Economic Populism

CrowdSource 11.25.2024

Welcome to CrowdSource, your weekly guided tour of the latest intellectual disputes, ideological disagreements, and national debates that piqued our interest (or inflamed our passions). This week: the ideas driving the Trump coalition, a continuing series. (See previous installments on National Libertarianism and the alliance between Traditional Conservatives and Tech Entrepreneurs.)

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Republicans for Labor

Last Friday, Donald Trump announced his candidate for Secretary of Labor: Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a Teamsters-backed Republican who supports the union-strengthening Protecting the Right to Organize Act (or PRO Act).

While the nomination has alarmed many traditional Republicans, the move is in line with pro-labor rhetoric of many politicians, intellectuals and thought leaders on the Right who can be broadly categorized as Economic Populists.

• “Pro-Family, Pro-Worker Conservatism.” VP-elect J. D. Vance, doyen of the economic populists, defined their mission in a 2019 speech: “We’re for American workers who want to build a life in their homes with dignified jobs and raise the families supported by those dignified jobs.”

• Real Economy > Knowledge Economy. This interview with

  Oren Cass
  , chief economist at the American Compass, a conservative pro-labor think tank, highlights some of what economic populists stand for: a critique of free trade and support for tariffs as the “stick” in trade negotiations; valuing the industry and the “real economy” over tech and the “knowledge” economy; serving those regions negatively impacted by globalization.

• “The Dignity of Work.” Marco Rubio, tapped to be Trump’s Secretary of State, has delivered speeches that support economic populism — like this one from 2019: “Free enterprise made America the most prosperous nation in human history. But that prosperity wasn’t just about businesses making a profit; it was also about the creation and availability of dignified work.”

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What About Labor Unions?

A tension is brewing on the Right between pro-union Economic Populists and union-skeptical ones. Here’s a taste of that nascent debate:

• In Favor. In 2020, Cass urged fellow conservatives to support unions and specifically to help reinvigorate private sector unions. This year, economic populist

  Sohrab Ahmari
  defended the largely unpopular longshoreman’s strike: “The militancy showcased by the [the longshoremen] is exactly what is needed to restore a fairer, more balanced economy — the kind that created the middle class ... ”

• What About Alternatives? This past summer, however, Cass seems to have changed his mind. He published an op-ed critical of unions and the PRO Act. The PRO Act, Cass argues, will benefit union leaders more than the actual workers unions are meant to serve. He suggests alternatives:

  • a “combination of a minimum-wage increase and mandatory E-Verify”';

  • “worker’s councils” where a labor rep has nonvoting seat in the corporate board;

  • fighting outsourcing to produce a “tight labor market.”

• Partisanship. The American Compass has also argued that “no reason exists that worker organizations … need to engage in partisan politics.” But whether the Republican leaders will learn to love the workers is an unavoidable political question of the Trump era.

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The Orphaned Working Class

Political analyst, academic and poet Michael Lind is not a Republican, but Republican economic populists have adopted much of his thinking — especially his characterization of the Democratic Party as the party of the “managerial elite.”

But Lind is also highly critical of the Republican Party. Here is his assessment of the American political landscape and its relationship with the working class:

The social base of the Democrats now consists of upscale, mostly white, college-educated voters for whom abortion, subsidized solar and wind power, and the imposition of race and gender quotas in all areas of American society are more urgent priorities than organizing warehouse workers or raising the minimum wage, even if cultural progressives pay lip service to organized labor. Meanwhile, even though most Republican voters of all races are working class, the most influential group within the GOP is the mostly affluent minority of the population — fewer than 10% of Americans — who are self-employed owners of small businesses that hire workers. Portraying themselves as victims squeezed between big business above and the working class below, most small business owners are and always have been ferociously hostile to any reform that increases the ability of their employees to bargain for higher wages, benefits, or better working conditions.

In other words, the working class is the main concern of neither party.

Needless to say, transforming the GOP into a pro-worker party is no easy task — even with Trump’s popularity with working class voters.

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From the Crowd

• John Wilson, reacting to “A Momentary Stay Against Doomerism,” by

  Santiago Ramos
  :

… I hadn’t thought to go from free will to hope, but it’s a neat way to say we can't account for all the possibilities, so let's at least be optimists. I tend towards finding more consolation in

Shadi Hamid

’s ultimate judgement for the religious, but I like this. It fits nicely in the Faith, Hope, Love trifecta. I mean my hope is in ultimate judgement, but still.

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See you next week!

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