Our economy works best when we trade with other nations. But some people fear that working with other countries will result in dangerous “globalism.”

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Here’s a transcript of our conversation:

Brittany: Hi, Emma.

Emma: Hi, Brittany.

Brittany: So today we have another ism for you. We love our isms, or sometimes we don’t love our isms. It depends on what the ism is. Today we’re gonna talk about globalism, which I think is going to be a very interesting conversation because even before we started recording this, Emma and I were like, you know, we’re a little confused. Cause on the one hand we hear people that we agree with, and we look up to you saying globalism is good. And then we see other people that we also, you know, agree with saying globalism is bad. And we kind of came to this conclusion that there’s one, people have different ideas of what globalism is. And maybe in that, you know, regard, there are, different kinds of globalism, right? So let’s back up a little bit and let’s talk about it. One thing I really love to do when I was a teacher, and I like to do now when I don’t know what a word means, I like to kind of break it down and see if there are parts of the word that I know. So if we look at global, you’ll notice that the first part is globe, right? And when we look, think about the globe, what is that? That’s, you know, we have it in our classrooms, or maybe you have it at home, especially if you’re a homeschooler. And that’s the world, right? It’s everything. So talk about global. We’re talking about the entire world and how it relates to each other rather than like a national thing. A national would just be the country. So global symbol of the world. We’re talking about how we interact as a globe and not as a country. Alright? So let’s focus on that. So globalism, as far as I looked it up from economic standpoints. globalism is this belief that nations should trade with each other. That they should not be, you know, confined meaning locked into buying their own goods, but they’re able to benefit with trade from each other. There’s a great, mises line, and I can’t remember it and I should have looked it up beforehand, but the line basically says that, actually we’re, I’m gonna go to a Bastiat quote first, which is, you can help me with this one, Emma. What is it? If goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will. And that’s not the exact quote, but that’s essentially it. And so what that means is when we trade with one another, we are actually more at peace with each other, right? Because we’re forced to stay with each other. And I think Mises had a similar one, but I may even thinking of Bastiat, if I remember, I’ll let you know. Yes. So, I think that’s an important thing to keep in mind during, you know, this first topic of this is that globalism in this regard is trading with one another.

Emma: Yes. Exactly. And you know, when you think about globalism and how it first kind of got started, depending on where you are in your history studies and learning about the ancient world and how we first started to really become these ingrained civilizations that worked with each other. You’re gonna learn about Marco Polo and the Silk Road. And the Silk Road was this trade route that connected the West with the East. And that was a really revolutionary thing at the time. And it was called the Silk Road because one of the main products that Marco Polo was an explorer and a merchant, one of the main products that he brought back to Europe was silk. Because the silkworms that were needed. Silk used to come from worms. It’s pretty crazy. I don’t know if it still does. I would imagine it still does, right? It probably hasn’t changed.

Brittany: But I remember growing silk worms and like kindergarten we had like, yeah.

Emma: Yeah, I’m like, now that I think about it. But silk was a huge luxury to have. So all of these royals and these wealthy people really wanted it. It was very coveted. And, he also brought back spices and teas and all sorts of things. And the reason why it was such a huge deal is cuz he was, like I said, uniting the East and the West. But there are people who fear this sort of trade where, you know, the whole world and all these different countries are trading these different products and, you know, maybe something grows really well in one part of the world and really badly in the other. Well, you would think that we would say, Hey, why don’t we meet each other’s needs? We can trade, we can do business. And, for a long time, in many ways, we do trade that way. But unfortunately, there are a lot of politicians that have tried unsuccessfully to force people to only buy products from their own country. And that’s sort of where this term protectionism comes from, where it’s like, we need to only buy American products because we wanna support American businesses. And there’s nothing wrong with supporting American businesses. Like I love buying made-in-America products. It’s awesome. I like supporting other people in my country that are making, you know, making stuff. And especially if it’s really good quality, I’m willing to pay for that. But that’s a personal value of mine. And when the government tries to force people artificially to do that. That’s protectionism. And you know, Donald Trump did a lot of this while he was in office. It was a big part of his platform was this America first agenda that ended up resulting in trade wars and adding tariffs, which are taxes on foreign goods. And, It made a lot of things more expensive for people. And there’s a line that, that’s kind of, you know, set a lot in, in sort of our circles when it comes to trade. But it’s that tariffs are a tax, on consumers because the companies don’t really end up paying for them. The customers are the ones that end up spending more on the same products. And it’s funny because you would think that this would be like maybe a left-right issue, but Biden actually has, our current president has a very similar plan in place. And I wanna say it’s even has a similar name really. I think. Really? It’s the by American First agenda or by American agenda. So it’s kind of a knockoff of what Trump was doing funny enough. And he wants the government to only buy American-made products, which, you know, they cost more money. And it’s really increasing the strain on taxpayers because the government is spending way more money than it needs to on stuff. So it’s interesting and you get it from both sides. But we’ve seen so many examples of this over the years. It’s, there’s, too many to even name in this podcast, but it’s something that is not necessarily on the left or on the right. And it’s super dangerous when the government tries to control what types of products consumers can buy.

