Saagar Enjeti is not an economic populist (Part two in a series)

Saagar Enjeti is the co-host of a popular YouTube show, called “The Rising.” The premise of the show, which he co-hosts with Krystal Ball, is that right- and left- populism share common ground, and are both ascendant.

Ball is a progressive, and Enjeti appears to believe in a form of right-populism. But his economic populism is inconsistent and unreliable. It also shares little common ground with left economic populism, contrary to the show’s premise.

Enjeti is a scathing critic of pro-corporate politicians. Yet pro-corporate Democrats are more populist than he is on most economic issues. In a recent episode, Enjeti noted that he shares Joe Biden’s opposition to single-payer health care, saying, “It’s funny. I agree with him. But it’s like I shouldn’t be agreeing with you [Biden] on health care policy.”

This was a telling comment. It implied that moderate Democrats, such as Biden, should be to Enjeti’s left on most economic issues. But if they are, it leaves the content of Enjeti’s economic populism wholly in doubt.

Enjeti also seems reluctant to support a living minimum wage. In his podcast, “The Realignment,” he failed to contradict his libertarian guest, Megan McArdle, when she implied that fast-food workers’ low earnings result from the low price of fast food. “People just aren’t willing to pay much money to eat a McDonald’s quality hamburger,” McArdle told him.

Her notion that high prices are needed to achieve the profits that are necessary to pay living wages is of course wrong. Wal-Mart is an obvious counterexample. It achieved staggering profits by pricing competitors out of the market. Meanwhile, low-wage workers’ productivity continues to skyrocket, as their wages stagnate. Just because customers might not pay $5 for a McDonalds hamburger does not mean that McDonalds cannot afford to pay living wages.

It is remarkable that the host of a podcast whose premise is that the right is “realigning” toward economic populism, would fail to challenge such an obviously flawed anti-populist argument on a major economic issue.

In fairness, Enjeti once made arguably favorable comments about a $15 minimum wage on “The Rising.” After Ball praised House Democrats for passing a $15 minimum wage bill, Enjeti replied, “Republican fights about the minimum wage have been so tired and boring for so long. I’m glad to see this happen.”

But here, Enjeti used the sort of equivocal language that is common of the political and media elites whom he hates. He took issue with the “tired and boring nature” of Republican opposition rather than its actual substance. He criticized Republican opposition to raising “the minimum wage” (which remains at $7.25 per hour), rather than their opposition to a $15 minimum wage. He said, “I’m glad to see this happen” rather than actually declaring support for the bill.

Either Enjeti wished to obscure his true stance on a $15 minimum wage, or he did not have one. Regardless, 98% of House Democrats and three House Republicans voted for this radical increase in the federal minimum wage. Enjeti, by contrast, lacks a clear opinion on the issue, despite his brand as a truth-telling populist.

It is difficult to find an issue where Enjeti holds a legitimate economically populist position. When Biden recently vowed to eliminate the student debt of graduates of public and historically black colleges under a certain income threshold, Enjeti joined Ball in ridiculing the incrementalist nature of Biden’s plan.

But Enjeti offered high praise for Senator Josh Hawley’s proposal to force colleges to pay 50% of the loans of students who default on them. Such a plan would do far less than Biden’s to eliminate student debt.

Hawley’s plan, it is worth noting, would also be problematic in a number of ways. It could pressure colleges to focus on career training over education. It could pressure them to accept wealthier students. And it would effect a revolutionary change in government’s power to extract money from universities. “Anti-intellectual,” and “reactionary” are apt descriptions of Hawley’s bill. “Populist” seems a stretch.

In the same video in which he praised Hawley’s bill, Enjeti offered his own ultra-reactionary solution to “wipe out student debt.” Enjeti wants to expropriate 90% of the endowments of all American colleges and universities in order to eliminate all existing student debt. Such a policy would jeopardize the solvency of the entire U.S. higher education system, without asking government to pay a penny to relieve student debt. It is the sort of action that Robespierre or the Taliban might take in reaction to despised elites. That Enjeti would argue for it in one moment, but sit quietly as McArdle oozes libertarian sophistry in another moment, suggests that Enjeti’s populism is insincere or cynical.

Cynicism seems common throughout Enjeti’s commentary. In a video in which he argued that Biden is an out of touch elite who has betrayed American workers, he tied Biden to Obama, whom he criticized because he “illegally legalized millions of illegal immigrants.”

Enjeti was presumably referring to Obama’s “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (DACA) program, which granted temporary protected status to undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. during their childhoods. But his suggestion that DACA reflected Obama’s elite disregard for ordinary Americans was simply dishonest, as DACA has been extraordinarily popular. And Enjeti’s notion that illegal immigration, let alone DACA specifically, significantly hurts U.S. workers, is controversial.

The “childhood arrivals” who benefit from DACA, moreover, are less likely to depress U.S. citizens’ wages than other undocumented immigrants. They are better educated, less financially desperate, and less legally vulnerable. Thus, in many senses, they are, effectively, ordinary Americans. They should, largely, be able to fetch similar wages as U.S. citizens do, rather than be forced to work for lower ones. So, to even frame DACA as a wages issue, as Enjeti did, is dubious at best.

