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WorkingUSA—March–April 2000 91

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REVIEW

Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism.BY DANA FRANK. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999. Hardcover.$26.00.

Brendan Smith

BRENDAN SMITH wrote and produced, with Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello, the public televi-sion documentary “Global Village or Global Pillage?” He is also co-author of the forthcoming bookGlobalization from Below: The Power of Solidarity (South End Press, 2000).

Only one presidential candidatecould be found among the thousandsof union members, environmental-ists, faith-based groups, and studentswho marched in Seattle to make theirvoices heard at the World Trade Or-ganization (WTO) meetings—PatBuchanan. According to Buchanan,a former Reagan adviser and outspo-ken right-wing critic of globalization,Bill Clinton and the WTO were “sell-ing out the workers of the UnitedStates and impairing the sovereigntyof this country.”

What was Pat Buchanan doing inSeattle, speaking of the need to pro-tect worker interests? Does his pres-ence signal the possibility of a newalliance between the labor move-ment and right-wing critics of global-ization? As we enter the globaleconomy of the third millennium,these are questions worth answering.

At times both the labor movementand the right seem to speak with thesame voice when it comes to global-

ization: loudly railing against unac-countable multinational corpora-tions, threats to sovereignty anddemocracy by the WTO, worker in-security, and wage stagnation. Theyare responding to a global economythat pits workers and communitiesagainst each other to see who willoffer global corporations the lowestwages, the cheapest social and envi-ronmental costs, and the biggest sub-sidies. The result is what has beencalled “the race to the bottom.” Eachseems to be getting ahead, but infact all are being driven down tothe conditions of the most poor anddesperate.

This apparent agreement over thedevastating effects of the race to thebottom has led to a tactical alliancebetween the labor movement and theright on many issues, ranging fromthe recent battles over the funding forthe International Monetary Fund todefending local and states’ rights be-fore the WTO to trading status with

WorkingUSA, vol. 3, no. 6, March/April 2000, pp. 91–99.© 2000 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.ISSN 1089–7011 / 2000 $9.50 + 0.00.

92 WorkingUSA—March–April 2000

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China and granting Clinton fast-track trading authority. Such tacti-cal alliances create the impressionthat right-wing critics like Pat Buch-anan are saying and doing the cor-rect thing when it comes to theglobal economy.

But are they? The right advocateseconomic nationalism as the alterna-tive to globalization. They argue fornational policies that raise tariffs onimported goods and services, in con-junction with threatening othercountries with various trade restric-tions if they do not import Americangoods. At the same time, individualAmerican consumers are told thatthey should help the Americaneconomy through consumer action.This means participating in BuyAmerican campaigns to protect U.S.jobs and communities. Economicnationalists promise that if theUnited States adopts these policiesin concert with grassroots BuyAmerican campaigns, the rewardswill be twofold: (1) reduced tradedeficits from expanded domestic andforeign markets, and (2) an increasein demand for American labor, re-sulting in greater bargaining powerfor workers.

But with the far right advocatingeconomic nationalism as the solutionfor the ills of the global economy, se-rious questions arise: How shouldthe labor movement be relating toeconomic nationalism as we movetoward formulating our own alterna-tives? What attitude should we betaking toward this apparent conver-gence over globalization? What arethe limits of the tactical alliance the

labor movement has made with thefar right over globalization? How canAmerican workers and communities,in the global economy, prevent them-selves from being driven down to thelevel of the most desperate?

Dana Frank’s new book, BuyAmerican: The Untold Story of Eco-nomic Nationalism, helps us think se-riously about these importantquestions by exploring the intrigu-ing history of Buy American cam-paigns from colonial times to thepresent day. In doing so, she helpsilluminate three important issuessurrounding economic nationalism:(1) the origins of economic national-ism in the United States; (2) the im-plications of American workers’attempting to save their jobs andimprove working conditions by join-ing forces with business leaders insupport of economic nationalist poli-cies; and (3) whether economic na-tionalism is something that workersshould support to fight the race tothe bottom.

The Boston Tea PartyBuy American campaigns are asAmerican as the Boston Tea Party. Onthe night of December 16, 1773, be-tween fifty and a hundred colonists,with faces blackened, climbedonboard three ships moored in Bos-ton harbor to dump 90,000 poundsof tea into the ocean. The nation’sfirst Buy American protest was at-tended by an audience of 2,000 or3,000, watching silently from the har-bor docks.