Brittany: You’re absolutely right. And I dealt with this, instance where I love grass-fed butter, especially carrot gold butter, which is Irish butter. It’s like, I could, honestly, I don’t do this, but I could just eat this butter. Like I could probably just eat this butter. Yes. It’s just, it’s really good. It’s really healthy for you. And because I think both you and I am a do low-carb, high-fat diets, it’s just a really good source of fat. So I eat a lot of grass-fed, but like my whole refrigerator, I’m telling you is filled with LaCroix, this keto soda I love called Zevia and just like grass-fed butter. Which is like pretty gold. Like, it’s like a really pretty butter.

Emma: It’s a wonderful experience.

Brittany: It’s a wonderful experience. Well, so I love that. And when the trade war started, and this was right before the pandemic or like the summer before the pandemic, Trump and his,  what was it called? Well, just the trade wars generally, they were called the trade wars. Butter started going up because they put tariffs on Irish goods. And that’s where my, or European, but that’s where my butter comes from. And I think whiskey for a while was in Jeopardy too. So my butter raised like a dollar, which, but this butter’s already expensive. Like it’s already like almost $4 and it got, I think it’s like four, maybe it’s not quite a dollar, but it’s like four 50 now. But I think I used to pay something like 385. Yeah. So it’s gone up. And that was really hard for me again, because I eat, like, you would be shocked if you knew how many, how much better I go through in a week. So it’s one of those things, it wasn’t just hypothetical. I think when we think about the economy, a lot of times people think like, that doesn’t really impact me. I don’t really see that but we saw things and we’re seeing this with the supply chain issues now, but when it came to the trade wars, we were seeing a rate or a, you know, a rise in costs. I think Joanne’s fabric or like other craft stores saw a big spike too, because Interesting. They were having craft supplies Yeah. That were coming from China or somewhere like that were being taxed. And I always think of it, I do a lot of shopping on Amazon and a lot of the Amazon goods do not, are not American-made. And I know sometimes I’m getting like cheaper products, but I, enjoy the products I get and it’s great to me that I can choose to buy cheaper products from another country. And so there’s just all these things that you think about and you’re like, okay, if that’s globalism, then why shouldn’t we want to be trading with everybody?

Emma: Yeah, exactly. And also having free trade between countries is very good for foreign relations. Like you said that Bastiat/Misesy’s quote that we can’t quite figure out. It’s good when we trade with our neighbors because we’re more likely to be friendly with them. And it’s, I mean, if you think about it, private companies and businesses, they have an incentive to be kind to their customers and to have good relationships with them. And it’s not always perfect. But having that incentive there really helps. So free trade with other countries around the world and globalism is actually helpful thing for keeping us safe and keeping us peaceful. And Thomas Jefferson even talked about not getting into foreign entanglements, but instead making good neighbors and good friends and trading with other countries. So I think he would’ve actually been pro-globalism. But it’s interesting because we have to talk too about the difference between economic globalism and global rule. Cuz those things a lot of times I think get mixed up and you hear about the EU and the G 20 and all these groups of high-up people meeting in Europe trying to control us. And that’s not actually what globalism is. Right? They’re, not the same thing. So maybe we could chat about that a bit and the difference between being ruled by global leaders versus being free to trade with people around the world.

