America First Risks Becoming America Alone
wsj.com
wsj.com
I have family members who think America should be first. They love it when the US snubs other countries. In general they are people who are retired, work for the state or local government, or don't do things that generate much wealth. So they are really oblivious to how the world order has benefited their country. But maybe that is because I benefited and they didn't.
America had been first all the time since at least 1945 while driving the globalizaton. What can be more "first" than extracting all possible kinds of value - cheap labor, educated immigrants, mineral resources, transaction fee from whatever goes through the financial networks, profit from the global trade flow, etc. - from the rest of the world?
>But maybe that is because I benefited and they didn't.
"didn't"? Having one of the best retirements in the world immediately comes to mind.
MAGA is about mythically great 50s or 60s i guess. Back then the technological complexity of the time allowed to have "in-house" all the technologies needed to build even most complex products. Today the "house of 340 million" is too small to fit all the tech needed for even moderately complex modern products. The tech pyramid became much higher and has much wider foundation. As a result, tariffs hit most strongly the domestic manufacturing which needs all those imported components/materials.
And also I agree that the whole country benefited economically. But its hard to see that when your region is doing badly.
May be proponents of globalism should have financed those voters travel to other countries to see what real "doing badly" looks like.
In US, as far as i see, whenever/wherever somebody is struggling, doing badly, it can mostly be attributed to 2 problems - 30 or something years stagnant minimum wage, which today is several times less than minimally reasonable, and tremendous limitations on housing construction, both problems are inflicted by politicians on the regular people.
Politicians got rid of company pay choices and made them pick from a list of options after it was established companies couldn't be trusted to make the wage choice on their own.
So yes, and for good reasons. Unless your argument is that companies should be allowed to pay in useless company scrip?
Government oversite is so necessary and has become so pervasive and successful that Conservatives are like fish that don't believe water exists. They assume our successful heavily regulated Capitalism is the default state of Capitalism.
For those who would claim that's too much to pay for a "minimum wage job," I have another question: Should a job that does not pay enough for someone to live be allowed to exist? We have those kinds of jobs today, and the companies with these jobs have whole departments teaching their employees how to gain social support such as rent assistance and Medicaid.
I would argue very-low-tier even if I were taking your position, or even low tier with roommates
> Should a job that does not pay enough for someone to live be allowed to exist?
I don't know, probably. For local service jobs like janitors, demand is inflexible, and they'd probably end up just getting higher pay. I worry about what happens to any job that could be done for cheap, remotely, in a foreign country. Manufacturing already happened this way, and with a high enough minimum it would happen to landscape architects, middle managers, accountants, etc. In the absurd case it could be cheaper to ship overseas your HVAC or even your car for repairs, instead of paying a mechanic. It could be cheaper to telephone a foreign doctor, food costs could be dwarfed by labor costs to the point that fast food is luxury, it could be cheaper to ship your dog across the border to go to a vet. It seems like we'd be putting a whole lot of people out of jobs and business, with their customers going remotely to a sweat shop.
Now if we pair the minimum wage increase with suitable tariffs so that people aren't shipping their cars for repairs, sure, but that is never brought up.
What industries could people take power back in this way?
I toyed with the idea when I needed a couple of crowns. A friend of mine in Estonia and I worked out that two crowns is the break-even point for traveling to Estonia and seeing his dentist.
For example most Republicans I know, when confronted with the idea that illegal immigrants benefit the economy, still want them deported. The economy is not their primary concern with most issues. Framing Trump's actions always economically misses the point a lot of times.
Moreover, America First is a sentiment of spending our attention and money on our internal problems, like redirecting foreign aid to domestic aid. It's a feeling of, why is Africa getting billions of my tax dollars when I can't buy a house? This is completely unrelated to our foreign business practices except to the extent that we were doing charity for a nebulous status. At least that's what I think people voted for. In practice it has been America burning its goodwill for no reason.
No, it's not, and that's what makes it so powerful. Everyone gets to decide for themselves when America was great. For some it's before the Civil War, when the darkies were working in the fields picking cotton and knew their place. For others it's the 1940s when the US was kicking ass in Europe and the Pacific and other countries knew their place. For some it's the 1950s when women were barefoot and pregnant and also knew their place... you can probably see a bit of theme here.
In any case everyone gets to choose their own imagined golden time when A was G, typically at the expense of others (women, African-americans, minorities, other countries, ...). And you can even see which era the different groups prefer, e.g. the tradwives want to be back in the 1950s when women were unpaid domestic servants, etc.
Unfortunately, the US has so many current problems it needs to work out that America First means America Alone until then. Unfortunately, I don't envision any of said problems being solved in any way.
When "then" comes, the world will have moved on.
From what I could tell, -most- America First proponents just got mad that the country was sending/spending money abroad while our own veterans/homeless/sick suffered. Some thought it reasonable to give up being the world police if it meant fixing issues at home. I think both are a fairly reasonable ask/thought. The problem of course is that there seems to be zero movement in fixing anything people were complaining about.
That said, it's a policy also historically used by racists and ultra nationalists, so it muddies the waters a lot. But I also have trouble believing the majority of the 67% of Americans who supported the idea fall into either of those camps.
They're somewhat dated now, but still informative if you're curious about the rest of the world.
"Netherlands Second" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-xxis7hDOE was I believe the first second, but not only other european countries but many others globally (as well as a few regions and fictional countries) eventually produced one, easily found on YT.
https://news.yale.edu/2015/09/22/living-artifact-dutch-golde...
America first. Because she's naturally exceptional at everything-- America is exceptionally unexceptional!!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46826867
(I would add that the Dutch come really close, but are not nearly as tolerant of.. a certain sort of (individualist) bigot, so that makes them second in that particular ("Calvinist"*?) arena :)
*GoogAI tells you to look at the history of Geneva and Puritan New England, if you need closer refs..
Yeah, the way I heard the story is the dutch were too tolerant: the Puritans couldn't stand the idea of their kids growing up with such examples around, so they upped sticks and headed off to wander in the wilderness...
Years later, that was reflected in the failure of New Englishmen to sync with the rest of the country
(But the success of old-English women in syncing with...
https://youtube.com/shorts/4H-bmxbi_JM
?)
* https://www.courthousenews.com/top-city-prosecutors-form-faf...
The US are having their split from the world, cleaved from within moment; all driven by a nominal desire to be great again.
Future history lessons on these moments in time will be interesting.
It seems to me like other countries are cautiously responding to threats of invasion and sudden tariffs. They did not wake up one day and randomly decided to divest from the United States.
The government overreach part I cannot comment on. From my limited point of view I see ICE and overturning Roe vs Wade, but I don't pay attention to US domestic politics.
I refer to two things:
* Internal to the US citizens are responding FAFO to the US Federal governments recent actions against specific states, and secondly to
* the "FAFO" comment made by @nixass above who appears to be European (by an extremely brief glance at comment history made once two hours ago).
I assume that comment refers to many countries now exploring other options for trade in response to the US actions since January 2025. Other allied relationships are also morphing in the face of the US no longer being seen as a reliable stable partner.