The Electric Slide and Populism

One hop this time! 

Populism has taken center stage in the American political landscape of 2016. Populism is a term that refers to a political movement focusing on the current conceptions (usually related to economics) of the “general population” or, in other words, “the common folk,” “the people.” Historically these movements have either faded into the nether or incited sweeping political revolutions, most extremely resulting in military coups and violent uprisings. Usually cooler- heads or the “status-quo” prevails, but hopefully having heard and listened to the concerns of the disillusioned common people. Today we are getting calls for drastic revolution from both sides of American politics. On the right we’ve watched Donald Trump drudge up outrage based on exclusionary populism suggesting that the jobs of hard-working Americans that were lost ‘due to’ the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) allowed Mexico to “win” by taking our manufacturing jobs out of the country. This is often echoed by those on the left, with different rhetoric, who are staunchly opposed to NAFTA on the grounds that big businesses profit through such trade agreements because of a lack of government oversight and regulation.

So for Trump: ‘Sliiiiiiide to the left!’

But don’t take that too seriously, for Trump supporters it’s less about a lack of government oversight and more just bigotry and xenophobia. He still supports “yuge” tax-cuts for the rich so anyone who would support Trump for his disdain towards NAFTA just doesn’t understand economics at all.

Donald, go ahead and hop, then sliiiide right.

The Populist movement on the left led by Bernie Sanders is at least consistent, but still radical populism. The anger from progressives towards trade agreements like NAFTA and the newer Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are completely logical if their hope is to tear down the concept of American capitalism entirely and start fresh with a socialist model based on protectionism. Protectionism? You mean like isolation and abstinence from global economics? Yep. That’s what I’m saying. 

So to keep this cute:

Bernie,  sliiiiiide to the right.

(I realize this doesn’t make him right-wing but bear with me i’m working within a drunk-wedding-dance format.)

Being against big business certainly does not make you conservative, by any means, but the implications of rejecting foreign trade deals over and over again suggest that you would prefer our country to close our borders to foreign trade and shut us off from participating in the global economy. This might come across as xenophobia, if you’re not careful.

The hatred for any and all foreign trade had it’s loudest protest in the recent upset in Michigan, where Bernie Sanders took home a massive victory over Hillary Clinton. Many have suggested that this upset was largely due to the frustration of un-educated, blue-collar workers flocking to Sanders because of his hard-line opposition of such deals. 

Since this upset, Hillary has also prostrated herself in front of these rustbelt voters in hopes of reminding them how similar the two Democrats really are on the issues. But this is barely worth mentioning in the context of The Electric Slide since Hillary is famous for her political dancing skills. The ‘criss-cross’ is every real politicians best move.

But to get down to the specific reasons that these workers dislike foreign trade as opposed to the reasons Bernie cannot support these particular deals gets sticky. The workers who lost their jobs due to outsourcing are under the impression that it is trade with foreign countries, in general, that is costing them their jobs. It is completely understandable that these folks did not actually look into the specifics of these deals because, let me tell you, as someone who has put a lot of time into trying to make sense of them, they are very hard to read. But, if you try to make sense of bits and pieces of them, or more helpfully, read what people on both sides have written about them, there’s actually nothing in there about moving money and jobs overseas. The reasons that ends up happening, and the reason Bernie Sanders is so fervently opposed to them, is about the unregulated freedoms that big corporations take advantage of when navigating these deals. 

So basically they couldn’t hear the DJ, some slid left, some right, and a lot of people bumped into each other.

The corporations that eventually end up profiting and screwing over hard-working Americans have the best, most-expensive economists on their teams to find the best ways to profit off of these deals. But it’s not foreign trade, or even these deals in particular that is responsible for this, it’s our lack of corporate accountability to the governments involved in these deals. Also, contrary to what we hear from some folks opposed to NAFTA and the TPP, the impact of these deals on the American labor force is actually so incredibly minimal, that sighting that as a reason to oppose trade makes very little sense. The reason for job losses due to out-sourcing is the profit motives of the executives of these companies, and if they want something, they’re going to get it. 

The way to fix this is not shutting ourselves off from participating in the global economy, or scrapping existing international partnerships. Nor is it a realistic option to assume that we could somehow remove corporations from being a part of these deals. I’m sorry, it’s just not possible, the people with money are the people in charge of the money, nobody is going to take it from them. The centrist, arguably reasonable alternative would be to create a dialogue between governments and corporations, insisting on oversight from the U.S. as well as foreign governments involved in these deals and enacting a variety of restrictions on the ways in which we proceed with global trade in the future. 

Some might say that The Electric Slide isn’t really a dance at all, but rather a series of pre-determined checks and balances that ends up with most people in roughly the same place they started, some with bruises, some embarrassed, but overall a sense of community and cooperation. If we all try not to slide too far in either direction, participating in the the global economy could one day inspire a similar sense of disinterest and giggles.