(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Two New Must-Read Reports on U.S. Trade Policy

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African Americans, Ana Swanson, China, Donald Trump, globalization, imports, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, intellectual property, ITIF, Jobs, manufacturing, mercantilism, minorities, non-market economy status, protectionism, Section 337, The New York Times, Trade, trade law, U.S. International Trade Commission, USITC, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Good things just came in twos on the U.S. trade policy front, in the form of two separate reports that spotlighted a major, vastly under-appreciated result of America’s approach to the international economy for many decades, and that proposed an excellent new idea for shielding U.S.-based workers and businesses from Chinese (and some other foreign) predatory trade practices.

The first study was released November 14 by the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) and alertly covered by Ana Swanson of The New York Times. The USITC researchers usefully reviewed the academic literature on trade policy’s impact on various U.S. population groups and found that overall, and came to two major conclusions. First, “in the face of trade shocks [like the soaring levels of imports from China that followed Washington’s decision in the 1990s to expand greatly bilateral economic ties], Black and other Nonwhite workers [fared] worse than their White counterparts.” Second, “import competition had a large and disproportionately negative effect on wages of minority workers.”

The reasons, the USITC stressed, were many and varied, and included discrimination in hiring and firing practices and the generally lower education levels of minority groups, which has tended to concentrate them in labor-intensive manufacturing sectors that have been vulnerable the longest to penny-wage competition from China and other developing countries. But one conclusion that shone through was the historic importance of manufacturing generally – including the kind of heavy manufacturing found in the Midwest, to minority prospects for economic progress.

And these conclusions will come as no surprise to RealityChek regulars, as the harm done to minority communities by a trade policy that I’ve long argued has been offshoring- and import-friendly has been the subject of two posts from several years back. (See here and here.) But as the X indicated, and the USITC report emphasized, too many gaps remain in the data currently available and too much of what can be accessed is too poorly structured to create a genuinely satisfactory picture. So how about USITC folks getting on the horn to their Census Bureau counterparts to get cracking?

One other point worth mentioning (which the USITC understandably didn’t include): The first recent President who tried at all to change the trade policies that apparently have hit U.S. minorities hardest was one Donald Trump – who’s still being widely pilloried as a white supremacist.

The second, more forward-looking report was released Monday by the Infomation Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, and recommended a creative way to use U.S. trade law to shut out of the American market products whose competitiveness has benefited from “unfair trade practices in non-market, non-rule-of-law economies such as China.”

The trade law provision ITIF would employ is called Section 337. The reason? Unlike other U.S. trade law measures, rather than authorize the imposition of tariffs on imports that are sold to Americans at below-market prices (dumping) or enjoy certain kinds of subsidies, or profit from intellectual property theft (the main alleged trade crimes addressed by American trade law), in certain circumstances Section 337 authorizes completely banning U.S. imports from foreign entities shown to have profited from such practices.

ITIF proposes to increase greatly the number of these circumstances, especially for cases not involving intellectual property, for transgessions by China and other economic rogues.

Perhaps most important, in cases involving such outlier countries, it would eliminate the (already weakened) requirement that a plaintiff domestic company or industry has been injured by predatory trade practices. (In the U.S. trade law system, plaintiffs not only need to demonstrate that an outlawed practice exists, but that it has seriously harmed them.) As ITIF argues,

“It should be irrelevant if the domestic company is harmed in the here and now. The point is that the unfair practices should not be rewarded, period. The other point is that all too often, especially in technologically complex industries, by the time harm is determined it is too late: The company has suffered irreversible decline in its competitive position. Adjudicating blame becomes a coroner’s inquest over dead U.S. companies.”

Two other crucial ways ITIF would lower barriers to winning Section 337 cases involving non-market economies: First, it would spur U.S. trade law to cover foreign governments that provide predatory support for their entities, as well as specific foreign entities themselves. This improvement matters a lot because in so many instances (for example, in every single instance of Chinese transgressions), American businesses and workers are facing an entire national system aimed at creating advantages having nothing to do with free market forces. As a result, U.S. plaintiffs typically wind up facing a defendant with ultimately much deeper pockets, and the high costs of American trade lawyering and the uncertain chances of success deter many from going this route to begin with.

Second, current U.S. trade law implicitly assumes that the damage inflicted by foreign trade predation is limited to a plaintiff company or industry. But given all the linkages among industries nowadays, that view is way too narrow, and can leave the entire economy exposed to much wider-ranging and long-term damage.

To remedy both problems, ITIF would also entitle Washington to take up their causes by permitting any U.S. government agency to file a trade case against a non-market economy.

I’ve got a few bones to pick with these ITIF recommendations. For example, damaging trade predation is by no means confined to China. Many economies that it would let off the hook, especially in East Asia, operate national systems of protection and predation, too. At the same time, as the report suggests, this approach could induce the kind of international cooperation that would increase by orders of magnitude the price China – clearly a culpit in a class by itself – would pay for what ITIF rightly calls its “economic aggression.”

Moreover, the new trade law regime wouldn’t encompass “multinational firms operating in China.” That’s an awfully big loophole, not only because it’s these companies (including U.S.-owned companies) send stateside lots of products that benefit from China’s mercantilism, but because taking advantage of these predatory practices has been a prime reason for moving their factories to China to begin with (as well as lying behind their support for admitting China into the World Trade Organization, and thereby providing these exports with a vital layer of international legal protection against effective, unilateral responses from Washington).

But in the name of making sure the perfect doesn’t prevent the good, I can support this policy, too (at least as a start). And because ITIF’s proposals would go far toward adjusting the decades-old U.S. trade law system to recent global economic reality, I hope both major paties in Washington get behind it ASAP.

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Im-Politic: A Viable Alternative to Affirmative Action?

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affirmative action, African Americans, college, college admissions, Defense Department, education, higher education, Im-Politic, integration, Latinos, math, minorities, NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress, reading, schools, segregation, Supreme Court

One of the most compelling arguments for ending racial preferences in college admissions – a demand that the Supreme Court will address in two high-profile cases – also seems to be one of the most depressing. As some opponents of such affirmative action programs contend (according to what I’ve heard on some cable talk shows), anyone truly interested in helping students from disadvantaged communities climb the education and therefore career success ladders would focus on improving the grade and high schools that are supposed to be preparing them for college, rather than on awarding higher education opportunities to those who don’t qualify according to race-blind criteria.

