"Foreign trade clearly has been a reason why inflation has been low"
About this Quote
“Foreign trade” gets to wear the clean lab coat here: a calm, technocratic culprit for a politically dangerous problem. Tim Bishop’s line is doing the classic centrist move of reframing inflation not as a failure of leadership or a moral drama about corporate power and wages, but as an outcome of forces that sound orderly, even beneficial. The word “clearly” is the tell. It’s not proof; it’s a preemptive argument, a rhetorical seatbelt meant to keep the conversation from swerving into blame.
The specific intent is to defend a pro-trade posture at a time when anxiety about prices and jobs can make globalization an easy punching bag. If low inflation is partly a dividend of foreign trade, then trade deals stop looking like elite indulgences and start looking like consumer protection. It quietly elevates the shopper over the worker: cheaper imports show up as “low inflation,” while wage pressure, offshoring, and hollowed-out manufacturing sit offstage.
Subtext: don’t touch the supply chain. Don’t romanticize economic self-reliance. Don’t turn inflation into an excuse for protectionism. In the post-1990s consensus, trade is cast as a disciplining mechanism: global competition squeezes prices, restrains domestic producers, and (conveniently) keeps the Federal Reserve from having to slam the brakes.
Context matters because “low inflation” is never just a metric; it’s a political mood. Bishop’s framing belongs to an era when policymakers treated stable prices as proof the system was working, even as the costs of that stability were unevenly distributed. Trade becomes the polite explanation that sidesteps the messier question: low inflation for whom, and at what price?
The specific intent is to defend a pro-trade posture at a time when anxiety about prices and jobs can make globalization an easy punching bag. If low inflation is partly a dividend of foreign trade, then trade deals stop looking like elite indulgences and start looking like consumer protection. It quietly elevates the shopper over the worker: cheaper imports show up as “low inflation,” while wage pressure, offshoring, and hollowed-out manufacturing sit offstage.
Subtext: don’t touch the supply chain. Don’t romanticize economic self-reliance. Don’t turn inflation into an excuse for protectionism. In the post-1990s consensus, trade is cast as a disciplining mechanism: global competition squeezes prices, restrains domestic producers, and (conveniently) keeps the Federal Reserve from having to slam the brakes.
Context matters because “low inflation” is never just a metric; it’s a political mood. Bishop’s framing belongs to an era when policymakers treated stable prices as proof the system was working, even as the costs of that stability were unevenly distributed. Trade becomes the polite explanation that sidesteps the messier question: low inflation for whom, and at what price?
Quote Details
| Topic | Money |
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