One big political problem is that Trump campaigned on “Make in America” so, convincing Republicans under his watch of just replacing the Jones Act is hardly possible.
Maybe the policy positions should be: “Tariffs are great if you want ‘Make in America’, repeal the Jones Act and replace it with a 100% tariff on foreign build ships (with the president having the ability to change the tariff as needed)”.
If you decrease ship costs from 4-5x to 2x of what it costs outside of the US, you might still get a renaissance of ships and you have a bunch of money that you can use to pay off people.
so, convincing Republicans under his watch of just replacing the Jones Act is hardly possible
Given how the Trump coalition seems to have worked so far, I don’t find this rejoinder plausible. Yes, Trump is not immune from his constituents. For example, he walked back from what some consider to be the greatest achievement of his presidency (i.e. Operation Warp Speed), because his base was or became increasingly opposed to vaccination.
But in many other regards he’s shown a strong ability to make his constituents follow him (we might call it “leadership”, even if we don’t like where he leads to), rather than the other way around. Like, his Supreme Court appointments overturned Roe v. Wade, but in this year’s presidential election he campaigned against a national abortion ban, because he figured such a ban would harm his election prospects. And IIRC he’s moderated his entire party on making (or at least campaigning on) cuts to entitlement programs, too, again because it’s bad politics.
This is not to say that Trump will advocate for repealing the Jones Act. But rather that if he doesn’t do it, it will be because he doesn’t want to, not because his constituents don’t. The Jones Act is just not politically important enough for a rebellion by his base.
A much bigger problem here would be that Trump seems to have very dubious instincts on foreign policy and positive-sum trade (e.g. he’s IIRC been advocating for tarifs for a long time), and might well interpret repealing the Jones Act as showing weakness towards foreign nations, or some such.
Most politics is not top down from the president. If Trump would care about repealing the act he could do it, but it’s unlikely a topic he cares very much about.
If you want change, you likely need to convince congressional Republicans. I would expect that such congressman have a reasonable fear of being attacked for going against “America First” if they would move to repeal the Jones Act.
If DOGE would want to get rid of it, they would need to convince congressmen. There are likely a lot of laws that would be easier for them to target with the political capital they have.
But rather that if he doesn’t do it, it will be because he doesn’t want to, not because his constituents don’t.
I generally prefer not to dive into the details of partisan politics on LW, but my reading of the comment you are responding to makes me believe that, by “Republicans under his watch”, ChristianKl is referring to Republican politicians/executive appointees andnotto Republican voters.
I am not saying I agree with this perspective, just that it seems to make a bit more sense to me in context. The idea would be that Trump has been able to use “leadership” to remake the Republican party in his image and get the party elites to support him only because he has mostly governed as a standard conservative Republican on economic issues (tax cuts for rich people&corporations, attempts to repeal the ACA, deregulation, etc); the symbiotic relationship they enjoy would therefore supposedly have as a prerequisite the idea that Trump would not try to enforce idiosyncratic views on other Republicans too much...
I don’t know, I’ve been reading a lot of Slow Boring and Nate Silver, and to me this just really doesn’t seem to remotely describe how the Trump coalition works. Beginning with the idea that there are powerful party elites whose opinion Trump has to care about, rather than the other way around.
Like, the fact that Trump moderated the entire party on abortion and entitlement cuts seems like pretty strong evidence against that idea, as well. Or, Trump’s recent demand that the US Senate should confirm his appointees via recess appointments, similarly really does not strike me as Trump caring about what party elites think.
My model is more like, both Trump and party elites care about what their base thinks, and Trump can mobilize the base better (but not perfectly) than the party elites can, so Trump has a stronger position in that power dynamic. And isn’t that how he won the 2016 primary in the first place? He ran as a populist, so of course party elites did not want him to win, since the whole point of populist candidates is that they’re less beholden to elites. But he won, so now those elites mostly have to acquiesce.
All that said, to get back to the Jones Act thing: if Trump somehow wanted it repealed, that would have to happen via an act of Congress, so at that point he would obviously need votes in the US House and Senate. But that could in principle (though not necessarily in practice) happen on a bipartisan vote, too.
EDIT: And re: the importance of party elites, that’s also kind of counter to the thesis that today’s US political parties are very weak. Slow Boring has a couple articles on this topic, like this one (not paywalled), all based on the book “The Hollow Parties”.
Trump’s recent demand that the US Senate should confirm his appointees via recess appointments, similarly really does not strike me as Trump caring about what party elites think.