It’s depressing because for so long Americans have seemed unable to “fix the schools.” So ending or at least thoroughly weakening affirmative action in higher education, even if Constitutionally prohibited, looks like a recipe for perpetuating racial and ethnic achievement gaps.

Except that some impressive evidence has just emerged showing that primary and secondary schools have succeeded in bringing African American and Latino student test scores closer to white test scores. It comes from the latest edition of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Performance (NAEP – “the nation’s report card”).

The NAEP is incredibly data-rich, but one set of findings I regard as especially revealing were those presenting the shares of different racial and ethnic groups performing at or above the level viewed as “proficient” by NAEP. (Here’s a starting point for this section of the report card.) The results go back to 1990 for math and 1992 for reading, and through 2019 for both. Therefore, they show both trends over time and changes achieved in the roughly three decades before the pandemic and related school closings struck – and set back everyone. I chose proficiency as a standard versus “NAEP Basic” because it figures that the proficient students are those likeliest to attend or want to attend college.

It would have been great to describe not only the scores for fourth and eighth graders in reading and math, but for high school seniors. Unfortunately, those data only cover the short 2015-2019 period.

Here’s how the shares of white, African American, and Latino fourth graders who have been math-proficient has changed from 1990-2019:

White: 16 percent-52 percent

African American: 1 percent-20 percent

Latino: 5 percent-28 percent

 

Here are the same type of math figures for eighth graders:

White: 18 percent-44 percent

African American: 5 percent-14 percent

Latino: 7 percent-20 percent

 

And now the results for reading proficiency among fourth graders from 1992-2019:

White: 35 percent-45 percent

African American: 8 percent-18 percent

Latino: 12 percent-23 percent

 

And for eighth graders:

White: 35 percent-42 percent

African American: 9 percent-15 percent

Latino: 13 percent-22 percent

It’s clear that in every single case above, African American and Latino scores significantly lag white scores both at the beginning of the time periods examined and at the end. But it’s also clear that in evey single case above, the scores for both minority groups improved at a faster rate than those for white students.

Yes, there’s a baseline effect at work everywhere – that is, when the figure for a comparison year is very low, it’s going to be much easier to generate bigger percentage changes than for a comparison year that’s much higher. But in this instance, what seems most important to me is that bigger is indeed bigger, and undeniably encouraging.

The remaining racial and ethnic gaps remain disturbing, but two other recent findings indicate that faster progress is anything but a pipe dream. First, the U.S. Defense Department runs its own very big school system. In fact, the NAEP compares it to a U.S. state. And even though many of its students come from disadvantaged backgrounds, they’ve been outperforming their “civilian” counterparts for many years in reading and math at both the fourth grade and eighth grade levels. (Twelfth grade data aren’t available for this group.) So maybe the military has long known something about education that it could teach the rest of us?

Or maybe these schools function well because they place disadvantaged kids out of neighborhoods whose many and varied troubles create terrible learning environments? As it happens, there’s some strong evidence for that proposition, too. In other words, as a Washington Post education columnist has put it, the best way to help low-income (including of course minority) students isn’t to try making their local schools better, but to move them into better schools.

Of course, that kind of policy shift would open up a whole can of related “white flight”and “school busing” and housing-segregation worms that have sparked numerous racial conflicts in recent decades – even in liberal cities like New York and Boston. But that only reenforces a conclusion about American attitudes toward making sure that none of our country-men and women are left behind: Too often, failure or inadequate progress stems not from lack of resources or of knowledge, but of will.

Im-Politic: More Reasons to Think Americans Aren’t So Divided

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abortion, affirmative action, college admissions, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, education, gender, higher education, Im-Politic, LGBTQ, minorities, polarization, politics, polls, public schools, race relations, social issues, Supreme Court

RealityChek regulars know that a theme to which I keep returning centers on intriguing evidence that Americans’ views on supposedly polarizing social issues aren’t nearly as polarized as the positions taken by activists on all sides.  Indeed, the public’s views are a triumph of both common sense and a spirit of compromise that’s continually overlooked by the political class across the spectrum. (See, e.g., here on the overall national mood, and here on abortion – a subject of special interest lately given the Supreme Court’s June decision to reject the idea of a Constitutional right to privacy and therefore to abortion.)

So I’m pleased to report new findings of equally surprising and encouraging consensus on two other supposedly divisive wedge issues.

The first is affirmative action in higher education admissions, whose future (for the time being) will be decided by the Supreme Court beginning later this month, when cases challenging such racial preferences will be heard.

If the public opinion has anything to do with the final outcome, however, these programs will clearly be toast – at least according to research summarized in this Wall Street Journal column. As noted by the author, retired University of California, Santa Cruz literature professor John Ellis,

“A 2022 Pew Research Center poll found that 74% of Americans oppose the use of race in college admissions. Even more surprising, 68% of Hispanics, 63% of Asians and 59% of blacks also opposed it. The same applied to both political parties, with 87% of Republicans and 62% of Democrats objecting.”

Most stunningly, even the African Americans who are the main intended beneficiaries of race-influenced admissions policies now strongly oppose the practice – along with three-fourths of the entire country.

Further, Ellis cites referendum results showing that uber-liberal California is off the affirmative action boat, too.

The second set of findings concerns the emotionally fraught matter of whether subjects like gender identity, sexual orientation, gay rights, and trans rights should be taught to pre-college students, and whether such materials on these “LGBTQ” topics belong in these students’ assigned reading.

A national survey from the University of Southern California (brought to my attention in this Washington Post article) makes clear that Americans are strongly opposed to these subjects in elementary school education, but much more open to bringing them into high school classes.

Specifically, the share of respondents agreeing that primary school students should learn about these subjects was only between 28 and 30 percent. But roughly twice as many Americans were fine with including LGBTQ subjects in high school curricula.