Organized by the radical intellec-


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tual Samuel Adams and the rich mer-chant John Hancock, the Boston TeaParty represented the climax of thedecade-long “nonimportation”movement protesting British controlof the colonial economy. The cam-paign boasted thousands of support-ers, ranging from carpenters andsailors to merchants and politicians.All pledged to support only “domes-tic manufacturers.” Groups of Yalestudents swore off foreign liquors,workers purchased only American-made clothes, and high taxes weremandated on a long list of importedgoods by the passage of the Town-shend Duties Act of 1767. Groupswere formed to “Expose and shameand Contempt all persons” traffick-ing in British goods. Founding fa-thers George Washington, ThomasJefferson, and John Hancock were theself-appointed leaders of the cam-paign, each publicly swearing offimported products with a pledge tobuy only American.

But while the working classeswere pumped into frenzied, patrioticmobs who threatened, and some-times killed, violators of the cam-paign, many of the businessmen andpoliticians who funded and orga-nized the British boycott benefitedfinancially by covertly selling Britishgoods. John Hancock’s violations, forexample, were exposed by an edito-rial in the Newport Mercury newspa-per, stating that Hancock “wouldperhaps shine more conspicuously. . . if he did not keep a number ofships running to London and back,full freighted, getting rich, by receiv-ing freight on goods made contra-

band by the Colonies.” Even GeorgeWashington, one of the most promi-nent promoters of the boycott, or-dered from his London agent a longlist of banned imports, including“hardware and equipment” for hiscarriage. As average citizens hunteddown violators of the Buy Americanmovement, the wealthy elite gainedpolitically by rhetorically defendingworker interests while at the sametime lining their own pockets.

As Dana Frank’s book shows infascinating detail, this was only thebeginning of an economic nationalistdrama that would play out repeat-edly over the next 200 years.

Hearst and the Yellow PerilAt the start of the Great Depression,with one-third of all wage earnersunemployed, newspaper mogul Wil-liam Randolph Hearst announcedthat he was going to provide the so-lution to the problems of the Ameri-can economy: Buy American.

Hoping the campaign woulddovetail with his relentless politicalaspirations, Hearst called on all patri-otic Americans to pull the economyout of recession by rejecting foreignproducts. Each day his twenty-sevennewspapers printed several BuyAmerican stories. In movie theaters,Hearst ran newsreels like the oneentitled “Children Enlist to Aid BuyAmerican,” in which a little blondegirl recites, “My mother and dad saythat everybody should buy Ameri-can so lots of people will get jobs.”And Hearst’s campaign was enor-mously successful. By 1933, the New


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York Times reported that the BuyAmerican campaign could be cred-ited for a 25 percent drop in pur-chases of “Paris styles.”

Where did Hearst get the idea forhis campaign? It seems he discoveredit on a trip through England where amajor “Buy British” campaign wasbeing waged. As the depression dev-astated Europe, economic national-ism surged throughthe continent, rep-licating itself in BuyFrench campaigns,which in turnspurred fifty pro-Hitler business lead-ers to launch aparallel Buy Ger-man campaign.

Hearst’s adop-tion of a buy-na-tional programpoints toward oneof the fundamen-tal flaws of eco-nomic nationalism:It is a device thatany country candeploy. “We’re Americans and weare only going to buy Americangoods so we keep our jobs at home”is the battle charge of an ideologyrooted in the belief that the world isat economic war—a war that mustbe fought and won at the expenseof other nations. The promisedbounty is that America will have thejobs and other countries will not.But, as history as shown, this inevi-tably leads to a “beggar your neigh-bor” trade policy, igniting large-scaletrade wars, with each country in

turn using the same trade policiesto “win the war.” The Great De-pression is a case in point, as coun-try after country raised tariffs andinitiated buy-national campaigns.No nation could “win” as eachgained its domestic market but lostits foreign ones. As was the case inthe depression, economic national-ism becomes essentially self-defeat-

ing, characterizedby the escalation ofidentical tactics byeach country.

