Advocating market supremacy

23 May Advocating market supremacy

In the 1970s crippling government regulation, excessive public spending, and high tariff barriers to international trade, brought about a new kind of new type of “free-marketeer”: the neoliberalist. Analysts of this ilk used the chronic economic crises that were manifest in the 1980s to promote political opposition to state intervention in commerce. By the 1980s, governments throughout the world began to implement neoliberal policies. They were led by the most powerful of its proponents: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1979–90) and US President Ronald Reagan (1981–89). In the 1990s, a second wave of neoliberalism was promoted by Prime Minister Tony Blair (1997–2007) and President Bill Clinton (1993–2001). Globalization was directly propelled by neoliberalism, since it advocated removing borders and barriers between nations so that markets—not governments—could drive the global economy.