Make America Manufacture Again
Foreign dictators use global corporatism to screw us. Let’s RESURECT American industry and screw them back instead.
What do Xi Jinping, Putin, and MBS have in common? Are they all foreign tyrants who run repressive regimes? Do they all believe generations of neoliberal & neoconservative rule have kneecapped America? Will they all test our country’s strength more and more as time goes on?
The answer is all of the above. These 3 despots represent the opening salvo of a global political realignment that pits a rising authoritarian axis against a fading alliance of liberal democracies, with America at their heart. The authoritarians wager that the 21st Century will empower them and dismember free democracies: after all, the world will only get scarier for the foreseeable future. Between the global climate crisis, the resultant global migrant crisis, and all the painful downstream socioeconomic consequences — it isn’t hard to see why authoritarians believe they’re better-equipped to brace their societies against all this impending chaos, while our messy democracies fall apart.
But their vision is cynical. Nowhere is it written that free democracies must be weak in the face of global challenges. Authoritarians are counting on us being too dysfunctional at home, too hooked on their fossil fuels, and too subject to the whims of multinational corporations and global elites to resist their tyrannical aggression — whether it’s Putin invading Ukraine, Xi Jinping hijacking western companies, or MBS price-gouging us with his OPEC+ oil cartel and undermining US currency.
But what if we called their bluff? What if we proved them wrong? What if we showed the authoritarian world that America doesn’t need their dirty energy or their supply chains or their approval? Remember: the best way to punish malevolent foreign dictators is to liberate ourselves from their economic shackles, taking our money and our prosperity with us. And make no mistake, that’s a tall order — but it is doable. All it would take is the political will to hammer out a bold new social contract that reclaims the true spirit of “America First” from the false idols who perverted it. Let’s double-down on the colorful imagery and enact this new “America First” social contract through the Resilient Supply, Reshoring, and Energy Chains of Tomorrow’s America Act — or RESURECT America Act, for short. This one is a whopper, so let’s walk through it piece-by-piece:
Aggressively build solar, nuclear, wind, & hydropower to decarbonize our energy grid and free ourselves from foreign oil cartels. Shifting to 100% solar, nuclear, wind, & hydroelectric power would only cost $4 trillion total — which sounds like a lot of money until you realize how many times over it would pay for itself between the millions of jobs it would create, the sky-high energy prices it would free us from, and the national pride it would foster. And this is as crucial for our national security as it is for our climate. Our addiction to foreign fuels gives our enemies leverage against us — which Putin, MBS, and Xi Jinping currently exploit. We cannot play their game; the best long-term way to protect ourselves from their malign influence is energy independence. And energy independence means 100% solar, nuclear, wind, and hydropower. Still, this is a medium-to-long-term solution that will take several years to implement. So, in the meantime…
Keep American energy in American hands by taxing the export of all fossil fuels extracted from American territory. Unfortunately, the current energy crisis demands that we act now on a short-term solution to bring prices to heel. With gas prices careening towards $5 per gallon, we cannot restrict our domestic fuel production — we’ve got to temporarily increase it, if need be via the Defense Production Act. However, simply drilling for more oil on our own soil isn’t enough. Oil is a global market, so more domestic drilling does nothing for us so long as our fuel hemorrhages onto a global export market. (The “XL” in Keystone XL means “export limited”, as in limited to exports…) To dig ourselves out of this energy hole, we need to combine domestic drilling with export taxes to keep as much of our fuel within our borders as possible. Multinational fossil fuel corporations and foreign oil empires won’t like this, but America must come first.
Rebuild our supply chains and industrial power with a massive manufacturing subsidy program, paid for by taxing the unrealized gains of the billionaire elite. The raw power of American industry has been unleashed before, most notably between the 1930s and 1960s. Back then, our leaders understood how our government could mobilize private capital towards the public good and create a rising tide that lifted all boats. But that was before decades of neoliberal and neoconservative politicians disemboweled American industry on the altar of global corporatism. Still — what we’ve done before, we can do again. America needs to pump several hundred billion dollars into a domestic manufacturing subsidy program, paid for by taxing the unrealized gains where billionaires hide their riches from taxes. The billionaire elite are the opposite of our Founding Fathers: our government gives them all the representation, but without the taxation. Their wealth exploded by over $2 trillion during the Pandemic — mostly in the form of untaxed, unrealized gains — while the rest of us suffered 2 whole years of inflation, income loss, and lockdowns. The least the billionaire elite can do is foot the bill for reigniting American industry.
Protect American industry by giving workers a seat at shareholders’ tables with 40% codetermination. As we rebuild American industry, how can we shield it from malicious foreign influence and ensure American interests are not betrayed? How can we help it avoid the fate of all the 20th Century industries that neoliberals and neoconservatives obliterated? What if we could anchor American corporations to the American communities that built them? There is one idea already used by some industrial powerhouses like Germany and even championed by major US presidential candidates: 40% codetermination. With 40% codetermination, any corporation with a board of directors must, by law, allow its employees to elect 40% of the seats on the board. With 60% of the seats, shareholders still have the majority and the corporation is still capitalist — but giving 40% of the seats to its workers is a necessary counterbalance to the “shareholder supremacy” that authoritarians exploit to turn our industries against us. Xi Jinping leverages “shareholder supremacy” to infect Hollywood with censorship and steal American technology. He does this because he understands that unchecked “shareholder supremacy” leads to greedy short-term decision-making that can be easily manipulated to play our own companies against us. 40% codetermination fixes this by incentivizing corporations to also consider the needs of their workers when making decisions. Shareholder profits are still a priority, but it becomes much harder for bad actors to play the short-term interests of shareholders against the long-term interests of our country.
Waive the patents, copyrights, and trademarks of US corporations that invert to other countries. Even with 40% codetermination, foreign rivals may still try their hardest to steal American companies. Think of how Mylan Pharmaceuticals — best known for monopolizing EpiPens and then raising prices 500% — outsourced its tax bill by renouncing its US “citizenship” while keeping its headquarters, workforce, and legal protections here in America. This is called corporate inversion, a popular scheme where American corporations change their “citizenship” on paper to dodge our taxes, while still taking advantage of all the practical benefits of being an American company — including our government’s protection of their intellectual property rights. Corporate inversion is also a national security issue because it’s yet another card that hostile foreign powers can play to steal our technology and our companies. As a deterrent, there is one simple card we can play to discourage corporate inversion: waive the intellectual property rights of corporations that invert. After all, why should the American government protect the patents, copyrights, and trademarks of a corporation that betrays the country that built it?
Through these 5 tactics, the RESURECT America Act safeguards our national security against malevolent foreign dictators. It rights the wrongs of decades of neoliberal and neoconservative rule that hollowed us out and empowered our enemies. It charts a clear path to a future where America and free democracy are both strong enough on the world stage to resist the rising authoritarian tide — a path through energy independence, revitalized industry, and a new social contract.