Somewhat oddly (at least to me) support for assigning LGBTQ-themed books was a good deal lower for both grade school students (18 percent) and for high school students (38 percent).

All the same, though, a strong consensus view – and one that should make intuitive sense as a starting point for making policy – shines through: Little kids just aren’t ready to be exposed to new challenges to longstanding ideas about gender identity and such. High school students? Much more so.

Of course, as we learned earlier this year with the Supreme Court’s latest abortion ruling, the fact that the public has figured out pragmatic ways to view complex social issues (simply put, supporting a broad right to an abortion early-ish during pregnancies and increasing restrictions as the pregnancy proceeds) is no guarantee that American leaders will be able, or want to, agree.

But as I pointed out in the above-linked abortion post, a powerful lesson taught by U.S. history has been that the Supreme Court “is most successful when it pays attention to public opinion, and runs into its greatest troubles when it gets too far ahead of or too far behind these attitudes.” The same surely applies to elected politicians and activists. Let’s just hope that all of them can get with the common sense approaches favored by Americans before further inflammatory actions really do produce dangerous and lasting national divides.

Im-Politic: Yet Another Weird, Dangerous Turn in Identity Politics

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affirmative action, African Americans, colleges, Congress, higher education, Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, Hispanics, historically black colleges and universities, identity politics, Im-Politic, lobbying, minorities, Politico, reconciliation bill, universities

Just what America needs right now – yet another source of identity politics-driven division, right? And one that looks completely bogus. Apparently this is exactly what the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) thinks.

Politico.com reported last week that the organization is competing with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) for funding reserved for “minority-serving institutions” in the big social spending bill (also called the “reconciliation bill”) passed by the Democratic Party-controlled House of Representatives but still still under consideration in the Senate.

And according to Politico, that’s how the measure has been structured – which depressingly indicates that the scramble for power, influence, and government resources has great potential to pit various racial and ethnic minority groups against one another, as well as continuing to foster competition between these groups collectively against whites. (Another example of intra-minority tensions – the pushback by Asian-American groups against affirmative action programs that they claim unjustly discriminate against them and for other “people of color.”)

But let’s say that, for some whacko reason, Americans decide that these battles among minority groups should be encouraged, or tolerated. Let’s also agree for the sake of argument that throughout American history, Hispanics have suffered from discrimination comparable to that which has victimized African Americans. (It’s a completely specious claim, but that’s not the point.) Shouldn’t the organizations involved at least boast genuine levels of legitimacy? If you agree, then the HACU doesn’t have a leg to stand on, even though according to the group’s website, the federal government for decades has formally recognized “campuses with high Hispanic enrollment as federally designated HSIs and [begun] targeting federal appropriations to those campuses.”

After all, the HBCUs were founded because of decades of unquestionably systemic and predominantly officially sanctioned discrimination in U.S. higher education against black Americans. Those days thankfully are gone, but it’s understandable that many African American students still want to attend those colleges and universities for reasons like demonstrating solidarity with them due to their historic role, or to a greater sense of comfort academically and/or socially on majority black campuses.

But the story of “Hispanic Serving Institutions” (HSIs) is totally different from that of the HBCUs. In fact, it’s so totally different that they don’t seem to have a story as such at all. The first big clue comes from the HACU’s own description of its membership: They’re schools “committed to Hispanic higher education success in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Latin America, Spain and U.S. school districts.” Even overlooking the inclusion of non-U.S. institutions in this definition (and, incredibly weirdly, Spain???), evidently the only hard and fast characteristic distinguishing these schools is their domination of Hispanic college enrollment in the United States (allegedly two-thirds).

But a look at the HACU’s membership list (which includes memberships of all types, in addition to institutions it classifies as HSIs) reveals that this criterion is meaningless on two major grounds. First, a very large percentage of these institutions are located in places like California, Texas, Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, and New York. In other words, they’re located in states with big Hispanic populations – along with Puerto Rico. So of course they enroll outsized shares of Hispanic students – especially since so many of those schools are public colleges, universities, and community colleges. And that’s supposed to demonstrate a defining commitment?

Second, perusing the membership list also quickly reveals that this commitment is often pretty weak, at least numerically speaking. For instance, Ball State University in Indiana is a member. Hispanics represents just 6.26 percent of its undergraduate and graduate enrollment. Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio belongs, too. It’s Hispanic enrollment is just 6.52 percent. For Central Michigan University, it’s a mere 4.89 percent. Duke University, with an overall student body that’s 6.78 percent Hispanic is a member. So is Emory University in Atlanta (8.17 percent), Michigan State University (6.01 percent), Mount Holyoke College (7.61 percent), Northwestern University (8.68 percent), the Univeristy of Alabama-Birmingham (4.42 percent), the University of North Carolina-Charlotte (7.31 pecent), the University of Tennessee (4.75 percent), the University of Chicago (4.54 percent), the University of Michigan (6.51 percent), the University of Pennsylvania (6.74 percent), the University of Pittsburgh (3.70 percent), Villanova University (5.38 percent), Washington University in St. Louis (6.69 percent).

(Note: Many of these figures come from the “Universities” section of the DataUSA.io website founded in part by the international consulting firm Deloitte.  The others come from the websites of these institutions themselves.)

And here’s some vital context: As of the latest available (2016) data from the U.S. Department of Education, the share of Hispanic students at all degree-granting American post-secondary schools was 17 percent. So all the above schools associated with the HACU are serving Hispanic students much less well according to this key measure than the national average. And since figures from the same agency show that the Hispanic share of the American college and university student body has been rising faster than that of any other racial or ethnic group, and since the above enrollment figures are all from well after 2016, arguably their performance has worsened in recent years.

Even more bizarre: The HACU reports that for its own “membership purposes, Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) are defined as colleges, universities, or systems/districts where total Hispanic enrollment constitutes a minimum of 25% of the total enrollment.” So by its own standards, none of the above schools should be members – or even close.

Moreover, the federal government itself has no official list of HSIs. But for the purposes of determining eligibility for aid, the 25 percent threshhold also seems crucial (though as you will see, HACU acknowledges that there’s no fixed formula.

