What is the Biden administration’s international economic agenda?

[EndtheMadnessNow]

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan kicks off a Brookings Inst talk on the New Washington Consensus.


White House Transcript


Jake Sullivan outlined an affirmative vision - long requested by allies/partners for what comes after the post Cold War US-led economic order. In a nutshell:

It is a time to build, at home and abroad. This will require a major reorientation of domestic & foreign policy.

The goal is no longer trade for trade’s sake or markets as ends unto themselves: we have larger, more urgent aims— rebuilding our energy, physical & technology infrastructure. And we’ll do it via targeted public investments that crowd in private capital to deliver good jobs.

This is the surest path to all 4 major challenges of the day: resurrecting a middle class, to sowing political support for further decarbonization; to out-competing China; and, through all of this, to repairing faith in democracy itself.

Quite extraordinary, Sullivan's speech can be summarized as "everything we've been saying and doing for 40+ years is now wrong" (markets aren't actually efficient, free trade is bad, etc.)

In short: rules of the game were good when we were winning, but now the rules must change.

Which is why this speech should be seen as America's farewell to the world: "We had this narrative of building a 'rules-based order', it failed for us, we stop the pretense and now unabashedly focus on our own self interests."

Antony Blinken and Sullivan running domestic and foreign policy. Powell is taking orders from the BIS. Intelligence agencies and their blackmail rings running '24 and the media. No need to waste energy on distraction flares. Make yourself relevant to Asian supply chains and the real economy.

The genesis of Putin and the late Soviet era: calcified & geriatric political leadership, quick fall of domination in parts of Europe, disastrous pullout of foray into the graveyard of empires [Afghanistan], an economy & military that people thought were too big to fail.

Some of America's top experts on the Soviet economy seem just as perplexed by our popular sense of an imminent collapse— especially when it centers on the Soviet economy. Vladimir Treml, a professor of Soviet economics at Duke University, says simply, "Economies this size don't collapse." John Hardt, the Congressional Research Service's top Soviet analyst, likewise sees neither imminent collapse nor any immediate threat to Gorbachev's political future.

Jerry Hough, a Brookings Institution political scientist, whose judgments about Gorbachev are highly regarded, is blunt: despite its current problems, he expects the Soviet economy to begin showing significant improvement within the next two to three years, and he says that when he raised the issue of Gorbachev's possible downfall with a broad range of Soviet citizens on a recent trip, "they looked at me with a blank stare." Hough says that "no one I talked to has the sense of an imminent popular uprising" or of widespread collapse.

The Black Box of Soviet Production

WHEN AMERICANS THINK ABOUT THE SOVIET Union, they often tend to think about scarcity. That, after all, explains the lines, the discontent, the seeming perennial shortage of goods.

The peculiar fact is that the Soviet Union produces an enormous abundance of goods. When you look at primary production (in what is still the world's second largest economy), the Soviets come out first globally year after year in things like oil, natural gas, iron ore, and steel. In 1988, for instance, they produced nearly twice as much steel as the United States did. Taken together, all the things that Marx, Smith, Ricardo, or any other classical theorist of capitalism would tell you are important to industrial success are hallmarks of the Soviet achievement. That's what makes the current disarray of Gorbachev's Russia seem so peculiar at first glance. The disarray down the line leads everyone— Soviets and Westerners alike— to debate what is going on, and why.
Inside the Collapsing Soviet Economy (June 1990)

India is on track to become Europe’s largest supplier of refined fuels this month while simultaneously buying record amounts of Russian crude, according to data from analytics firm Kpler.


Bloomberg

[Ninurta]

... to more deeply integrate domestic policy and foreign policy

There is something seriously wrong when they start blending domestic policy with foreign policy. They are separate for a reason - one is domestic, and the other foreign, i.e. "not domestic". There is only one reason I could think of to blend the two, and it's not a good one. The only reason I can think to do that is preparation to give up US sovereignty.

You cannot both maintain US sovereignty and give up US sovereignty at the same time. Therefore, their claimed goal of reinstating US pre-eminence in world matters is a goddamned lie.

This is the surest path to all 4 major challenges of the day: resurrecting a middle class, to sowing political support for further decarbonization; to out-competing China; and, through all of this, to repairing faith in democracy itself.

There would be no need to "resurrect" a middle class had not both Obama and Biden worked so diligently to destroy the one we had. Now they want to "resurrect" it? More like re-make it in the image they prefer... which is not actually any sort of "middle class" at all. There are only two classes in Socialism in reality - the Oligarchs and the Peons. Any "middle class" they would try to "ressurrect" would necessarily fall into one of those two categories, and since the Oligarchs are loathe to give up their power over the Peons, guess which category they would force a "middle class" into...

Since when has "decarbonization" been a legitimate goal for governments? They can kiss my carbon-laden ass.

We cannot "outcompete" China while at the same time remaining it's major source of income, Biden cannot continue to keep pushing pet projects that require moving massive amounts of US money to China by purchasing their infrastructure components AND outcompete them at the same time. To think he can is the very definition of cognitive dissonance, and an oxymoron.

I've NEVER had any faith in "democracy", since it is defined as two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for supper, i.e. "mob rule". There was nothing wrong with the Republic we had - at least it protected individual rights and minority rights by it's very design - so there is no way in hell they can "repair" what never was. That is verbal sleight of mouth to try keeping folks from realizing that they are "fundamentally changing" America into something it never was, where the wishes of the mob outweigh the rights of it's victims, and it's victims have no means of defending themselves from the mob, no recourse other than either capitulation or death.

I know which of those two options will be my choice, as it ever has been.

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