Frank’s bookalso reveals a longlineage of powerfulmen, like Hearst,who followed inthe footsteps ofWashington andHancock, demand-ing that all truepatriots Buy American, while theysecretly soughtforeign assets.

Hearst owned acastle in Wales and

a 900-acre cattle ranch in Mexico.He shelled out millions of dollars forEuropean antiques and owned partof a lucrative copper mine in Peru.Any guesses on where Hearstbought the paper for his newspa-pers? Canada. Hearst, and the menbefore him, were not about to risktheir personal wealth by actuallypracticing economic nationalism.Such a policy was meant for theworker, not for the businessman.

With the nation beginning to takenotice, Hearst increasingly directed

Hearst’s adoption of abuy-national programpoints toward one of

the fundamental flawsof economic

nationalism: Itis a device

that any countrycan deploy.


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his Buy American charge againstforeigners both outside and insidethe United States. His papers wereaflame with warnings of the “yel-low peril.” Typical headlines in hispapers read “Japan Sounds OurCoast” or “The Dear Little BrownMen.” Hearst warned that theUnited States “must be protectedfrom invasion, and both alike mustbe defended from within.” Importswere to be avoided, whether pro-duced by “foreigners” abroad or by“infiltrating” immigrants who tookjobs and resources away from“Americans.”

Such racist scapegoating is yetanother unfortunate component ofeconomic nationalism. A policy ofsearching for a group to blame for anation’s economic problems simpli-fies the complex economic realitiesfacing workers. With Hearst, it wasthe Japanese; with Buchanan, it is theChinese. Blaming “foreigners” re-mains a much easier task than de-manding a responsible corporatesector or building viable economicalternatives insulated from the glo-bal economy.

Perhaps the most tragic aspect ofHearst’s Buy American campaignwas that the American labor move-ment was sucked into aiding one ofthe greatest enemies of labor. Dur-ing the San Francisco general strikein 1934, Hearst pushed his papersto denounce the strike, and evencabled in a story from London of-fering tactical information as to howthe British government crushed thegeneral strike of 1926. And, ofcourse, when it came to his own

newspaper shops, Hearst fired anyjournalists who hinted at joining ororganizing a trade union.

Unfortunately, none of this im-peded Hearst’s ability to line up BuyAmerican labor endorsements fromaround the country, including onefrom Matthew Woll, the vice presi-dent of the American Federation ofLabor (AFL). Woll encouraged work-ers to fight the depression by gettinginvolved in the Buy American cam-paign. In July 1938, the AmericanFlint Glass Workers passed a resolu-tion at their convention demandingthat the government “Buy Ameri-can to keep American factories go-ing.” Soon the AFL press began tomodify its “Union Made” messageto include “American Made,”claiming that “there is no bettermethod through which better timescan be brought to America.”

But was buying American goingto ensure workers safe passagethrough the insecurity and rampantunemployment of the depression?The argument was based on the logicthat there was a compact with busi-ness: If workers buy American prod-ucts, then companies will keep jobsin the United States. The problemwas that men like Hearst, Washing-ton, and Hancock had no interest inkeeping their end of the bargain. AsFrank explains, “Unions have oper-ated on the misperception that buy-ing American would reinforce aprosperous national circuit betweenproducers and consumers, therebyprotecting American jobs. It rests onthe idea of the nation as an economicteam, with consumers and manu-


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facturers working together as part-ners.” Big business had no intentionof playing by the rules. Instead,Hearst pitted his workers in themines of Peru against mine work-ers in the United States, seeing whowould work the longest hours forthe lowest wages.

Some people had a very differenttake on Hearst’s Buy American cam-paign. In an era when blackscouldn’t rest on a sleeper train, renta hotel room in the South, eat at arestaurant, or go to a Broadwayshow, Robert Abbott, editor of theChicago Defender—the nation’s mostprominent African-American news-paper—editorialized his feeling onthe Buy American campaign:

We’re for it. . . . Certainly we’ll buyAmerican first and we’re happy to rec-ommend this to you our readers:

And here are some of the thingspurely American which we shall hence-forth insist upon buying:

We’ll buy Pullman tickets for Chicagoto Atlanta. . . .

We’ll buy a night’s lodging in ho-tels in Birmingham, Jacksonville,Memphis. . . .