If Hispanics want to start their own separate higher education system and then seek as much taxpayer-funded assistance as they can get, that’s their God-given right as citizens of this great country. But it’s obvious that no such system has ever existed, that none exists now, and that the idea that Congress should pay any attention an organization even claiming to speak for a significant number of schools with an unusually strong commitment to higher education for Hispanics is a sham.

Moreover, rather than continue to play grievance politics – and with an artificial interest group – wouldn’t it be much better for the nation as a whole, and even for Hispanics specifically, for these institutions reorient their lobbying toward ensuring college affordability for all American students in need who can truly benefit from higher education. And wouldn’t it be nice if on top of seeking additional access to the government funding trough, and thereby indirectly feathering their own nests even more lavishly, they paid at least as much attention to reducing their long-soaring costs – e.g., by improving their performance and their efficiency?

After all, if American higher education doesn’t start helping students think more logically and coherently; receive an accurate, balanced picture of the society in which they live and the civilization that spawned it;  and function effectively in the economy that it’s created, then any lobbying victories it wins will be hollow for those they say they’re championing.       

Im-Politic: Crime Derangement Syndrome

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African Americans, Chicago, cities, crime, District of Columbia, gaslighting, gentrification, homicide, Im-Politic, inner cities, law enforcement, Mainstream Media, minorities, murder, policing, race relations, racism, Washington Post, white fragility, whites

If you still doubt that Mainstream Media coverage of the last year-plus’ national crime wave – which inevitably affects how Americans overall think about this issue – has gone completely off the wall, check out last weekend’s long Washington Post piece about the contrasting views of Black and White residents of the District of Columbia about homicides in city neighborhoods where they make up majorities.

I should actually say “supposedly contrasting views,” because there’s no reason to think that the opinions reported amount to a representative sampling of any segment of the public. In fact, it’s far more likely that these selected views reveal how this premier newspaper’s journalists (including of course editors) regard these matters.

Specifically, the article makes painfully clear how they and the rest of a disturbingly woke national media are now regularly turning cognitive somersaults in order to pin the blame for urban violence – which takes place overwhelmingly in minority neighborhoods and claims overwhelmingly minority victims – on anyone except the criminals who overwhelmingly come from these same precincts. Heading this article’s list of the truly guilty are White Americans, who allegedly only care about such violent crime when it starts threatening them and their neighborhoods.

As written by authors Rachel Chason and Emily Davies (and approved by every editor with authority over the article):

“From the majority-Black neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River that have long been afflicted by gun violence to wealthier, Whiter parts of the city that have only sporadically experienced it, there is a sense that the issue is receiving more attention now in part because the violence is touching gentrified areas like 14th Street NW.”

Especially unhinged (or “less hinged”?) – the White residents so charged by the Post live in the District, which is one of the most Democratic Party-leaning areas of the country.

But don’t think for a minute that the Post believes this alleged hypocrisy is confined to the District. After all, this is a publication that since the May, 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis, Minnesota policeman has launched a big new news beat preachily called “Race and Reckoning.” And it’s no accident that this truly national newspaper, read assiduously throughout the D.C.-based federal government and broader national policy and political establishments – ran the article on the front page of its print edition.

The glaring irony should be lost on no one: There was actually no shortage of Americans who have been calling attention to the violence-prone nature of these minority neighborhoods and its causes for years before the Floyd murder, and who have continued to flag the issue since then. And whether they’ve been indisputably liberal or progressive (as was the case with former President Barack Obama) or, more recently, conservative, (see especially any number of episodes of the Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham talk shows on Fox News, or the years of studies by Manhattan Institute Fellow Heather MacDonald, or some of former President Donald Trump’s remarks), the reaction has been typically the same. They’re pilloried as fear-mongering racists. (See, e.g., here, here, and here.)

Another favorite response to decrying the so-called obsession with Black-on-Black crime: what can only be called gaslighting. My favorite example of such “Nothing to see here” claims came here in 2016, when an apologist for inner city crime (writing, not so coincidentally, in the Washington Post) went so far as to suggest that the idea of “war-torn” South Side Chicago was nothing but a myth.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that last week’s Post piece took gaslighting a big step further that was not only downright looney, but obviously racist – except to the hopelessly woke. It came in a description of a digital exchanges among residents of D.C.’s upper 14^th Street neighborhood (which has been rapidly gentrifying in recent years and recently was the scene of a shooting that stunned its newest, more affluent residents in particular) and the nearby Shaw district (in which gentrification has been slower). It’s worth quoting the Post‘s account of it in full:

In the conversation “about violence, rowdy behavior near bars, noise from ATVs, trash and illegal parking, [White 14th Street-er Jeffrey Willis wrote] ‘We have lost control of the streets here & apparently elsewhere’….

“Shortly after came a terse reply from a woman who said she grew up in Shaw and was angered by what she saw as a desire to over-police Black communities and a refusal to understand the Black culture long at the heart of Shaw.”

In other words, “violence, rowdy behavior near bars, noise from ATVs, trash and illegal parking” should now be seen as part of “Black culture.” In addition, it should be preserved against an onslaught of White Fragility. Now it’s always possible that this woman’s frustrations about inherently difficult changes in residential patterns momentarily overcame her common sense, and that she didn’t really mean to praise such behavior. It happens to everyone. But it’s still remarkable, and in my view revealing, that her claim went utterly without comment in the Post.

Although its origins are fuzzy, I’ve always thought that one of the most compelling ideas ever advanced is the contention that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Last week’s Post piece, and the overall direction of American thinking on race, racism, and crime, makes clear that the only thing necessary for the triumph of arrant, dangerous, and indeed racist claptrap to triumph is for sensible folks to respond just as passively.      

Im-Politic: Don’t Forget About All the Systemic Anti-Racism

Tags

affirmative action, African Americans, critical race theory, government contracting, higher education, Ibram Xendi, Im-Politic, minorities, race relations, racial justice, set asides, Small Business Administration, systemic racism

There’s a big concept that’s been utterly and conspicuously missing in the floods of verbiage sloshing across the nation about systemic racism, and it’s badly distorting the picture of how bigoted America and all its institutions remain. Think of it as “systemic anti-racism.” So far, it seems as good a term as any for all the official and unofficial efforts launched and maintained over the course of decades to help victims of discrimination overcome its lingering effects. And they have been legion.

