Joe Biden's war on free trade
SACRAMENTO ❯❯ It's no surprise President Joe Biden is pursuing policies that use the feds to manage trade rather than allowing the marketplace to operate in a free and efficient manner. He's a tool of the unions, which are about “protecting” existing jobs and boosting members' wages (and their dues).
Unions therefore fight against innovation. I often discuss the concept of “creative disruption.” As Investopedia defines it, “Creative destruction is the dismantling of longstanding practices in order to make way for innovation and is seen as a driving force of capitalism.”
If you believe in capitalism — and freedom, for that matter — you can't also try to lock in the economy. If you support innovation and economic growth, you have to accept disruption. If I have an idea for a better mousetrap, that necessarily threatens businesses and workers who make the current ones.
That's why corporations and unions spend so much time on political action. They want government to put its thumb on the scales and “protect” their industries. That squelches economic activity, deprives consumers of better goods and limits the creation of new jobs. It deprives entrepreneurs of the fruits of their creativity, but the “seen” trumps the “unseen” in the political arena. Politicians see jobs that exist, but don't see the ones never created because of their policies.
We all know how California unions lobbied for the passage of Assembly Bill 5, which tried to outlaw most contracting work. The unions are angry that tech companies have developed new work models that give workers flexibility. Unions lose their power — and the dues they collect — when new economic ideas circumvent the old 9-5 factory and cubicle model. AB 5 caused so much economic disruption and so many job losses that the Legislature (and voters) exempted 100-plus industries.
Because of his ideological blinders, President Joe Biden has nonetheless tried to impose similar anti-contractor laws at the federal level through regulatory fiat. He also has promoted the FAST Act, which embraces a European sectoral-bargaining model for fast-food restaurants — i.e., it places a union-dominated government panel in charge of setting working conditions and wages in an entire industry. Big surprise that it's modeled on California legislation.
Less known, the administration is doing the union's bidding when it comes to our nation's trade policies. This is from the New York Times in April: “Since President Biden came into office two years ago, the United States has declined to pursue new comprehensive free-trade agreements with other countries, arguing that most Americans have turned against the kind of pacts that promote global commerce but that also help to send factory jobs overseas.”
That policy, which provides tax credits to U.S. electric vehicle and battery manufactur
ers, is angering other nations. In response, as the article notes, the president has created a “complicated work around” that involves signing individual trade agreements with complaining countries. Free-trade agreements are problematic in that they include all sorts of complicated regulations, but they're fine to the degree that they promote