Finding a pro-worker and pro-Canada framework for our economy

It can be a bit hard to find our footing, opposing Trump's actions which are destabilizing the same liberal economic order that we have struggled against.

If we are outraged that Donald Trump is flouting free trade deals that he himself negotiated, does that mean we have to defend free trade now?

Photo by Tapish on Unsplash

Of course not, but it does mean it’s easy to get pulled in that direction. It's also easy to get pulled into his isolationist frame - he doesn't believe in collaborative solutions, (i.e. Win-wins don't exist), he's picking up all his toys and storming off, so we should do the same.

I don't think this is the right approach.

I think our approach should be to say, OK, given this context of an unreliable, unstable, and deeply selfish partner, how do we build the economy and society that we want.

Canada should seek independence from the economic harms that Trump is inflicting on us - but we also need to find broader independence from corporate power. Corporations are neither good nor evil - they are simply motivated by one thing - profits. In the good old days, we’re told, the profit calculus included long-term considerations about the overall health of the economy. If that was ever true, it is no longer. Immediacy rules; tomorrow is for losers. Quarterly reports, executive bonuses, and the bottomless hunger of private capital have driven a parasitic relationship with the broader economy, instead of a healthy symbiosis that we’re sold in Econ textbooks.

This means that there is no question whether or not capital can be trusted to build the critical infrastructure that Canada needs in order to build a more self-sustaining economy. So we need the political will and policy freedom for governments to shape the economy with public investment in infrastructure & services, to regulate in the public interest, and we may need direct public investments in domestic industries (in ways that subsidize wages instead of profit - working on thinking this through).

The left in Canada has historically been a bit nationalistic, partly because we live in the shadow of the United States, but also because pragmatically the state is where we have power in a democracy to challenge corporate interests and build non-market institutions that will meet our collective needs.

I don’t know if we need a slogan for it, but they seem to work for conservatives. If we reject "Make Canada Great Again," can we find something pithier than "Protect our right to build something different". This is not my strength, but there must be a slogan that captures a pro-worker agenda that includes the reality of needing public investment to build some domestic private sector economic independence from the whims of the US and other global actors. Anyone?

If you have a subscription to the Toronto Star, you can see what I wrote about how the federal government’s approach to the “interprovincial trade barrier” question is counter-productive for what we need in this moment.