Whatever one’s political persuasion, one could well chuckle last month when Hillary Clinton advocated the “formal deprogramming of cult adherents” of Donald Trump in order to restore power to “the good people in the Republican Party.” On the one hand, anti-Trump people have been reinforced in their contempt for the ex-president and his twisted-minded supporters. On the other hand, pro-Trump supporters concluded that the former presidential candidate’s obvious condescension once again betrayed the complacency of an elitist politician oblivious to the daily difficulties faced by the less educated working class.
To tell the truth, Mme Clinton, who did not shine in the 2016 campaign against Trump, would have done better to keep quiet. Such comments only hurt the chances of President Joe Biden, already weakened in the popular imagination because of his association with “the good people” of the Democratic Party, including the powerful rich of Wall Street, Hollywood and of Silicon Valley.
Nevertheless, his off-the-cuff statement is useful because it highlights the blindness of the intelligentsia on both American coasts, especially among economists and journalists in the academic, political and media centers of big cities and on prestigious campuses. At the top of this academic and media aristocracy sits the columnist Paul Krugman of the New York TimesNobel Prize winner in economics and heavyweight around the conference tables of Harvard, Princeton and Yale.
More careful in his language than Mme Clinton, Mr. Krugman shows the same indifference towards people less literate — and less paid — than him. A good example lies in his column of October 6 titled “Will the voters bring in the clowns? “. Mr. Krugman ironically points out that a clear majority of Americans surveyed say that Republicans would manage the economy better than Democrats, although Donald Trump’s party “seems incapable of governing itself, let alone govern the nation.”
Perplexed by this contradiction, Mr. Krugman admits that he is not a “historian”. As far as he knows, however, “America has never seen anything like the current political madness” — a madness remaining “entirely within the Republican Party.” According to the columnist, the economic news is largely positive — “almost unrealistically good”: inflation is falling; unemployment, low; salaries up compared to the period before the pandemic. “You would have thought that the Americans would feel pretty good,” but now they say “they feel gloomy.”
It is certain that Paul Krugman is not a historian, but it seems that he was never tempted by psychology either. If you have never experienced unemployment, if you have never witnessed the elimination of your place of employment following relocation, and witnessed the near destruction of your city and your traditional life , it is completely understandable that you are surprised by the depression of a large number of Americans. The story unfolds on several levels, and the figures provided by the Federal Reserve, relayed by the columnist, only describe part of our national epic.
Yet Mr. Krugman has no shortage of supporting evidence on the origins of financial pessimism in America. On July 19, 1993, he signed, with 313 other renowned economists, a letter to President Bill Clinton supporting NAFTA, then a treaty awaiting congressional confirmation. Possibly in possession of the text is Krugman, who stated: “While we do not necessarily agree on the precise employment impact of NAFTA, we agree that the agreement will be clearly positive for the United States, in terms of job creation and economic growth in general. Specifically, assertions that NAFTA could lead to an exodus of labor from Mexico are unfounded. The exchange with Mexico resulted in net job creation […] in the past, and there is no evidence that this trend will not continue when NAFTA is enacted. »
This statement appeared so false after the fact that it still leaves me speechless. There was abundant evidence to the contrary at the time (read my book as well as my reporting for The diplomatic world about Fostoria, Ohio). Today, the loss of industrial jobs caused by NAFTA is estimated to be between 700,000 and one million, not to mention the losses in ancillary businesses that surrounded the now-closed factories.
However, the worst calculation then made by famous economists was political and not statistical. To paraphrase journalist Jean-Louis Tremblais, Donald Trump is the monstrous child of NAFTA and the Permanent Trade Agreement with China, a Frankenstein-like creature, uncontrollable and uncontrolled. Crucial number: Trump won the 2016 election thanks to about 80,000 voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, three states badly hurt by the “free trade” agreements enacted by the Clinton administration.
Still convinced that NAFTA was a blessing? Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner in economics who did not participate in the call of July 19, 1993, recently recommended to me the account of four economists, including the excellent Ebonya Washington, published by the National Office of economic research on the decisive effect of NAFTA in favor of Trump in 2016. If you care about numbers and equations, Mr. Krugman, read your colleagues’ study. Perhaps then the alienation of little people will no longer be a mystery to you. And you will learn who the real clowns are.
John R. MacArthur is editor of Harper’s Magazine. His column returns at the start of each month.