Obama’s other immigration policies were draconian. He deported more immigrants than all 20th Century presidents combined. Like Trump, he put children in cages, and swiftly deported Central American refugees in possible violation of U.S. law. And famously, the net migration of Mexico to the United States was negative during most of Obama’s presidency.

Like them or hate them, Obama’s immigration policies probably did not depress U.S. workers’ wages. Enjeti’s suggesting that they did, without an argument, just a hand-wave, indicates that he is not very interested in the economic effects of Obama’s immigration policies. His views on immigration, therefore, should buy him little credit as an economic populist

Nor should we assume that Enjeti’s views on trade have much to do with economics. Like most other “right-populists” such as Hawley, Tom Cotton, and Marco Rubio, who have recently embraced protectionism, Enjeti is a jingoistic anti-China hawk, who claims to believe that China is a uniquely bad actor on the international scene., and that the U.S. plays fairly by comparison.

This has been untrue since at least 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr. called U.S. the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” Since then, we have fought several illegal wars, toppled many Democratic governments, and flouted international law — all with total impunity. And whenever an international governing body holds us to account, as the International Court of Justice did after we terrorized Nicaragua during the 1980s, we simply fail to recognize the process and deprive a miserable people of the billions of dollars in damages that they desperately need.

Pretending that the U.S. is a good-faith actor compared to China, as Enjeti does, might have some propaganda value that serves his realpolitik. But it also makes him wrong, dishonest, and anti-intellectual.

It should hardly be surprising, then, that Enjeti’s commitment to protectionism is equivocal, and sometimes subordinate to his anti-China hawkery. In an article for The National Review, Enjeti argued that Trump should not scuttle an existing trade agreement with South Korea (KORUS) because doing so would compromise our strength against China in the region.

This is reasonable enough in itself. But it undermines Enjeti’s credibility when he rails against Obama for having supported trade agreements that hurt U.S. workers.

Recall that Obama’s trade deals were as concerned with countering Chinese power, as they were with U.S. industry. This is especially true of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would have arrayed 40% of the world economy in an alliance that excluded China.

Enjeti has referred to TPP as Obama’s attempt to “sell out American workers.” It may have been. But an obvious tension arises. On one hand, Enjeti believes that the national security implications of KORUS are more important than any damage that the deal does to U.S. workers. But on the other, he flatly condemns TPP as an affront to workers — even though its national security implications were more prominent than KORUS’s, and even though he supports Obama’s view that the U.S. should muster economic strength to combat a rising China.

As with immigration, Enjeti’s views on trade are far closer to Obama’s than he would want viewers of “The Rising” to know. He owes his audience an explanation of why, in this particular case, his supposed regard for American labor outweighs his strong desire to counter China. The fact that he does not give them this, or even acknowledge the geostrategic value of TPP, which he must see, given his hawkery, again suggests dishonesty.

It hardly helps that the entire Republican Party lacks credibility on trade. Recall that Congressional Republicans almost unanimously supported all three of Obama’s controversial Free Trade Agreements of 2011. His deals with Colombia, South Korea, and Panama passed with 96%, 91%, and 98% of House Republicans supporting each deal, respectively. House Democrats, by contrast, overwhelmingly rejected these pacts, with 84%, 69%, and 65%, opposing each, respectively.

Trump, himself, frequently brags about his protectionism. But in his “trade war” with China, and the USMCA, Trump has favored stronger patent protections for U.S. corporations. These empower companies to charge consumers more for their products, including drugs, which are already exorbitant.

In the case of the USMCA, House Democrats prevented Trump from winning these enhanced patent protections. Thus, on the one issue where Trump actually advanced economic populism (however mildly), Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats were more populist than he.

This will not surprise those who know much about U.S. trade history. From NAFTA to George W. Bush’s and Obama’s free trade agreements, through the TPP and the USMCA, Democrats have always been more opposed to corporate-friendly free trade agreements, and their anti-worker provisions, than Republicans.

It is true that the Democrats whom Enjeti contemns most, such as Biden and Pelosi, have supported most corporate-friendly trade agreements. But if Enjeti truly cared about the anti-populist elements of trade regimes, he would hold Trump in equal contempt — and rail against his relentless pursuit of ever-stronger patents that hurt ordinary Americans.

Thus, on trade, Enjeti deceives his audience via a number of omissions. He omits that his own populism is equivocal; that TPP was largely an attempt to counter China; that Democrats were infinitely more populist on trade than Republicans before Trump became president; that they are still arguably more populist; and that Trump’s trade regime retains anti-populist elements.

In fairness, I must qualify that Enjeti’s economic populism is not a total, 100% fraud. If you watch “The Rising,” you will see him argue strenuously, for example, for European-style, Covid-stimulus packages that will substantially help workers, renters, and small businesses.

But on an overwhelming number of issues, Enjeti is scarcely more populist than most Republicans. On issues that most directly affect workers and consumers, such as health care and the minimum wage, he is less populist than nearly all Democrats. He claims to view immigration as a wages issue. But since he is not forthright about Obama’s record or its economic implications, this seems in doubt. He claims to believe in protectionism. But his countervailing hawkery, and his toleration of Trump’s failures on the issue, render this claim dubious as well.

Saagar Enjeti is not an economic populist. Like many Republicans, he pretends to be.