Oddly, the unofficial programs seem to be by far the best known. Surely they’ve been the highest profile, and the most prominent have been the affirmative action policies long in effect throughout American higher education. This post discusses a study indicating just how many minority students have been provided with opportunities to attend colleges and universities by revealing how significantly state government bans on these programs since the 1990s have reduced the shares of “underrepresented” youth in the student bodies of their public institutions.

And if these data don’t convince you, here’s the verdict on such programs from no less than Ibram Kendi, one of the nation’s leading propounders of critical race theory – which of course contends that systemic racism still defines much and even most of American life: “Affirmative action programs in education have been demonstrated to increase diversity and increase access specifically for underrepresented groups.” (There’s evidence, though, according to the aforementioned CBS News post, that such underrepresentation has worsened since the 1970s at the most selective colleges.)

Yet the reach of affirmative action and related initiatives has extended far beyond the campus. As this history of the idea puts it (all the while emphasizing how fuzzy and confusing it’s long been):

“The actual programs that come under the general heading of affirmative action are a diverse lot; they include policies affecting college and university admissions, private-sector employment, government contracting, disbursement of scholarships and grants, legislative districting, and jury selection. Numerous affirmative-action programs have been enacted into law at local, state, and federal levels. In addition to programs that have been mandated by law, many private corporations and universities have developed affirmative-action programs voluntarily.”

The federal government’s measures have been especially impressive. Since 1961, because of an executive order issued by President John F. Kennedy, Washington has not only required all companies doing business with Washington to end racial discrimination in their own hiring practices (a policy with roots in the immediate pre-World War II period), but to promote equal opportunity in employment actively, and to document such practices and their effects in detail. Penalties for non-compliance were severe.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson expanded these obligations with a directive that all federal contractors and subcontractors act to expand opportunities for minorities.

The Johnson years also saw the first small-scale federal efforts to use the Small Business Administration (SBA) “to award contracts to firms willing to locate in urban areas and hire unemployed individuals, largely African Americans, or sponsor minority-owned businesses by providing capital or management assistance.” These practices were strengthened and expanded during the 1970s until in 1978, Congress expressly authorized the agency to focus such activity on “socially and economically disadvantaged small business concerns” (as the statute states) or “on businesses that are least 51% owned by one or more socially and economically disadvantaged individuals and whose management and daily operations are controlled by such individual(s)” (according to a history prepared by the Library of Congress).

It’s important to note that the SBA has also used this authority to help such businesses win contracts throughout the federal bureaucracy. In addition, every federal agency that authorized to buy any product from the private sector is required to operate an Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization whose mandate includes ensuring that minority-owned small businesses “are treated fairly and that they have an opportunity to compete and be selected for a fair amount of the agency’s contract dollars.”

And don’t forget “set asides” – which means that a certain number of federal contracts are either reserved completely for minority-owned businesses or businesses “in historically underutilized business zones” (including in economically depressed areas with big minority populations), or that such businesses be given preferential pricing in the contracting process. To cite one example, since 2015, Congress has required the Transportation Department’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program (which exists separately from the above SBA operations) to award a specified percent of its contracts to companies defined as having dealt with “ongoing discrimination and the continuing effects of past discrimination in federally-assisted highway, transit, airport, and highway safety financial assistance transportation contracting markets nationwide.”

Nor is the federal government the only level of government in America offering such preferences. As of 2016, the National Council of State Legislatures reported that “At least 38 states, Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico have state-level MBE development programs involving certification for participation in state government procurement….” And such policies are in place in many U.S. cities, too.

I don’t want to present an overly rosy view of the American race relations scene. As many of the sources above make clear, the scope for using racial preferences in higher education admissions and in government contracting has been steadily narrowed by the courts. Some of these government programs were underperforming even before these restrictions came into force. None of them seem to have made a satisfactory impact on the nation-wide racial wealth gap yet (especially lately). And prejudice continues to mar policing in many areas of the country. So race relations Nirvana is still a long way off.

Nor is my purpose in this column to make the case either for or against any of them. (For the record, I’m generally supportive.) And no one should come away from this post thinking that it’s examined or listed all of these preferential programs exhaustively. 

What I am emphasizing here is that these efforts to overcome historical racial injustice show that the inadequacy of progress hasn’t been for lack of trying -at least to a noteworthy extent. As a result, they call into question the extent to which American racism today is still actually systemic. As a result, any teaching of race relations in the schools, or government or private business efforts to raise employees’ awareness of racial issues, or even any discussions or press coverage of these subjects, would do well to include discussions of these systemic anti-racist policie. Otherwise, it would seem fair to criticize them as systemically biased.

Im-Politic: An Immigration and Racism Link Deserving Much More Attention

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African Americans, Chicago, CNBC, H-1B visa, Hispanics, Im-Politic, Immigration, inequality, Jim Reynolds, minorities, Norman Matloff, race relations, racism, STEM workers, tech jobs, unemployment

“H-1B” and “racial injustice” probably aren’t terms most people would believe have much to do with each other. That’s why a recent CNBC interview with a leading African American financier deserves your attention even if it is two weeks old. Because he shows not only that they’re intimately connected, but that even someone who is focusing on the link needs to think much more about how exactly it works, and what needs to be done about it.

For those who don’t follow immigration issues closely, “H-1B” is the name of the category of visa that the federal government allots business for foreigners they supposedly need to employ because their “specialty” skills can’t be found in the domestic workforce. The skills cover a wide range, but according to this organization (which loves the program) most of the visas requested by U.S. companies are for science and technology occupations, and indeed their prevalence in these fields is responsible for most of the controversy they’ve generated.

For evidence abounds that, contrary to their claims, the tech companies that seek these foreign workers so ardently aren’t using them because they’re geniuses, but because they’re cheap – and because they need to remain tied to the company that sponsored them if they have any hope of getting permanent legal residence in the United States. (My go-to source on this issue is University of California-Davis computer scientist and immigration authority Norman Matloff, whose work can be found at this terrific blog.)