Trump made that demand and John Thune became Senate majority leader without making a clear promise to appoint all candidates via recess appointments.
Elites already managed to prevent the pro-antitrust, pro-Snowden pardon appointment of Matt Gaetz and replace him with a more conventional Republican that’s less likely to go after corporate power and other elite interests.
I know that Trump doesn’t have control of the legislature or anything, but I guess I’m still not quite understanding how all this is supposed to relate to the Jones Act question. Do you think if (big if) Trump wanted the Jones Act repealed, it would not be possible to find a (potentially bipartisan) majority of votes for this in the House and the Senate? (Let’s leave the filibuster aside for a moment.) This is not like e.g. cutting entitlement programs; the interest groups defending the Jones Act are just not that powerful.
If you don’t think it relates to the question at hand, why did you brought up the point in the first place?
I think you are too much focused on Trump (likely because the media likes to focus on Trump) and not on how a successful campaign to repeal the act would look like. It’s unlikely that Trump makes it his agenda, but that’s not required given that the legislature is independent from the executive.
Maybe our disagreement is that I’m more skeptical about the legislature proactively suggesting any good legislation? My default assumption is that without leadership, hardly anything of value gets done. Like, it’s an obviously good idea to repeal the Jones Act, and yet it’s persisted for a hundred years.
This is an otherwise valuable discussion that I’d rather not have on LW, for the standard reasons; it seems a bit to close to the partisan side of the policy/partisanship political discussion divide. I recognize I wrote a comment in reaction to yours (shame on me), and so you were fully within your rights to respond, but I’d rather stop it here.
Fwiw I feel a bit confused about whether this conversation is bad. (locally, it seemed fine so far, and the main reason it might not be fine is that politics attracts more politics which attracts people-into-politics)
In my ideal world, LW talks about politics, but always in a kind of practical, gearsy modeling way that has internalized the lessons of the LessWrong Political Prerequisites sequence.
Maybe we should make political threads require you to log in and/or have at least 1 karma to see them.
This discussion felt fine to me, though I’m not sure to which extent anyone got convinced of anything, so it might have been fine but not necessarily worthwhile, or something. Anyway, I’m also in favor of people being able to disengage from conversations without that becoming a meta discussion of its own, so… *shrugs*.
I do agree that it’s easy to have discussions about politics become bad, even on LW.
One big political problem is that Trump campaigned on “Make in America” so, convincing Republicans under his watch of just replacing the Jones Act is hardly possible.
Maybe the policy positions should be: “Tariffs are great if you want ‘Make in America’, repeal the Jones Act and replace it with a 100% tariff on foreign build ships (with the president having the ability to change the tariff as needed)”.
If you decrease ship costs from 4-5x to 2x of what it costs outside of the US, you might still get a renaissance of ships and you have a bunch of money that you can use to pay off people.
Given how the Trump coalition seems to have worked so far, I don’t find this rejoinder plausible. Yes, Trump is not immune from his constituents. For example, he walked back from what some consider to be the greatest achievement of his presidency (i.e. Operation Warp Speed), because his base was or became increasingly opposed to vaccination.
But in many other regards he’s shown a strong ability to make his constituents follow him (we might call it “leadership”, even if we don’t like where he leads to), rather than the other way around. Like, his Supreme Court appointments overturned Roe v. Wade, but in this year’s presidential election he campaigned against a national abortion ban, because he figured such a ban would harm his election prospects. And IIRC he’s moderated his entire party on making (or at least campaigning on) cuts to entitlement programs, too, again because it’s bad politics.
This is not to say that Trump will advocate for repealing the Jones Act. But rather that if he doesn’t do it, it will be because he doesn’t want to, not because his constituents don’t. The Jones Act is just not politically important enough for a rebellion by his base.
A much bigger problem here would be that Trump seems to have very dubious instincts on foreign policy and positive-sum trade (e.g. he’s IIRC been advocating for tarifs for a long time), and might well interpret repealing the Jones Act as showing weakness towards foreign nations, or some such.
Most politics is not top down from the president. If Trump would care about repealing the act he could do it, but it’s unlikely a topic he cares very much about.
If you want change, you likely need to convince congressional Republicans. I would expect that such congressman have a reasonable fear of being attacked for going against “America First” if they would move to repeal the Jones Act.
If DOGE would want to get rid of it, they would need to convince congressmen. There are likely a lot of laws that would be easier for them to target with the political capital they have.
