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Mike Moschos's avatar

Well written and interesting. In my opinion, while you raise valid concerns about the challenges of implementing tariffs and industrial policy effectively, I think your overlooking important historical systemic stuff. It wasnt just oligarchs "skimming of the top", US real GDP growth rates actually began to decline (!!!) along with broader economic dynamism coincided with the rise of so called "free trade" policies of the Neoliberal Era began to be implemented and have continued to decline as each new big leap of its program was made. These policies were not truly about free markets but rather about centralizing economic power in oligarchic structures, leading to deindustrialization, regional decline, and a shrinking number of firms driving innovation. Tariffs, while not a panacea, could play a big role in reversing this trajectory by generating a paradigm shift toward a decentralized economic model resembling the Old Republic.

But that sort of a shift would require more than just tariffs; it would demand a reimagined framework of economic and political decentralization that promotes regional economic diversity, scientific and engineering innovation, and cultural flourishing. Tariffs could be part of a broader industrial policy aimed at rebalancing power and investment geographically, reducing reliance on imports for essential goods, and creating conditions where private-sector jobs with benefits—jobs Americans value—become widespread again.

And not least of which it would require a paradigm shift in banking and finance that resembles the paradigm that governed banking and finance in the USA between the 1830s and the 1970s, the destruction of which was the physical actions core of the advent of the Neoliberal Era

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