Stan Evans had a quip: “I never liked Nixon until Watergate.” He was joking, yes, but not entirely. Conservatives often bemoaned Nixon, for his imposition of wage and price controls, etc.
I’ve thought of this in recent days when reading the news. One article begins,
With inflation and high grocery prices still frustrating many voters, Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday proposed a ban on “price gouging” by food suppliers and grocery stores, as part of a broader agenda aimed at lowering the cost of housing, medicine, and food.
Uh-huh. As the article I have quoted points out, “price gouging” is a slippery term. When I see a small bottle of water at the airport for $5, I think: price gouging. But what the best economic minds at the University of Chicago would say, I’m not sure.
(Remember: You can’t bring your own water through airport security. You can bring an entire picnic, I think — but nothing to drink.)
Price controls are what leaders of a certain type do. You will find such commands from the left and you will find them from the right.
Viktor Orbán is perhaps the favorite leader of American populists, aside from Donald Trump. He is a darling of CPAC, the Heritage Foundation, and so on. Here is a news report from January 2022:
Hungary’s government will cut the price of six basic foods from February, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Wednesday amid an inflationary surge, extending price caps already in place for energy, fuel, and mortgages ahead of an April national election.
Orbán, who faces a tough fight for re-election on April 3, said the prices of flour, sugar, sunflower oil, milk, pork leg, and chicken breast must be cut back to mid-October levels from next month.
That’s what you call bossin’ an economy; laissez-faire is anathema to many a leader.
Another darling of our populists is Nayib Bukele, down in El Salvador. Here is a report from last month:
Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele, famous for his heavy-handed crackdown on street gangs, threatened to use similar tactics against price gougers.
Since 2022, Bukele has rounded up tens of thousands of suspected street-gang members — often on little evidence — and filmed them being frog-marched in their underwear though vast new prisons.
In a speech late Friday, he threatened to use the same tactics on wholesalers and distributors whom he blamed for a recent steep rise in the prices for food items and other basic goods.
Bukele said, “I am going to issue a call, like we did to the gangs at the start of 2019. We told them: ‘Either stop killing people, or don’t complain about what happens afterward.’ Well, I’m going to issue a message to the importers, distributors, and food wholesalers: Stop abusing the people of El Salvador, or don’t complain about what happens afterward.”
The president added, “We are not playing around. I expect the prices to come down by tomorrow or there are going to be problems.”
That’s bossin’ an economy. That is dictating an economy. (And it is very, very popular, at least initially.)
Turn now to Trump — who told a rally yesterday, “A tariff is a tax on a foreign country. That’s the way it is, whether you like it or not. A lot of people like to say, ‘Oh, it’s a tax on us.’ No, no, no. It’s a tax on a foreign country.”
With emphasis, Trump said, “It’s a tax that doesn’t affect our country.”
Live long enough, and you will see the cycles of a political party. Its phases, its evolutions, its shape-shifting. When I was coming of age — and long after — Republicans spoke of tariffs with a shudder. Smoot and Hawley were cautionary tales, not role models.
Populists often claim that America has a “uniparty,” with no real differences between the Republicans and the Democrats. In some areas, they have a point — a very good point. Both parties are demagogic about trade. (That is not an example that populists have in mind, by the way.)
In recent days, J. D. Vance has been slamming Kamala Harris as a supporter of NAFTA — the North American Free Trade Agreement. Is she one? No, of course not. But he is claiming that she is. (For an article about this, go here.)
I think of Bill Buckley, whom Gore Vidal accused of lying. Bill quipped, “Anyone who lies about Vidal is doing him a favor.” Would that Vance’s claim about Harris were true.
I remember how proud Republicans were of NAFTA. They (we) said, “A majority of Democrats voted against it. But President Clinton signed it, in an act of ‘triangulation.’ We made him come our way.” Now Republicans hold NAFTA to be a badge of shame.
Economic ignorance is a friend of politicians, a friend of demagogues — a reliable vote-getter. But the bills for associated follies come due. And bless those politicians who respect people enough to tell ’em the truth — about trade, about the national debt, about entitlements . . . about many things.