The Case for National Developmentalism
Neoliberalism, the economic policy doctrine of free trade, free markets, and limited government that has prevailed since the early 1980s, has run its course.
As Robert Atkinson writes for The Liberal Patriot, the Biden administration and lawmakers in Congress often disagree in heated terms on the specifics, but a striking, broad-strokes consensus has nonetheless gelled around the contours of a neo-New Deal economic agenda marked by redistribution, global economic autarky, and a worker-centric animus toward corporations and markets.
This is a grave mistake. If implemented, neo-New Dealism—which bears only a partial resemblance to its namesake—would come at the longer-term cost of economic stagnation, fiscal crisis, and greatly diminished U.S. international competitiveness and global power.
It is time to overthrow neoliberalism. But not with neo-New Dealism. For those who believe that innovation, productivity growth, and competitiveness are critical to the future of the American experiment, it should be clear that we need an alternative to neoliberalism and neo-New Dealism. That is national developmentalism.
