Tom Donohue, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — America’s most powerful business lobby — tried to claim the mantle of “economic populism” Wednesday while critiquing the Sen. Elizabeth Warren brand of populism.
“Today, we’re hearing a lot of talk about so-called ‘economic populism,’ ” Donohue said near the end of his annual “State of American Business” address. “Its advocates claim they are standing up for the average citizen — but what they really stand for is the unbridled growth of the central government and a state-run economy.”
Donohue, at a press conference following the speech, added that such left-wing populism can’t work because it doesn’t foster economic growth.
Donohue didn’t offer any names in his address, but — as reported by my Examiner colleague Joseph Lawler — when asked about Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., an outspoken and popular leader of her party’s progressive wing, he was very clear: “Elizabeth Warren is a person who has some views we don’t share.” He pointed to Warren’s torpedoing President Obama’s nomination of Wall Street veteran Antonio Weiss to a top job at the U.S. Department of Treasury.
He summarized Warren’s views this way: “that enterprise and American companies should be more vigorously regulated by the government — and in fact controlled by the government.”
“We already have real economic populism in this country,” Donohue argued in his speech. “American free enterprise is the economic populism we need and must support. It has built the most successful economy in history and built it from the bottom up. Our enterprise system is the envy of the world. It’s why people from rich and poor countries alike are beating a path to our door.”
On one level, it’s odd to see the head of the nation’s largest lobbying organization, representing the largest corporations in the world, try to don the mantle of populism in the grand halls of the U.S. Chamber. But Donohue had an argument: Free enterprise is the system that allows anyone to start a business and try to get ahead; and free enterprise is also the best tool the world has known for maximizing employment and diminishing poverty.
In this way, Donohue’s arguments resonate with my own advocacy of libertarian populism or free-market populism. But there are two important differences:
First, Donohue omitted a key part of free-market populism: the point that bigger government, in the form of regulations and mandates, often tilts the playing field towards the bigger guys. This would be an awkward point for the head of a trade group to make, but it’s a key part of the populist argument.
Also, Donohue and the Chamber hold some very un-free-market, un-populist views, such as support for big-business subsidies like the Export-Import Bank — whose renewal Donohue explicitly advocated in his speech Wednesday.
It’s noteworthy that Donohue thought there was a rhetorical advantage in claiming populist ground. It will be interesting — shocking, actually — if he moves the Chamber in that direction.
