As Vice President Kamala Harris proceeds into the election and looks to carve out a path distinct from incumbent President Joe Biden, foreign policy is an area where she can make the most stark contrast with not just her opponent, but her predecessor. Anand Giridharadas interviewed CIP’s Matt Duss about what to do differently.
Their conversation is far reaching, from Gaza and arms shipments to international law and industrial policy. One major call from Duss is for a break with neoliberal economic visions of the past, ones that supported bad governments abroad in order to provide American capital access to cheap workers in those countries.
GIRIDHARADAS: What is the right message for Harris then? How do you talk about [this post-neoliberal economic approach] in terms that are not distorted by this — as you just put it — new hotness of great power competition.
DUSS: I think focusing on: This is what is going to be good for American workers. It’s going to be good for workers around the world. We are not pitting American workers against workers in China or anywhere else in this zero-sum competition. What we are doing is going to be good.
Again, the United States government’s first responsibility, first and foremost, is to the people of the United States. But making a pitch not only here but globally to say, Listen, we want to raise worker standards. We want to raise labor standards. We want to protect labor’s right to organize. That’s a very powerful message. And I also think looking at the speech that JD Vance gave at the RNC — in some ways, that was a mirror image or a darker version of the speech Jake Sullivan gave at Brookings because it was billed as a foreign policy speech.
And yet it was all about trade. It was all about how the elites have failed working people. That is a very powerful message. And people can call him weird all they want, but I’m saying that was a map to what they are trying to do.
Duss offers concrete policy recommendations for Harris, including:
Use leverage. “Enforce that law as a way of putting genuine pressure on the Israeli government, Netanyahu in particular, to accept a ceasefire”
Talk to Iran. “Getting to some regional agreement, a smaller nuclear deal that would at least have the U.S. and Iran talking and building some measure of familiarity and trust so that we better understand each other’s aims”
Reposition the United States in support of international law.
Ditch the “great power competition” frame. “I think defining our entire approach to the world through the lens of strategic competition is ultimately going to lead us down a very bad path that eventually leads one place, and that’s to conflict. It is not going to lead to more security and prosperity. It leads to more conflict. It’s just spending more on the military and spending less here on our people at home.”
Labor protections at home and abroad. “Minimum wage legislation. Minimum corporate tax legislation nationally and globally. The global corporate minimum tax is a huge one that her administration should really lean into. Global minimum corporate tax and a global minimum wage raising America’s minimum wage substantially. Leaning into the social safety net.”
Compassionate migration policy. “We’re not going to scare people away from the border given what they’ve already risked to get here. You need to address the reasons that they are choosing to flee.”
Rethink sanctions, “which don’t actually produce policy change. They just produce more refugees, more migrants. They produce more corruption on the parts of elites inside these countries.”
Read the full piece, which covers everything from Gaza to climate change to Iran, at The.Ink.
