Follow the Mango, Not the Money
It’s easier for trade than for finance to evade governments’ rush to keep capitalism at home.
You shouldn’t have to go to Amritsar.
Photographer: Narinder Manu/AFP/Getty
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Whatever happens, the global shipping lanes will still be active. Trade must continue. To use US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s favorite analogy, the US can never produce its own mangoes; it will keep importing them, and shouldn’t slap on tariffs that would only make them more expensive for Americans.
Lutnick isn’t the only one with a financial mango analogy. The British novelist John Lanchester, who became an avid student of economics during the Global Financial Crisis, has used them to denounce contemporary financialized capitalism. He offers this example of a farmer who will soon harvest his fruit: