Jonah tries to give more political coherence and consistency to Reagan’s overall record than I think is really there.
I really appreciate Jonah Goldberg’s response to my column today on the many Ronald Reagans and many JD Vances that people love and hate in turn.
Jonah tries to give more political coherence and consistency to Reagan’s overall record than I think is really there. Deregulation got its first big push under Carter (airlines, trucking, and rail), but Reagan expanded on it mostly through appointees to the agencies who were hostile to regulation, shifting anti-trust enforcement, and using OMB review to slow rulemaking.
On trade protectionism, there were Reagan’s export restraints in 1981; the 1986 semiconductor agreement with Japan, which set market-share targets (picking winners and losers much?); tariffs on Japanese electronics in 1987; steel import quotas; the 1983 tariff hike for Harley Davidson; sugar quotas tightened; and textile and apparel quotas under the Multi Fibre Arrangement. On the free trade side, there was the U.S.–Canada Free Trade Agreement, a genuine precursor to NAFTA. At times Reagan seemed to use protectionist means for economically liberal ends. His import quotas caused Toyota to start making more cars in the U.S., and drove the radical expansion of the auto industry into states that were far more hostile to unions. Beyond that — and also something that touches recent Vance controversies — Reagan weakened the dollar at the Plaza Accord in September 1985 — using coordinated central bank intervention to rebalance the dollar against the franc, the deutsche mark, and the yen. From a very different angle, this is structurally similar to the Trump-populist-new-right push against free-ridership among our allies. Although it was accomplished far more quietly (literally in secret) and with far less bullying or the appearance of unilateral imposition.
I think the factions of the right today are sometimes talking past each other on these issues. Free traders will argue something like: “There’s no economic case against free trade.” While their antagonists are mostly arguing that there’s a political aim to be achieved, and assume that there is an economic cost being paid for it somewhere. (Again, Trump will make mutually exclusive arguments for tariffs because he loves them. And I think he loves them because, when pursued by executive action, they give him real leverage, and his favorite thing to do is announce a new deal under terms he negotiated personally.)
Jonah notes that JD Vance has shifted his political persona in his career. Reagan did the same, and not just on gun control. Reagan was the governor who expanded access to abortion and made no-fault divorce. Reagan was a divorcee himself back when there were still a few remaining conservatives who held that against people. He would almost never say anything but good things about FDR, but was obviously the champion of people who hated FDR’s policy legacy. I have some real qualifications to offer on it, but Mark Lilla’s famous 1998 essay, “A Tale of Two Reactions,” captures something real about the Reagan revolution too, that in some ways it was continuous and consonant with the moral deregulation of the 1960s cultural and sexual revolution.