Success Quote by Alan Greenspan

Greenspan is doing something economists rarely get credit for: speaking in plain cause-and-effect, with an implied warning label. “Protectionism will do little to create jobs” punctures the crowd-pleasing promise that tariffs are a quick switch you can flip to revive employment. The phrasing is deliberately deflationary. Not “will not” but “will do little” signals technocratic restraint and a sense of empirical frustration: even when protectionism “works” politically, it tends to rearrange jobs rather than multiply them, raising costs for downstream industries that employ far more people than the protected sector.

The second clause sharpens into a threat: “if foreigners retaliate, we will surely lose jobs.” That “surely” is the fulcrum. It turns a policy debate into a risk assessment. Greenspan’s intent isn’t moral; it’s prudential. He’s reminding listeners that trade policy is not a domestic monologue but a negotiation with other governments who have their own voters, industries, and pride. Retaliation isn’t hypothetical; it’s the default response to unilateral barriers, and it targets politically sensitive exports. The subtext is about feedback loops: a tariff may save a visible factory today, then quietly erode employment through export losses, higher input prices, and reduced competitiveness.

Context matters: Greenspan’s worldview was shaped by postwar liberalization, the rise of global supply chains, and the central banker’s obsession with confidence and expectations. He’s arguing that protectionism offers the theatrical satisfaction of “doing something,” while importing a slower, less photogenic harm. The line reads like a preemptive correction to economic nationalism: you can’t wall off consequences in a connected economy.