Commentary
Neither liberalism nor protectionism: It’s time for the ‘social standard’
Protectionism and liberalism are just two faces of capital, desperate and ferocious, grappling with the great crisis of the American-led world order. For those of us who want to represent the demands of labor, the environment and collective health, the problem before us is to seek another compass entirely to navigate the tremendous global storm we are facing.
Which hill will we die on: trade liberalism or protectionism? According to the political agenda, the only choice we have is to hang from one or the other of these two gallows. A dismal dilemma, and a ridiculous one: trade liberalism and protectionism are in fact two endpoints of the same capitalist noose, inextricably woven together.
This is demonstrated by Donald Trump's recent moves. The American president is waving around the loaded gun of tariffs, then putting it back in his pocket, then pointing it at the world again. And in this merry-go-round of announcements and about-turns, bordering on market manipulation, he is offering magnificent profit opportunities to his great constituents, the Wall Street speculators, who over just a few days have been able to buy low and sell high.
Ever-higher barriers towards the outside, and a free market of privateers on the inside: two expressions of the same capitalist frenzy.
In Italy too, there is plenty of evidence of similar entanglements. It is enough to note how the government is talking up Giorgia Meloni's visit to Washington. Apparently, the premier will sit down with Trump with two items on her agenda. On one hand, to heap high praise on the U.S. tariffs against China, the common enemy. On the other, to convince the European Union to waive the already-pitiful taxes paid by U.S. multinationals on the continent, and to cancel regulations that curb the import of poor-quality American goods that are often harmful to health and the environment.
Protectionism and liberalism, once again two strands woven into the same web.
But the clearest way to understand that the dispute between protectionism and trade liberalism is misleading is to note that historically, one stems from the same historical branch as the other. The rules-free globalism of years past has generated enormous trade imbalances, which are clearly visible today in the record-high U.S. debt towards the rest of the world.
America's protectionist turn is nothing more than an extreme attempt to remedy its debt crisis. The implication is clear: trade liberalism cannot be the solution against protectionism, since it is part of the problem that generated it.
At this point, the insubstantiality of the debate between proponents of barriers to trade and champions of free trade becomes apparent. Protectionism and liberalism are just two faces of capital, desperate and ferocious, grappling with the great crisis of the American-led world order.
For those of us who want to represent the demands of labor, the environment and collective health, the problem before us is to seek another compass entirely to navigate the tremendous global storm we are facing.
One possible solution is to revive the so-called social standard for regulating the international movement of goods and capital. This is not a new idea. It is an updated synthesis of proposals put forward by the ILO (the UN agency for labor and social policies), rules found in the EU Treaties and clauses contained in the International Monetary Fund’s statute, a proposal which has already received attention in the European Parliament in the past.
The core of the social standard consists of restricting trade with those countries that implement competitive policies that amount to a race-to-the-bottom on wages, working conditions and environmental and health protection, judged according to a common reference target and taking into account the starting position of each country. Thus devised, the mechanism would be able to sanction not only China, which is repressing independent trade unions, or Romania, cutting welfare to subsidize the investments of multinational corporations, but also Germany, squeezing down wages per unit produced, the United States, tearing down environmental constraints on production, or Italy, gutting its labor laws.
On closer inspection, the social standard represents a solution that is exactly opposite to the agenda that Meloni and other governing right-wingers in Europe would like to set as a basis for starting negotiations with Trump. According to them, the international imbalance must be addressed with a wretched mix of liberalism and protectionism: an all-out dumping that will not solve the global crisis and will only worsen labor, health and environmental conditions.
The Trump-Meloni mix is already on the table. It’s about time to join forces around an alternative proposal.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/ne-con-il-liberismo-ne-col-protezionismo-un-social-standard on 2025-04-13