As a result, H-1B opponents argue that their use undercuts American pay levels in science and technology fields, and severely undercuts the argument that gaining these skills is one of the best guarantees available to young Americans of prospering in the turbulent economy of recent decades. But the program damages the economy in a way less often noted by opponents: It guts the incentives American business might develop to invest in American workers’ skills generally, or to press government to get the country’s education act together so as to make sure that the skills they need are available domestically.

And this is where the racial injustice and related economic inequality issues come into play – along with that CNBC interview. The subject, Jim Reynolds, is an inspiring African American success story who’s long been active in civic affairs in a city with one of the nation’s biggest African American populations – his native Chicago. (See this profile.) CNBC brought him on the air on July 2 to talk about racial diversity on Wall Street.

The conversation proceeded along these lines till it was about two thirds of the way through, when Reynolds made this totally unprompted and stunning pivot. Its worth quoting in full, and came in response to a question on whether he thinks Wall Street is genuinely committed to hiring more minorities in the wake of the George Floyd killing and ensuing tsunami of nationwide calls to end racism and related economic injustices.  (I also need to present it because this point didn’t make it into the CNBC news story accompanying the interview video that’s linked above.)   

“You ask if I think this is real…. I was at an Economics Club dinner a couple of years ago…and one of the top CEOs in the city [Chicago], actually, one of the top CEOS in the country – a Fortune 100 company – spoke to the group, and what he said to the group that one of his most frustrating experiences is working with H-1B programs, and why they won’t let his company recruit more of the talent that they need in the tech space….[H]e said that in the middle of downtown Chicago, where we have African American and Hispanic youth in the city, ten minutes from where he was standing, that have…let’s call it 40, 50, 60 percent unemployment, that go to schools that don’t really…teach them this sort of thing, and I wondered why he didn’t even think about this. Sure, you can go to China, and you can go to India, and recruit that talent. And that talent – and I’ve spent a lot of time in China – that talent started getting developed in middle school When they come here, and they go to the quants on Wall Street and the quants in Silicon Valley – and they do dominate that space – they started studying this stuff like when they were eight years old, nine years old. And I’ve started thinking about and talking about and I’m working with our wonderful Mayor Lori Lightfoot about, let’s get these corporations thinking about – and this time is great – investing in these black and Hispanic schools. Now. Let’s grab our young black and Hispanic kids in middle school. Let’s have a Facebook program in the school, Microsoft program, Alphabet program, Apple program in these schools. I think that’s an opportunity.”

I couldn’t have done a better job of making the H-1B-racial injustice connection. But as I suggested above, Reynold is still missing a piece of the puzzle: The CEO he mentions, and others like him, simply aren’t going to make those investments because they don’t have to. And they don’t have to precisely because they have a cheaper alternative – and one that doesn’t require them to deal with the kinds of workforce training challenges they’ve never faced: the H-1B program.

So if Reynolds really wants to expand opportunity for disadvantaged minority youth (and other young Americans) all over the country, he’ll start pressing for the elimination of the H-1B program, and for broader immigration policies that deny businesses in all sectors the easy option of hiring low-cost foreigners – and in the process, creating even more power over workers and thereby intensifying the downward pressure they can keep exerting on their wages and benefits.

Reynolds, moreover, is in a particularly good position to lobby for these changes effectively because, as made clear in the profile linked above, his close friends include a fellow named Barack Obama – who has more than a little influence on the liberals and progressives who have emerged (along with Corporate America) as among the stubbornest opponents of immigration policies that put American workers – including of course minority workers – first.

Following Up: Why Many of America’s Widest Divides Aren’t What You Think

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college-educated, Democrats, education, Following Up, Gallup, healthcare, inequality, minorities, non-college, opportunity, partisanship, polling, polls, race relations, Republicans, whites

“An anxious and divided nation cast its first votes,” the headline in the Washington Post moaned this morning.

As yesterday’s RealityChek post reported, though, some impressive evidence came out last week showing that the nation isn’t all that anxious, or fatally divided in the most general terms, after all. At the same time, diving into that evidence’s internals shows no shortage of divisions – only many of the dividing lines are pretty surprising.  (See the PDF linked at the bottom where it says “View complete question responses and trends.”)

For not only is the most important division by far the partisan split between Democrats and Republicans. It’s a gap that tends to be considerably wider than those between groups where divides in the last few years are supposed to have been especially and worrisomely gaping – between blacks and whites, between rich and poor, between the better educated and the less well educated.

For me, the big takeaway is that when Americans are in political moods, they get carried away by their emotions, with Republicans feeling awfully chipper about the state of the nation, and Democrats correspondingly gloomy. When they’re not preoccupied with politics, Americans seem more level-headed – and their outlooks are sunnier. But the unexpected findings scarcely stop there!

For example, let’s look at the internals of the headline satisfaction finding, which shows Americans’ feelings about the quality of their lives. A lofty 84 percent of all Americans told Gallup that they’re satisfied on this score, and 37 percent said they were “very satisfied.”

Republicans were the most satisfied Americans by a wide margin – an astonishing 96 percent called themselves satisfied, and 60 percent considered themselves “very satisfied.” The least satisfied group? Democrats. Their satisfaction levels were 77 percent satisfied and only 25 percent very satisfied.

But here’s what really grabbed my attention – and should grab yours. Keep in mind that the various groups of respondents overlap considerably (for example, both Democrats and Republicans include the wealthy and the poor, and the college-educated and the high school grads; and the both the wealthy and the poor include those identifying with both political parties).

The Democrats’ satisfaction levels were lower than those for non-whites (79 percent) and for Americans with a high school education or less (84 percent). That doesn’t sound very consistent with the notion that non-whites and those with relatively modest education levels are feeling especially downtrodden lately. But these readings definitely point to special degrees of unhappiness among Democrats. So does the fact that the “very satisfied” results for both these groups (31 percent and 34 percent, respectively) topped those for Democrats as well.