We’ll buy a steak or a pork chop din-ner in a restaurant in Baltimore, Phila-delphia, Charleston. . . .

We’ll buy theater tickets . . .On one hand, Hearst’s Buy Ameri-

can campaign served as a foil forblacks to expose the hypocrisy of aneconomy that defined “American” aspurely white. On the other, it capi-talized on the deeply democraticimpulse of ordinary Americans to tryto exercise control over their eco-nomic lives. Stores in black commu-

nities were not black-owned, and,in most cases, their owners refusedto hire black workers. Blacks orga-nized their own modified BuyAmerican campaigns in response,rallying around the slogan “Don’tBuy Where You Can’t Work” inthirty-five cities.

Foreign Competition: Made inthe USADuring the economic turmoil of the1970s, corporations attempted to re-main competitive in an increasinglyglobal marketplace by laying off hun-dreds of thousands of workers. Bythe late 1970s and early 1980s,900,000 jobs a year were eliminated,with steel industry employmentshrinking by 40 percent.

According to Frank, this time eco-nomic nationalism began with thelabor movement. In 1971, after im-ports began to devastate the garmentindustry, the International Ladies’Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU)launched a national advertising cam-paign, spending millions of dollarson print and television ads. In onesuch ad, a union member solemnlydeclares, “There used to be more ofus . . . but a lot of our jobs disap-peared because a lot of clothesAmericans are buying . . . are beingmade in foreign places.”

As in Hearst’s campaign, theILGWU ads revived the “yellowperil,” taking aim at Asian workers.In August 1972, posters were plas-tered throughout the New York sub-way system simply showing agigantic American flag with an in-


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scription reading, “Made in Japan.”Underneath was printed in asmaller typeface, “Has your jobbeen exported to Japan yet? If not,it soon will be unless you buy theproducts of American workers whobuy from you.”

Again during the 1980s, as U.S.manufacturers deliberately disin-vested in U.S. industry and movedtheir operations “offshore,” manyU.S. workers directed their hostilityto Japanese workers: “Toyota-bash-ing” became a highly publicized na-tional sport. Corporations cannilyexploited this attitude. At the verytime it was abandoning steel plantsinstead of modernizing them, theU.S. Steel Corporation showed itsworkers a movie called Where’s Joe?blaming job loss on Japanese compe-tition and asking for protectionagainst Japanese steel imports.

Playing right into the hands of thecorporations and the right wing,unions scapegoated Japan ratherthan identifying the real problemsconfronting the American economy.While corporate leaders supportedand funded the Buy American cam-paigns in the 1970s and 1980s, thesesame U.S.-based manufacturers weretransferring their production facili-ties overseas as fast as they could. Asone critic of the ILGWU “Made inJapan” poster correctly stated, “Un-employment is not made in Japan;it’s made in America.”

At the same time, unions like theILGWU were asking its member-ship, many of them Asian and Latinaimmigrants, to reject garments be-ing produced by their family mem-

bers abroad. Frank correctly notes,“Rather than pursue a policy oftransnational solidarity with gar-ment workers all over the globe, asit does today, the union insisted ona Buy American partnership withdomestic garment manufacturers—who were laughing all the way tothe bank.” Indeed, this strategy pitsworkers in different countriesagainst each other, allowing com-panies to accelerate the competi-tion of the global economy. Ac-cording to one ILGWU supporter,“To reduce complicated interna-tional economic issues to the simplelevel of a campaign against theworking-class people of other coun-tries is sloganeering unworthy ofyour union.”

Buy American campaigns andeconomic nationalism have becomeeven more problematic in the era ofglobalization. What does it mean to“Buy American” in a global econo-my? In today’s economy, it is increas-ingly difficult to identify an Americanproduct. An “American” car maycome off the same assembly line andinclude exactly the same parts as a“Japanese” car—except for the la-bel. By the end of the 1980s, Fordowned 25 percent of Mazda, andChrysler owned 24 percent ofMitsubishi. The confusing realitiesof the global economy were well il-lustrated on January 25, 1992, whenUAW members mounted a BuyAmerican protest at a Mazda as-sembly plant near Detroit, in whichthe workers were their fellow unionmembers.

