Gosplan? Simple. It was the central economic planning agency of the Soviet Union. It was from there that communist party apparatchiks tried to fine-tune and calibrate the Soviet economy – insular, isolated, and incompetently self-sufficient as it was. After 74 years, the whole contrivance imploded in one day, December 26, 1991. Poof! Gone! The Trump crowd is intent on imitating the game plan.
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Stalin had Lavrenty Beria as his chief cheerleader and confidante till his death. Trump has a palace coterie of them, including Vice President Vance. Trump sneezes and they immediately rush him with Kleenex boxes. The guy says “tariffs” and they say, “How high, how many?”
Nobody questions it, in spite of careers spent lambasting them as the height of central panning folly. Take a look at the venerable Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank in the forefront of the Reagan Revolution. Dominic Pino of National Review lays out the duplicity in the group’s flipping from free trade to protectionism. He garnered 52 articles and reports from 1983 to 2016 criticizing protectionism and advocating free trade (see #1). Now, Heritage’s president Kevin Roberts is a fulminating protectionist:
“President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs are a tool of statecraft that can level the playing field . . . . Tragically, trade policies over the last several decades coincided with middling economic growth, stagnating middle-class wages, a mass exiting of the labor force by young people, the breakup of the American family, and decaying communities.”
Anyone who says otherwise, according to Roberts, is pasted with “globalist”. No argument, just name calling. All of it is at the behest of the glib, ill-informed assumptions of Donald Trump.
They won’t get a dime from me.
The sycophancy is revolting. The vitriol is an insult to civility. Vance’s attack on RedState blogger Bonchie sets the tone (see #2). Bonchie questioned the wisdom of Vance’s enthusiasm for tariffs. Quickly Vance proceeded to heated jargon by tarring opposing views as “braindead liberalism”. Then came the American victimhood spiel. Go ahead, read it for yourself (see #3). VP Vance is a hot mess.
Marxist central planning was thought to be necessary because the working classes are victims. Trump and his MAGA posse want central planning of trade because . . . the working classes are victims. Hmmmm, sound familiar?
Central planning is a dog that won’t hunt, and never did. That’s because economic “fine tuning” is illusory. We were warned by economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises a half century or more ago. The “knowledge problem” looms over us. There is no small group of sages that has enough knowledge to address all the unintended consequences of its commands, whether it be regarding steel production or trade. Unforced errors abound. Government manipulation of one sector will lead to unforeseen harms to others. Crap will happen.
The quasi-socialist Democrats refuse to learn the lesson. Now, Republicans joined the ranks of dolts.
RogerG
Sources:
1. “The Heritage Foundation Was One of Free Trade’s Strongest Supporters”, Dominic Pino, National Review, 3/31/2025, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/03/the-heritage-foundation-was-one-of-free-trades-strongest-supporters/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=capital-matters&utm_term=second
2. “Sorry, Mr. Vance, Things Are Not the Same as People”, Dan McLaughlin, National Review, 3/31/2025, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/03/sorry-mr-vance-things-are-not-the-same-as-people/
3. Bonchie/Vance X feed at https://x.com/TimesBChanging/status/1906201911453171977