The partisan divide is even bigger, in both absolute and relative terms, for satisfaction levels regarding whether working hard can get a person ahead in America these days. In toto, 72 percent of respondents were satisfied and 43 percent were very satisfied with this situation. Non-whites’ overall satisfaction and very satisfied levels weren’t too far off those figures (71 percent and 37 percent, respectively). And the figures for those holding a high school degree at most were notably higher (77 percent and 51 percent, respectively).

But the Democrats’ results were completely in the dumps (only 47 percent and 19 percent, respectively).

Also interesting – non-whites, and Americans lacking college degrees are all more convinced than the college grads (68 percent) about the payoff of working hard, with respondents with a high school degree or less expressing the highest (77 percent) satisfaction level.

Satisfaction levels are much lower in absolute terms (43 percent overall) over the distribution of income and wealth in America – which should surprise no one. But again, those lacking a high school degree were more satisfied, and by a wide margin (49 percent), while the least satisfied (also by a wide margin) were the Democrats (21 percent).

The least educated were also more satisfied with the current rich-poor gap than college graduates (40 percent). But on this issue, non-white satisfaction levels were lower than the average (38 percent).

Gallup respondents were even less satisfied with the availability of healthcare in the United States, with only 37 percent expressing such views. Yet a familiar pattern emerges from the internals. The biggest gap was between Republicans (53 percent satisfied) and Democrats (27 percent). These also represented the highest and lowest levels of all the groups examined.

In addition, non-whites (41 percent) were more satisfied than whites the overall total (37 percent), and much more satisfied not only than the Democrats but than college grads (31 percent). The same held for Americans without high school diplomas (also 41 percent satisfied).

Finally, let’s look at a particularly explosive issue – race relations. Or at least it’s supposed to be particularly explosive. But according to the Gallup survey, there’s much more dissatisfaction than polarization – except among Democrats and Republicans.

Overall satisfaction levels are low – coming in at 36 percent. But the widest gap by far is between followers of the two parties, with 51 percent of Republican identifiers declaring themselves to be satisfied compared with only 24 percent of their Democratic counterparts. (Actually, Gallup also measured satisfaction levels according to political ideology – liberals, moderates, and conservatives. I’ve left these findings out due to the assumption because these results closely track the political parties’ results – which include independent voters. But according to this gauge, the conservative-liberal gap is somewhat wider, at 52 percent-17 percent.)

Most significantly, this partisan divide is far wider than the racial divide, with 35 percent of whites expressing satisfaction with the state of race relations and 39 percent of nonwhites so stating. Also doubtless significant: The next-least-satisfied group is college graduates, of whom only 28 percent expressed satisfaction. Further, their “very satisfied” levels (3 percent) were by far the lowest along with the Democrats’. And they were only one-third the nine percent “very satisfied” levels of non-whites.

Is the country indeed anxious?  To some extent, sure.  Is it divided?  That’s where the answer gets especially complicated.  And this complex picture indicates that, especially in this presidential campaign year, all Americans should beware of pundits and others bearing sweeping generalizations. 

Im-Politic: Economy/Election Poll Shows Surveys’ Strengths and Weaknesses

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2016 election, blue-collar workers, Cato Institute, consumer confidence, Democrats, Donald Trump, economy, Financial Crisis, Great Recession, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Jobs, millennials, minorities, polls, recovery, Republicans, students, The Conference Board, TPP, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership

I was going to start off with today a post-mortem on last night’s presidential debate but decided to wait until we get what are billed as the complete TV ratings – which are scheduled to be released later today. In my view, until we get the first reliable polls, these will be crucial to answering the question of who won in the all important minds of the voters (as opposed to the chattering classes). I’ll explain what I mean in that post, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, I was really struck by the results – and the interpretations – of a new poll on how Americans view the high profile issues of the economy and trade. All else equal, at this point, these seem to be the main determinants of both the upcoming presidential and Congressional election results.

The survey was commissioned by the publication Politico and the Harvard University school of public health. (Go figure!) And when it comes to Americans’ assessment of the country’s performance since the financial crisis peaked in 2008, the findings look like good news for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. That’s no major surprise. What was more unexpected was how bipartisan the downbeat views are, and how that finding was soft-pedaled in the summary article.

Respondents were asked whether they thought that the U.S. economy had gotten “better” since the downturn in 2008, “worse,” or “stayed the same.” “Better” won with a 41 percent plurality, “worse” came in at 32 percent, and “stayed the same” was the answer of 24 percent. So that seems fairly encouraging for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who served in the administration that’s been responsible for the economy since 2009. At least, it seems, there’s no mass political uprising brewing against the Obama record.

But think about 2008. That wasn’t the run-of-the-mill “downturn” suggested by the poll’s bland wording. That was perfect economic storm time, a period when the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in particular nearly triggered a global financial and economic meltdown. In addition, the second half of the year in particular was also a time when Americans were losing not only their jobs but their homes in droves. So one in four respondents seeing no change since then is stunning enough. Even more so is the belief of nearly one in three that matters are worse.

Nor should you put too much stock in the article’s claim of “a clear partisan split on this question” with Democrats more upbeat than Republicans. It’s true that 67 percent of Democrats (versus only 21 percent of Republicans) perceived an improving economy since 2008. But 32 percent saw the situation just as bad or worse than during that crisis period. Just as important, a total of 62 percent of independents gave the expansion (which technically began in mid-2009) that kind of lousy grade.

The big questions that still arise, though, from these findings:

>How do Americans perceive their own economic and financial circumstances, as opposed to the country’s? Usually they feel much better about their own lots, and the latest Conference Board consumer confidence survey supports that proposition. It just hit a nine-year high.

>Which of these judgments will matter more in the voting booth?

>Will Americans who are down on the economy place more trust in Trump or Clinton to set things right?

>How will these and other economic poll results break down by state – which of course will influence the all-important Electoral College count?

Meanwhile, the Politico-Harvard survey produced several important results on the trade policy front. First, it found that although only 29 percent of the public has heard of President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Pacific Rim trade agreement that’s currently before Congress, 63 percent of those familiar with the agreement oppose it. And 68 percent disagree that Congress should vote on the matter in a lame-duck session of Congress – which the president is pushing for.