An exclusive focus on national


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economies distorts people’s under-standings of what is really going onwith the global economy. Buy Ameri-can campaigns—and economic na-tionalism—do not grapple with theunderlying problems of internationalcapital mobility and race-to-the-bot-tom competition. As Frank’s book il-lustrates, Buy American campaignsplay right into the hands of the cor-porate agenda, helping business tomarket Buy American campaigns tosell their products, while blamingforeigners as a diversion from theirglobally competitive strategies.

Workers Helping WorkersAmid the cheerleaders for the glo-bal economy, Pat Buchanan’s pas-sionate anticorporate rhetoric beginsto sound like that of progressive la-bor leaders. But, as the Bible says,“The voice is Jacob’s voice, but thehands are the hands of Esau.”Buchanan’s solutions, like those ofWilliam Randolph Hearst beforehim, are deceptively simple.

The challenges of the globaleconomy demand alternatives thataddress the real economic problemspeople face—not the marketingtools of Buy American campaigns.Economic nationalism pits workersagainst workers, allowing nationalsymbols to trump international soli-darity. It lures people into scape-goating China and Japan. It mis-leads workers into supporting cor-porate marketing campaigns in thename of patriotism instead of de-manding an economy that repre-sents their needs and interests. But

then what can we do to stop therace to the bottom?

As Dana Frank’s history pointsout, a large part of the attraction ofthe Buy American campaign is thatit provides a way for ordinary peopleto play an active role in the economy.But not accepting the Buy Americanpitch doesn’t mean that people areunable to do anything to address therace to the bottom.

One solution has been to buildbridges between workers in commu-nities around the globe. In 1994, theJapanese-owned Bridgestone/Firestone Company demandedtwelve-hour shifts and a 30 percentwage cut for new workers in Ameri-can factories. When workers struck,Bridgestone/Firestone fired them alland replaced them with 2,300strikebreakers. Early in the strike, aleaflet signed by a Steelworkers localasked people not to buy products“Made by THE JAPANESE-OWNEDBridgestone/Firestone,” and a pick-et sign referred to the company’spolicy as a “Second Pearl Harbor.”

Making no progress, the unionshifted from Japan-bashing to seek-ing the support of Japanese workers.U.S. Bridgestone/Firestone workerswent to Japan and met with repre-sentatives of sixty Japanese unionorganizations. On the strike’s anni-versary, an international day of ac-tion was planned to support theworkers from the United States. Fivehundred Japanese unionists marchedthrough the streets of Tokyo. In Bra-zil, workers staged a series of one-hour work stoppages, then “workedlike turtles”—the Brazilian phrase


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for a slowdown. Unions in Belgium,France, Italy, and Spain demandedthat Bridgestone rehire the firedworkers.

According to Tommy Powell, anemployee of Bridgestone/Firestoneand president of his local, “Welearned that people have to be uni-fied in labor around the world . . .regardless of our trade, regardlessof our international, regardless ofour background, we’re one. We’reworking people and we have toshare that.” In the wake of theworldwide campaign, Bridgestone/Firestone unexpectedly reversed it-self and agreed to rehire its locked-out workers.

What really separates the labormovement from the likes of PatBuchanan is that we see the valueand necessity of cooperating withworkers in other countries. This willnot work if we demonize and blamethem for taking our jobs. We cannotsupport policies that are in opposi-tion to the material interests of work-ers in other countries. Instead, weneed to find common ground andformulate alternatives to corporate-led globalization.

But this still leaves open one ques-tion: How should we relate to lead-ers on the right like Pat Buchanan?Instead of an ally, Pat Buchananneeds to be seen as a competitor forthe hearts and minds of how peopleare going to construct an alterna-tive vision of the global economy. Wecannot follow his lead into a worldof racism, nationalism, and warlikerhetoric. The global economy is nota war that needs to be won for thegreat American cause. We need ourown inclusive alternatives that em-body the values of the labor move-ment. It is essential that the “tacticalalliance” of the labor movementand right do not merge into an ideo-logical union. We have walked thatroad too many times.

If we do not offer an alternativevision, Pat Buchanan will frame theantiglobalization debate with state-ments like “We need an America thatis first, second, and third”—fillingthe void much as Hearst did in the1930s. Which future is more promis-ing? A world of solidarity as in theBridgestone/Firestone strike or PatBuchanan’s world where America isboth first and last?

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