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Tariffs and non-neoliberal globalization – I

22 1
12.04.2025

When there is something fundamentally wrong, it needs to be fixed to the extent that those fundamentals get corrected through a policy that takes least time, and minimum disturbance. It may even require giving a shock, if what it needed is a big jolt to re-form the form into something that is necessary for sustainably moving forward for most.

The policy of shaking trading relations by US through the deep use of tariffs, although could have been more nuanced, and perhaps should have been, given the unnecessarily deep economic ripples, but ultimately such shake-up was necessary to deal with the unjust global economic and trading order since the double-standard practice of economic policy of those in power against the weaker segments.

This will likely remain a limited answer to the overall neoliberal order, as reflected in domestic policies, and mainstream educational knowledge and teaching, and as carried by multilateral institutions like International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and World Trading Organization (WTO).

So-called ‘sound’ economics never worked. It was an outcome of wrongly reading Adam Smith, most likely intentionally because it served the interests of capitalists, and political-, and economic elites in general. This is because Adam Smith never advocated ‘division of labour’, which becomes clear in the latter pages of his book ‘The Wealth of Nations’, as pointed out by Noam Chomsky as follows: ’So for example take say ‘division of labour’.

Now, everyone is familiar with the early paragraphs about the butcher, and the baker… but when [Adam] Smith continues a couple of hundred pages later, he sharply condemns ‘division of labour’, and says it’s kind of an abomination. That any civilized society will have to overcome by government intervention, and the reason is, goes right back to the roots of classical liberalism.

Now, the reason is that ‘division of labour’ will turn every human being into a creature as stupid, and ignorant as a person can possibly be because… repeating the same actions over and over doesn’t have a chance to exercise his intelligence and reaches full development…’

He did advocate practice of’ comparative advantage’ principle by colonies, but which was not followed to their immense advantage, by the newly liberated United States of America (USA) where, for instance,........

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