At the same time, such trade soundings have been all over the board lately – see this poll released a little earlier from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs for some contrasting results.

Much more interesting to me was the genuinely partisan split – which both surveys found. As Politico described it, Americans who call themselves Republicans have swung not only to being sharply critical of U.S. trade policy, but decidedly more critical than self-identified Democrats.

In GOP ranks, the Politico-Harvard poll found that 47 percent of respondents said that free trade agreements have hurt their communities and fully 85 percent called them net job killers. The comparable results for Democrats? Only about 25 percent and 50 percent.

My big takeaway here: “The party of the common man” may now be a misnomer for the Democrats. And interestingly, an analyst from the Cato Institute, which disagrees with nearly all my views on trade policy and even politics, concurs. He told a Politico reporter that the trade shift 

“might also reflect a shift in party affiliation among voters [especially among] ‘less-educated white males, blue-collar folks who probably used to support Democrats, but who are now Republicans. For cultural reasons, I think they are more prone to subscribe to the characterization of trade that Trump likes to use, the sort of nationalist view of us versus them.’”

Conversely, more and more Democrats look to be college students and other younger Americans (who have relatively limited experience in the job market or who take more cosmopolitan views of the global economy); government employees and workers in low-wage service industries (who face no foreign competition); and minority citizens (who have never been terribly active on the trade front but who should be).

Of course, polls shouldn’t be taken as gospel, especially this year – even when they agree. But if you look at enough of them, and read a bit between the lines, you’ll probably wind up more informed about American politics, not less. So I’ll be keeping an eye on them for the rest of this campaign – and you should, too, if you’ve got the time.

Im-Politic: Hillary Clinton Could Have a 1950s and 1960s Problem

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1950s, 1960s, 2016 elections, America First, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Immigration, minorities, Obama, Robert B. Reich, shared prosperity, The New York Times, Trade, women

Should the 1950s and 1960s in America be mainly remembered as a halcyon economic era of growth that was strong and whose benefits were widely shared? Or an age when increased prosperity was confined mainly to white males?

Whatever your own view, and whatever the merits, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s so-called victory speech last week revealed – no doubt unwittingly – that her party could be deeply divided on the question. In turn, this split could create major confusion about a campaign theme she’s apparently become taken with, and about what economic policies she genuinely supports.

In the June 7 speech declaring her historic victory in this year’s Democratic presidential campaign, Clinton clearly painted the early post-World War II decades in dark tones. In her view, her likely GOP rival Donald Trump’s call to “Make America Great Again” is “code for, ‘Let’s take America backwards.’ Back to a time when opportunity and dignity were reserved for some, not all, promising his supporters an economy he cannot recreate.”

Nor has this been a one-off remark. At a Planned Parenthood event yesterday, Clinton repeated “When Donald Trump says, ‘Let’s make America great again,’ that is code for ‘let’s take America backward.’ Back to a time when opportunity and dignity were reserved for some, not all.”

What Clinton doesn’t appear to recognize is that many of her fellow Democrats have portrayed these years much more positively. Here’s one example: “In the decades after World War II there was a general consensus that the market couldn’t solve all of our problems on its own. …This consensus, this shared vision led to the strongest economic growth and the largest middle class that the world has ever known. It led to a shared prosperity. “ The speaker? President Obama.

Robert B. Reich stands further to the left than Mr. Obama on the political spectrum – and was also Labor Secretary during the presidency of Clinton’s husband. He’s even more all-in for the early post-war decades, terming the period, “The Great Prosperity” that was fueled by “what might be called a basic bargain with American workers. Employers paid them enough to buy what they produced. Mass production and mass consumption proved perfect complements. Almost everyone who wanted a job could find one with good wages, or at least wages that were trending upward.”

The New York Times Editorial Board is also pretty keen on these decades:

“Economic growth and rising productivity are needed for broadly shared prosperity, but rising living standards require policies that ensure regular increases in the minimum wage, which peaked in 1968; greater investment in the social safety net; full employment as a government priority; progressive taxation; and effective financial regulation to avoid overgrowth followed by collapse.

“These kinds of policies dominated from the late-1940s to the 1970s, a time of broadly shared prosperity and a strong middle class.”

In fairness, Clinton is absolutely right in contending that women and minorities didn’t generally prosper along with the rest of the population. And no knowledgeable liberals would disagree. Yet what’s the evidence that Trump wants to reserve all future gains made by the American economy to white males? Indeed, he’s repeatedly condemned numerous recent economic policies for leaving minorities behind, most recently in yesterday’s call to take federal funds currently targeted for refugee relief programs and use them instead to foster employment in inner cities.

This last point spotlights what might be the most politically important difference between Clinton and Trump on the legacy and lessons of the 1950s and 1960s. When the former Secretary of State accuses her Republican counterpart of “promising his supporters an economy he cannot recreate,” she’s focused most tightly on his opposition to highly permissive immigration policies and amnesty for the nation’s current illegal population.

Clinton has recently voiced criticisms of current U.S. trade policies.  Yet her past record and – as I’ve noted – some of her recent rhetoric indicates that she’s also fundamentally OK with the great and overwhelmingly one-sided opening of the American economy to import competition that almost immediately followed the early post-war years. Interestingly, it’s a critique of Trump-ian views on immigration and trade that’s identical with that of America’s donor class and its hired guns in the Republican party’s establishment wing.

If Clinton keeps repeating her charge about Trump’s supposedly unrealistic and retrograde nostalgia, it would be relatively easy for his campaign to counter with the kind of “America First” response he outlined in his own “victory speech“. The argument? Clinton’s endorsement of the trade and immigration status quo amounts to a program of aiding workers abroad and foreigners living illegally in the United States at the expense of the nation’s legal residents – of all genders, races, and heritages.

And if the Republican candidate can stay on this message (an awfully big “if”), he’ll be able to show that prominent Democrats, including President Obama share this economic nostalgia, too – along with the confidence that restoring this kind of economic greatness (albeit with a somewhat different policy mix) is eminently realistic.