Beware of Democrats

Even if Americans and Canadians were to accept all the nasty things that were said of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton through eight tedious days of the Democratic and Republican conventions, we should not lose sight of the fact that there is more to this U.S. election than the alarmingly erratic personalities of the leaders of both parties. At stake are the economic policies of the richest, most powerful country in the world, and in that contest Canada and the world would be better off without the Big Government regime envisioned in the 2016 Democratic Party Platform.

The Democrats, under the influence of collectivists and socialists such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, are clearly driving the party’s policy regime off the centrist track and turning sharply left. Compared with the Trumpinfluenced Republican platform, on just about every important economic issue facing America and the West the Clinton Democratic agenda promises to make the U.S. government a vastly more interventionist and statist regime. From climate and energy to trade and spending, the Democrats are tilting dangerously away from sound policy — and they could take the world with them.

Canadians might recoil at Trump’s persona and antics, but nothing about the Democratic program would be good for Canada. On climate, trade and energy, Canada could be left out in the cold. If bad policy drives America, whether its rising debt or financial activism, Canada will feel the whiplash, not the Bern.

Across the Democratic platform, the American foundations of free markets and self-sufficiency are under assault. On spending and debt — with the U.S. federal government already running US$400 billion annual deficits and heading toward a US$30 trillion debt crisis — the Democrats promise more spending and are less than concerned about debt. They say they will “ensure” that new spending and tax cuts “do not add to the nation’s debt over time.” The Republican platform calls for balanced budgets and a concerted effort to reduce spending and the national debt.

On energy, Clinton has publicly said she is “going to pledge to stop fossil fuels,” a policy direction that can only lead to more Keystone XL decisions, freezing out Canadian energy exports. A U. S. Chamber of Commerce official notes that the final version of the Democratic platform — which once hailed natural gas as a solid source of energy — now calls for it to be phased out of the electricity supply market in favour of renewables. Fracking, the greatest U. S. energy success of the last 50 years, gets short shrift. The platform is fixated on climate change and the Paris Accord. The Democrats claim the “science” must be followed and that the U.S. must remain steadfastly committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 80 per cent of 2005 levels by 2050.

The Republican platform takes the opposite tack. It calls for “an immediate halt to U. S. funding for the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change ( UNFCCC),” an agency described as “a political mechanism, not an unbiased scientific institution.” Objective science is called for. Republicans “support the development of all forms of energy that are marketable in a free economy without subsidies, including coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear power, and hydropower.”

The Clinton/Democrat trade stance is a mess of historical contradictions. The platform says the party will “oppose all trade agreements that do not support good American jobs, raise wages and improve our national security.” Like Trump, the Democrats threaten to kill the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership negotiated by President Obama and backed by Canada. As for NAFTA, Clinton has swung both for and against, depending on the audience and the time. (See “Hillary’s trade twirls” elsewhere on this page).

The Democratic rage against Wall Street is embedded in the platform, echoing Elizabeth Warren’s populist bashing of bankers and the financial system. “Wall Street CEOs — the same ones who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs — still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favours, and acting like we should thank them,” she told the convention earlier this week. The Democratic platform plays the same tune. “The greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street must be brought to an end. Wall Street must never again be allowed to threaten families and businesses on Main Street.”

Such pandering to the mythologies of Sandersism are absent from the Republican agenda. Instead there’s a clear-eyed and more accurate interpretation of the Democrat-imposed Dodd- Frank legislation to bring Wall Street to heel. DoddFrank established “unprecedented government control over the nation’s financial markets. The consequences have been bad for everyone except federal regulators,” says the Republican platform. “Rather than address the cause of the crisis — the government’s own housing policies — the new law extended government control over the economy by creating new unaccountable bureaucracies. Predictably, central planning of our financial sector has not created jobs, it has killed them. It has not limited risks, it has created more. It has not encouraged economic growth, it has shackled it.”

The Democrats plan more of the same. In fact, they have a government plan for everything, including a national minimum wage of US$15, along with the creation and protection of union and government jobs. Even the postal service gets a boost, allowing it to get into financial services. “The United States Postal Service (USPS) is a national treasure. That is why Democrats embrace a vibrant, public Postal Service that offers universal service, and reject any effort to privatize or marginalize it.”

Whatever one might think of the individual party leaders, the party economic platforms look to be better guides to America’s — and the world’s — economic future.

NOTHING ABOUT THE DEMOCRATIC PROGRAM WOULD BE GOOD FOR CANADA.