I generally prefer not to dive into the details of partisan politics on LW, but my reading of the comment you are responding to makes me believe that, by “Republicans under his watch”, ChristianKl is referring to Republican politicians/executive appointees and not to Republican voters.
I am not saying I agree with this perspective, just that it seems to make a bit more sense to me in context. The idea would be that Trump has been able to use “leadership” to remake the Republican party in his image and get the party elites to support him only because he has mostly governed as a standard conservative Republican on economic issues (tax cuts for rich people&corporations, attempts to repeal the ACA, deregulation, etc); the symbiotic relationship they enjoy would therefore supposedly have as a prerequisite the idea that Trump would not try to enforce idiosyncratic views on other Republicans too much...
I don’t know, I’ve been reading a lot of Slow Boring and Nate Silver, and to me this just really doesn’t seem to remotely describe how the Trump coalition works. Beginning with the idea that there are powerful party elites whose opinion Trump has to care about, rather than the other way around.
Like, the fact that Trump moderated the entire party on abortion and entitlement cuts seems like pretty strong evidence against that idea, as well. Or, Trump’s recent demand that the US Senate should confirm his appointees via recess appointments, similarly really does not strike me as Trump caring about what party elites think.
My model is more like, both Trump and party elites care about what their base thinks, and Trump can mobilize the base better (but not perfectly) than the party elites can, so Trump has a stronger position in that power dynamic. And isn’t that how he won the 2016 primary in the first place? He ran as a populist, so of course party elites did not want him to win, since the whole point of populist candidates is that they’re less beholden to elites. But he won, so now those elites mostly have to acquiesce.
All that said, to get back to the Jones Act thing: if Trump somehow wanted it repealed, that would have to happen via an act of Congress, so at that point he would obviously need votes in the US House and Senate. But that could in principle (though not necessarily in practice) happen on a bipartisan vote, too.
EDIT: And re: the importance of party elites, that’s also kind of counter to the thesis that today’s US political parties are very weak. Slow Boring has a couple articles on this topic, like this one (not paywalled), all based on the book “The Hollow Parties”.
Trump made that demand and John Thune became Senate majority leader without making a clear promise to appoint all candidates via recess appointments.
Elites already managed to prevent the pro-antitrust, pro-Snowden pardon appointment of Matt Gaetz and replace him with a more conventional Republican that’s less likely to go after corporate power and other elite interests.
I know that Trump doesn’t have control of the legislature or anything, but I guess I’m still not quite understanding how all this is supposed to relate to the Jones Act question. Do you think if (big if) Trump wanted the Jones Act repealed, it would not be possible to find a (potentially bipartisan) majority of votes for this in the House and the Senate? (Let’s leave the filibuster aside for a moment.) This is not like e.g. cutting entitlement programs; the interest groups defending the Jones Act are just not that powerful.
If you don’t think it relates to the question at hand, why did you brought up the point in the first place?
I think you are too much focused on Trump (likely because the media likes to focus on Trump) and not on how a successful campaign to repeal the act would look like. It’s unlikely that Trump makes it his agenda, but that’s not required given that the legislature is independent from the executive.
Maybe our disagreement is that I’m more skeptical about the legislature proactively suggesting any good legislation? My default assumption is that without leadership, hardly anything of value gets done. Like, it’s an obviously good idea to repeal the Jones Act, and yet it’s persisted for a hundred years.
Congress does have leadership that’s separate from the president. People like Nancy Pelosi have political power.
You also have a lot of other organizations. Organizations like the Chamber of Commerce can drive legislative change as well.
This is an otherwise valuable discussion that I’d rather not have on LW, for the standard reasons; it seems a bit to close to the partisan side of the policy/partisanship political discussion divide. I recognize I wrote a comment in reaction to yours (shame on me), and so you were fully within your rights to respond, but I’d rather stop it here.
Fwiw I feel a bit confused about whether this conversation is bad. (locally, it seemed fine so far, and the main reason it might not be fine is that politics attracts more politics which attracts people-into-politics)
In my ideal world, LW talks about politics, but always in a kind of practical, gearsy modeling way that has internalized the lessons of the LessWrong Political Prerequisites sequence.
Maybe we should make political threads require you to log in and/or have at least 1 karma to see them.
This discussion felt fine to me, though I’m not sure to which extent anyone got convinced of anything, so it might have been fine but not necessarily worthwhile, or something. Anyway, I’m also in favor of people being able to disengage from conversations without that becoming a meta discussion of its own, so… *shrugs*.
I do agree that it’s easy to have discussions about politics become bad, even on LW.