‘Outdated and unjust’: can we reform global capitalism?

In Trump’s case, the inheritance was one in which global capitalism was already suffering from a crisis of legitimacy. “Nobody believes any more in a moral revival of capitalism,” wrote the German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck in the New Left Review. In the 1970s, this form of managed capitalism succumbed to what’s known as stagflation, the combination of high inflation and stagnant economic growth. But they demonstrated that, at least as far as relations with China went, Washington’s abandonment of the open-trade model of global capitalism reflected a bipartisan consensus. On a broader horizon, he is intent on reshaping global capitalism into a system of national or regional blocs, each protected by largely closed borders and high tariff walls.