to the homeland.

In short, American politics is perfectly aligned to help progressives use nationalism for our economic agenda.

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• Reader Comments

  When did in these times become a newsletter for mr Sirota?

  Posted by headed on Apr 4, 2008 at 1:46 PM

  Back in the 1990s when NAFTA was proposed, Ross Perot was the only candidate who saw what it would eventually bring to the average American. He got my vote and my Congressman got my letters urging he vote against it. He has gotten lots of letters ever since.

  The last line of my first letter in November of 1993 ended with my comment, “NAFTA — Not A Fine Thing America!”

  Maybe if Supply Side Economics had been applied to our former nationalistic idea — that Congress was instituted to represent Americans — it would have been a good thing.

  Supply Side works on the theory that by cutting taxes companies will invest their tax savings, to create higher productivity, new jobs and profits. Sounds like a win-win all the way around. Right?

  Well, that was the theory ... and it worked!  All kinds of companies and the wealthiest individuals got nice tax breaks. They invested the savings. They created higher productivity. They created jobs — millions of jobs.

  The only problem is they created those jobs outside the U.S. — and they did make huge profits!

  Now some people on TV are asking, “How did the economy get to the point where the vast majority of U.S. citizens think the economy is in deep do-do? (to borrow from Bush the First who started the NAFTA, happily ever afta process rolling)

  Today job losses are increasing and job quality is decreasing. The categories which were biggest losers most recently were construction and manufacturing. The greatest gainers were government (If you can’t lick ‘em…), health care and hospitality (motel cleaning).

  As if that weren’t enough the Wakk St. shenanigans — CDOs, SIVs ARMs, etc., (Do these qaualify as four-leter words when plural?) have led the Fed to go rate-cut-wild and driven the dollar into the pits and given us a giant helping of inflation.

  “America First ” has come to mean we got the financial clap first and have now infected the whole world.

  Like I said fifteen years back — Not A Fine Thing America!

  Posted by whattheheck on Apr 5, 2008 at 8:57 PM

  “...American politics is perfectly aligned to help progressives use nationalism for our economic agenda.”

  It’s not just about American corporations being given incentives to keep their operations in America, or uphold American labor and environmental standards when abroad. Your economic agenda would benefit from including emphasis upon supporting small businessmen, both rhetorically and legislatively. This might sound like a classically “Republican Party” agenda item (if that matters, and of course to plenty it will), but if it’s economic empowerment of regular folks in the neighborhood you want to push, endorsing and supporting the efforts of small business owners by way of law and advocacy of policy agendas is a big way to do it. It is not common to regard that sector as being akin to “the working class”, so maybe you all will shy off. But I submit that the small business owner and the employee in that business have more of common interests than they do opposing ones. Any sort of gathering of power into fewer hands (including the gathering of economic power into a few conglomerated hands) is in opposition to broadbased empowerment, and that’s the case whether the corporations getting in bed with government, as we know they do, are based in the US or abroad. To the clerk trying to earn enough to put food on the dinner table or her boss trying to get a loan to consolidate her business debts, what’s the difference?

  Do something overt and striking to back up the regular guy, and not just the clock-puncher but the one who pays the salaries from his business account in the local bank as well.

  Posted by Kuya on Apr 11, 2008 at 7:13 AM

  I think today’s economic trend in the U.S. may be a uniting factor to override the racial divide. In fact, it could even be the uniter of many categories of discrimination — racial, sexual preference, gender — all of which are increasingly being shoved aside in favor of imported low-income foreign workers.

  It began with encouraging Hispanics to come here as sub-minimum wage workers. Then our best jobs were exported. Now both are happening at all levels of income, even lawyers.

  You may remember hearing how as a service economy our people are getting better jobs in the tech sector.

  Recently Bill Gates went to Congress to plead for more visas (raising the 65,000/year limit) for tech jobs. He claims there is a shortage, but recent estimates are for 300,000 U.S. college graduates to come into the workforce this year — so apparently Bill meant a shortage who will work for what he wants to pay.

  Many of my friends and relatives lost their jobs for the same reason. Machinists (also now claimed in short supply), architects, salespeople and others because their long service and experience made them the highest paid.

  The falling dollar now puts an individual pre-tax income of $30,000 at near poverty level. Forty years ago I easily supported a family of four on that.

  My father’s father was a coal miner before unions. The unions made things better for millions of people for decades. Then, when they got too powerful our manufacturing became sloppy and lost the competitive edge to Japan, Germany and others. (My 1973 Pontiac nothing but trouble and I have owned 5 VWs since.)

  Since the 1980s management has taken the power seat and shifted the income overwhelmingly in their favor. Some CEOs now earn 500 times as much as their lowest paid employees here (who knows how it compares to China and Mexico?)

  We need to take back our government, do away with the massive influence of lobbyists and demand leaders who realize their job is to serve Americans first.

  I had hoped Obama would be a person to do this, but I think his genuine opinion of ordinary Americans has been distorted by his associations (Rev.Wright and his own wife) to the point where he sees most of us as ant-black and/or too ignorant, too self-centered and too superstitious to know right from wrong.

  Posted by whattheheck on Apr 16, 2008 at 1:19 PM

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