The Blueprint v. the Altar Call

Obama didn’t use the word deindustrialization as often as economists or critics did, but his administration’s stance is very clear in the record: he saw the long decline of U.S. manufacturing as a structural problem that needed active correction, not something to accept as inevitable. 

In Obama’s view, deindustrialization was a threat to middle‑class stability. Obama consistently treated the erosion of manufacturing capacity as a danger to economic resilience and to the social fabric. His policy documents describe the loss of industrial jobs as something the federal government should reverse, not merely cushion. His “Blueprint to Support U.S. Manufacturing Jobs” explicitly framed offshoring as a harmful trend and proposed tax changes to discourage it.

He regarded offshoring as a policy failure, not a natural market outcome.  Full marks, Mr. President!   His administration argued that the tax code rewarded firms for moving production overseas and needed to be rewritten to stop subsidizing deindustrialization.

One key element in his world-picture was that manufacturing was essential to national strength. The Blueprint emphasized that a strong industrial base was tied to innovation, exports, and middle‑class wages.

Reindustrialization required active state intervention.  Obama pushed for targeted tax incentives, reshoring credits, and public‑private manufacturing institutes to rebuild industrial capacity.

His actions reflected his beliefs, highlighting several major initiatives that show how seriously he took the issue.

Saving the auto industry in 2009, which he framed as preventing a catastrophic collapse of America’s industrial core.  Launching Manufacturing USA, a network of advanced manufacturing institutes meant to rebuild technological leadership in key sectors like 3D printing, advanced fabrics, and lightweight metals. Trade enforcement actions against unfair imports in steel, tires, and auto parts—moves intended to protect domestic producers from predatory foreign practices. “Buy America” provisions in the Recovery Act to ensure infrastructure spending supported domestic industry.

These actions weren’t framed as nostalgia—they were framed as strategic.

Did he think deindustrialization was reversible? Obama publicly set a goal of 1 million new manufacturing jobs by the end of his second term. He didn’t reach it, but the fact that he set such a target shows he believed the decline was not fate but a policy choice that could be countered.

Boiling it down, Obama saw deindustrialization as a harmful trend driven by policy incentives and global corporate strategies, not an inevitable force. He believed the federal government had a responsibility to rebuild manufacturing through targeted intervention, innovation policy, and reshoring incentives. He was opting for destiny over fate.

I can compare Obama’s view to Veblen, Galbraith, or Mazzucato—my mythic-economic pantheon is rich with parallels. What Obama wasn't was Spenglerian (fate). However, the evolution of civilizations is context-dependent.

Obama’s relationship to austerity is one of the most revealing tensions of his presidency. There is a clear factual basis to work from, and they paint a picture that’s more complicated than either “he opposed austerity” or “he embraced it.”  

I never want to separate politics from economics, but there are tug of wars among the Toynbeean "planes" of collective Maslovian teleologies. As a result, Obama’s stance on austerity presents a mixed, often contradictory position. When Obama entered office in 2009, he rejected austerity as a response to the Great Recession. The administration pushed through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, an $800 billion stimulus designed to counter the downturn. This was the opposite of austerity: it expanded spending and cut taxes to boost demand.

However, the stimulus was much smaller than his own economists recommended. Reporting summarized in the search results notes that Christy Romer calculated the economy needed $1.7–1.8 trillion in stimulus, but internal decisions reduced the proposal to $850 billion. This meant the administration accepted a constrained version of anti‑austerity.

By 2011 (mid-Presidency), Obama shifted toward a political posture that emphasized deficit reduction. This culminated in the Budget Control Act and the sequester, which imposed $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts over a decade.

This was austerity in practice.

The People’s Policy Project source argues that these cuts hit while unemployment—especially Black unemployment—was still extremely high, making the timing economically damaging.

One tug was from the traditional GOP fussbudget contingent. The administration accepted the sequester as part of a political negotiation with congressional Republicans.  Obama’s economic policy page frames the sequester as part of a broader effort to “reduce the deficit back to typical historical levels” during his second term.

So while he did not ideologically champion austerity, he did adopt austerity measures as part of a political strategy to stabilize deficits and appear fiscally responsible.

Dissent Magazine describes the Obama years as culturally and politically defined by austerity, arguing that the administration’s acceptance of spending caps contributed to a slow, uneven recovery and a broader “austerity mood” in American life.

This is an interpretation, not Obama’s own stated view, but it reflects how many analysts understand the consequences of his choices.

So what did Obama think about austerity?

Based on the factual record, he rejected austerity as an economic strategy in 2009, favoring stimulus. He later accepted austerity measures, especially the sequester, as part of a political compromise and deficit‑reduction agenda. He did not publicly champion austerity as a virtue, but he did frame deficit reduction as necessary once the immediate crisis had passed. His administration’s actions produced a hybrid outcome: anti‑austerity in the recession’s depths, austerity‑lite in the recovery.

Concisely, Obama saw austerity as bad economics during a recession but acceptable—or even necessary—as part of long‑term fiscal politics once the economy stabilized.

I can map this onto my broader interest in creditor power, the Washington Consensus arc, or the tragic logic of “restrictive economic policies” in late‑imperial phases which stir up Macauley's "distemper" in Keynes's "animal spirits." Instead I want to cast Obama in the role of Samuel Delaney's perennial protagonist "The Kid". In 𝘋𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘯, the iteration of Delaney's archetype comes to Bellona to wound the autumnal city. Obama, however, wants to sting it to renewed activity, to rouse it back to life. Spengler’s Autumn is the phase when a culture’s inner form has exhausted itself. Its symbols no longer generate new meaning; they merely persist as habits. The city becomes the great organism in decay—still vast, still powerful, but hollowed.

The hero is a late‑civilizational wanderer. Spengler’s late figures are detached, ironic, rootless, improvisational.

The Kid is all of these. He is not a Faustian striver; he is a post‑Faustian drifter, a creature of the aftermath.

Obama is not from Springtime; he brought the Summer of the Soaring Sixties.