Brittany: I think that’s a great point to make because I think this is where people get really scared of globalism. You know, part of the reason that I think it’s so important to talk about local governments is because you want to have a rule or, you know, if you’re going to have to live in a society with all these laws, you’re gonna wanna have them be as close to the people as possible. Yeah. So, you know, what Connor does is great cuz he helps with the laws and the state of Utah. He’s working with people who live right next to him and helping, helping do what the people of Utah want. Imagine, you know, we already feel so out of touch from what Congress does all the way in Washington. I say all the way, it’s like down the street for me, but all the way in Washington. But imagine if it wasn’t all the way in Washington. Imagine it was like a group of politicians from all over the world who don’t live in America, or, you know, a lot of them don’t live in America. They don’t know what our lives are like. It’s like people who like socialism and they’re from countries where there’s less people. Now, I’m not saying socialism is just, or moral in small countries either, but it’s feasibly easier to do it in smaller countries and they think, oh, that’ll work here ’cause we do it here. They’re just out of touch. So there’s this fear that if we give into globalism, people think of it as, oh, we don’t want global governments, the United Nations. Yeah. I dunno if we’ve done an episode on the United Nations. We might have to. We have. Ok, I thought we did.

Emma: Fairly recently. Yes.

Brittany: So perfect. We’ll have to talk about that more. But, so the United Nations, or put a link to that. I mean the United Nations is, a lot of people get scared of it because it is kind of that global governance and for good reason, you should be a little scared of it because again, we shouldn’t be making laws for every single person in this world when we all have very come from different cultures, different customs. Right. We have different ideals. So I think, and Emma, I’ll have you, I’ll kick it back to you and have you chime in. I think that’s why people get so scared because when they hear globalism, they’re not necessarily thinking about trade and all these goods and services we get, they’re thinking about the possibility of it. A global government,

Emma: Right? Yeah. And to be clear, global government is horrible. Yes. Right. It’s a horrible idea. We’ve talked about this before. We talked about it in the UN episode. So if that was what globalism was, Brittany and I would both be very anti-global. Yep. But that’s why we kind of wanna clarify what these terms actually mean, right? Because we’re free. We love one country’s work with one another to do business. That’s awesome. But we are very much against,  you know, far away people in Europe or Switzerland or whatever trying to tell people in Venezuela or Mexico what to do or people in America, people in Tennessee where I live. So that’s a really dangerous thing. And I do have to say, I think that’s where things are sort of moving right now, where you’ve got these global summits, people coming together and saying, we’re going to enforce a global minimum tax on businesses. And that’s something that actually has advanced through these, these forums over the last year or so because they wanna make sure that there’s nowhere a business can go in the world to get out of paying corporate taxes. Which might sound like a good thing, I guess if you’re pro-tax. But when you actually think about it, that really hurts developing countries who a lot of times will waive those taxes to welcome in businesses that bring in jobs and bring in, prosperity and good things and money. So when you have these global leaders trying to make decisions for everyone, that’s very scary. And also too, we’re seeing the, I believe it was a health minister from Germany and she was some sort of commissioner for the EU. This just happened today, the day that we’re recording. So you’ll hear it a few weeks later. But she is trying to basically tell people in Europe that they need to throw out the Nuremberg code, which is basically, it’s something that came from the Nuremberg trials, which is where.

Brittany: Connor and I are actually gonna do an episode on that soon. So, stay tuned. Yeah.

Emma: Perfect okay. Yes. Stay tuned on that front. But these trials were held after the Nazis were taken down and they set a bunch of very important ethical codes, about medical ethics and things that you can and can’t force people to do. And one of those had to do with vaccinations. And so you have this world leader that controls a bunch of countries in Europe. It’s a very powerful position who’s actually proposing that we throw away these ethical rules that were set after the Holocaust to protect us from having something like that happen again. And, you know that’s kind of a scary example, and hopefully, it doesn’t get very far. Hopefully, people have the bravery to stand up to that and say no. And I hope that that happens. But it’s just another example of how when you consolidate power and you concentrate power like that in one place to rule everybody, it can go so wrong if those people are corrupted or if they lose sight of what’s important. So I don’t know, Brittany, if you have anything else you wanna add to that on the global government front before we wrap it up here.

Brittany: No, I think, you pretty much said it. Yeah, absolutely.

Emma: Yeah. Awesome. Okay, well we will close it here guys. Stay tuned for the podcast episode on the Nuremberg Trials. That’s gonna be a really interesting one. And we will talk to you all again soon.

Brittany: Talk to you soon.