Unintended Fame: Media, Trump, and the Politics of Consequence (HEN Editorial 341)

Trump’s poli­cies sparked media buzz, reve­al­ing ten­si­ons bet­ween exper­tise, objec­ti­vity, and appearance—plus the quirks of eco­no­mic cause and effect

The world is full of unan­ti­ci­pa­ted con­se­quen­ces and one (pro­ba­bly very minor ;-) unin­ten­ded con­se­quence of the uncon­ven­tio­nal eco­no­mic poli­cies on the way in the US (due to Trump) and Europe (als due to Trump ;-)) is that I receive an increased num­ber of media requests. Such requests are ambi­va­lent in many ways: they often force you to choose bet­ween focu­sing on explai­ning cle­arly what’s going on and eva­lua­ting what should be done, as there is often too little time to cover both ques­ti­ons in the neces­sary depth. They also force me to somehow blend a neu­tral stance, that is able to illu­mi­nate dif­fe­rent per­spec­ti­ves on a pro­blem as, pro­ba­bly, expec­ted from an „expert“, with the wil­ling­ness to pro­vide some form of sen­si­ble and workable out­look by ten­ta­tively sug­gest­ing solu­ti­ons to the pro­blem at hand. And then, of course, any request that includes some images of me rai­ses the wicked out­fit ques­tion: shall I go in my „natu­ral form“ (inclu­ding a bat­man-shirt and fancy sun­glas­ses) or shall I „dress up“ as pro­fes­sor? The last one is close to unsol­va­ble for me, so I will typi­cally have both out­fits ready and let the jour­na­lists or PR-guys choose. And, indeed, some are brave and opt for the fancy out­fit (e.g. here, where I align very well with the flowers ;-)), while most of them go for the more tra­di­tio­nal option.

When com­men­ting on the Trump admi­nis­tra­tion ano­ther ambi­va­lence comes poten­ti­ally into play. As I am per­so­nally some­what abhor­red by recent deve­lo­p­ments (as exten­si­vely descri­bed in my last edi­to­rial), com­men­ting on the uncer­tainty and poten­tial long-term dama­ges impo­sed by this govern­ment (as in the con­text of their attacks on sci­ence or in the con­text of dis­cus­sing stock mar­ket vola­ti­lity) is rela­tively easy, while com­men­ting on tariffs is more tri­cky. Here, short-term costs (most tariffs will in the short-run mainly raise pri­ces for US-cus­to­mers as empha­si­zed by our main­stream col­le­agues) have to be jux­ta­po­sed with medium-term impacts, where incen­ti­ves for loca­ting more pro­duc­tion acti­vi­ties in the US could indeed help to slow down deindus­tria­liza­tion ten­den­cies and improve the US net posi­tion in for­eign trade.* As you might ima­gine, say­ing some­thing that indi­ca­tes that what Trump does could indeed work is a some­what chal­len­ging task for me ;-)

Having used the notion of unin­ten­ded con­se­quen­ces in my intro­duc­tory remark, let me quickly add that, in my hum­ble opi­nion, the notion of „unin­ten­ded con­se­quen­ces of poli­ti­cal action“ is among the more mudd­led con­cepts in hete­ro­dox eco­no­mics. I repea­tedly encoun­ter situa­tions in tea­ching as well as in con­ver­sa­tion with col­le­agues, where I have the impres­sion that the domi­nant inter­pre­ta­tion of the term is coined by Hayek’s nar­row, nor­ma­tive rea­ding, that empha­si­zes the poten­tial perils and dis­ad­van­ta­ges emer­ging from such unin­ten­ded con­se­quen­ces. And while this indeed might be a valid point in some con­texts, the sys­te­mic neglect of poten­ti­ally neu­tral or bene­fi­cial (or even com­plex and multi-fac­ted) unin­ten­ded con­se­quen­ces, that comes with this under­stan­ding, bia­ses and cons­trains the appli­ca­bi­lity and useful­ness of the con­cept. As a con­se­quence, I repea­tedly find mys­elf poin­ting to Robert K. Merton’s clas­sic paper or Alfred O. Hirsch­mans rela­ted book, that pro­vide a more insti­tu­tio­na­list, and ther­eby sci­en­ti­fi­cally apt and useful per­spec­tive on the sub­ject. Espe­ci­ally against the back­drop that hete­ro­dox eco­no­mists often (and pro­ba­bly cor­rectly) empha­size that a lot is actually doable and chan­geable by poli­ti­cal means, a more neu­tral con­cep­tion of unan­ti­ci­pa­ted con­se­quen­ces could be a valuable heu­ristic for pro­vi­ding a struc­tu­ral anchor to sys­te­ma­ti­cally account for uncer­tainty, plu­ra­lity and multi-cau­sa­lity in more hete­ro­dox policy studies.

All the best,