Eisenhower Institute Welcomes New Senior Fellow John Austin
Headshot of Eisenhower Institute senior fellow John Austin, who spoke in an interview with the Gettysburgian about his new role and career. (Photo courtesy Eisenhower Institute)
By Brandon Fey, News Editor
The Eisenhower Institute announced this August that international economic leader John Austin has joined the institute as a new senior fellow.
Austin is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution whose career focused on the economic revitalization of post-industrial regions in Europe and North America. He is bringing this work to EI to further his mission of strengthening international democracy through economic revitalization.
Austin visited the College between Sept. 3-5 and spoke with students at a Lunch and Learn focused on economic revitalization and democracy.
He sat down with the Gettysburgian for an interview discussing his career, views on economic revitalization and his goals working with EI.
Austin’s interest in economic policy can be traced to his early life. He grew up in the coalfields of West Virginia, surrounded by considerable poverty. His father was a minister who worked to help struggling families in his community.
“I think it always provoked an interest in asking about how we can help create conditions for people to find better opportunities and have a decent shot at life,” said Austin.
His family then moved to southeastern Pennsylvania, where Austin had his first formal introduction to economics while studying at the George School outside Philadelphia.
“It was here that I realized that economics rules the world,” he reflected. “It shapes lives and opportunity.”
Austin then went on to study at Swarthmore College, where he pursued a double major in political science and economics with a concentration in public policy. He became interested in how political leadership and public policy can create economic opportunity and better lives for people.
After completing his undergraduate studies, Austin worked on the 1984 Walter Mondale presidential campaign before moving to Massachusetts where he worked for then-Governor Michael Dukakis. Under Dukakis, Austin was among policy experts working to bring economic growth and opportunity to parts of the state that were not benefiting from the “Massachusetts Miracle” of high economic growth in the 1980s. He eventually became the governor’s personal aide and worked on his 1988 presidential bid.
During this time Austin also attended the Harvard Kennedy School, where he designed his own master’s program focused on the psychology and driving forces behind economic competition and development.
Having gained his foundational policy experience in Massachusetts, Austin then moved to Michigan to build his policy-shaping career. There, he led a nonprofit organization for community leaders in Genesee County. He was later elected to a position in the State Board of Education, eventually serving as president. In this role, he was the policy advisor for the governor’s commissions on higher education and economic growth, while remaining involved in several state-level economic public policy initiatives.
He also founded the Michigan Economic Center as a think tank dedicated to addressing the economic challenges faced by communities in the midwestern “Rust Belt” through deindustrialization.
The German Marshall Fund sent Austin on trips to Europe during this period to learn about the ways European leaders were approaching economic development in their post-industrial communities. “This led me to think more about the industrial heartland of the American Midwest,” he stated.
Austin has drawn several parallels between the mindsets of economically-declining communities in the United States and Europe.
Among these, he has noticed that residents of such communities often feel forgotten by the political establishment and are therefore receptive to the narratives of right-wing populist parties that support isolationism and pledge a return to “the way things used to be.”
Austin argues that this mentality poses a significant threat to democracy, making it increasingly important to foster economic revitalization in these communities.
“The residents of those communities that had even lost many of their economic base employers but had come back, diversified, and created new, good jobs, did not respond to nativist, nationalist politicians who preach a message of resentment,” he explained. “It is really important that we accelerate our work to bring economic opportunity to people so they don’t feel disaffected and ignored.”
The goal of Austin’s work is not the mere return to traditional manufacturing jobs that are no longer efficient. It is instead to create new economic opportunities in emerging fields by offering higher education and technical training.
“It’s not to bring back the way it used to be, with a lot of high-paying, no-skill jobs. Those are gone forever,” Austin clarified. “There is a whole new skill set and lots of high-paying jobs in new advanced manufacturing environments. It’s become a different industry.”
He believes that as more people develop advanced skill sets, formerly declining regions will be able to participate in emerging technology industries. As new tech firms are created, other businesses will emerge, making positions available for people with varying skill sets.
“99% of the jobs created in the U.S. since the Great Recession require advanced skills. 99% of them also pay a decent yearly wage,” he said.
Austin cited Kalamazoo, Michigan as an example of a resurgent community. After having lost 40,000 jobs from Upjohn and Pfizer, Kalamazoo was able to recover by promising free higher education for those who pursued it within the city. This has encouraged a substantial influx of business and new residents in the area.
Similarly, Pittsburgh, once the capital of America’s evanescent steel industry, has transformed itself into one of the world’s foremost technical leaders in artificial intelligence and advanced robotics technologies through Carnegie Mellon University.
Such a change, however, can be daunting for community members who are beyond the typical age to be pursuing education. Austin acknowledges this and was able to provide such individuals with personalized educational opportunities to enter new fields through the No Worker Left Behind Initiative in Michigan. This was successful given its ability to avoid bureaucratic hindrances.
Austin organized the Transforming Industrial Heartlands Initiative in partnership with the Chicago Council for Global Affairs to advance economic revival through political and community leadership. It requires effective communication between political leaders and community members to understand the disaffections of people who feel left behind in a rapidly changing world. Leadership must then work alongside community members to deliver the resources necessary to create their own economic opportunities.
Austin’s initiative has connected an international network of leaders focused on the economic revival in industrial regions of North America and Europe to collaborate on sharing corresponding solutions.
“The goal is to ask ‘how can we help each other learn from our collective experience to help similarly situated regions in all these countries, and find those paths to economic success in order to strengthen democracy?’” he said.
Austin highlighted the growing threat of U.S. adversaries Russia and China as reasons that the West must become more economically united.
“If isolationist populist leaders are elected [in the West], they would retreat from the collective alliance of democratic nations that need to work together as never before to counter these serious threats from Russia and China, who reward corruption and respect neither the civil rights of workers nor the environment,” he said.
The COVID-19 pandemic exemplified the importance of establishing reliable supply chains with cooperative allies. Austin said the virus led him to recognize America’s dependence on Chinese inputs and China’s purposeful monopolization of some manufactured items such as personal protective equipment.
Several politicians initially responded to this with calls to manufacture the majority of critical imported goods domestically. This would involve the creation of multiple new facilities with high production costs while continuing to rely on imported raw materials that are unattainable on the mainland. Austin believes in another solution.
“As someone who works on all kinds of global economic issues, I know that [domestic production] would be not only impossible but economically destructive,” he said.
Austin was among a group of experts who envisioned the concept of “allyshoring,” in which the United States would focus on trade with allied democratic nations for sharing critical supplies.
“We could develop a highly efficient global supply chain, a global ‘co-production system,’ as I call it, to produce and trade more with our international partners and countries who share our values and aren’t going to use our dependencies for political or economic coercion like China or Russia does,” he said.
He believes that countries like the U.S. and Germany have the capabilities to specialize in technologically advanced, high-skill applications while emerging partners are able to focus on low-skill manufacturing. The United States would retain its global leadership as he has remarked on its unique ability to spearhead new technology such as the internet and artificial intelligence.
Austin decided to bring his work to EI to vitalize his mission of using economic revival to strengthen America’s international partnerships.
“I was looking for a place where I could create a center of activity around international economics and strengthening democracy. I realized that this is a great institution with the tradition and leadership of Eisenhower as its legacy, and would be a great center of activity as it is all about strengthening, protecting, and expanding a healthy international democratic order,” said Austin.
He has previously worked with EI in helping to create programs that engage students in his industrial heartlands work both in the U.S. and Germany.
Austin expressed excitement in involving Gettysburg students in his future work.
“There are going to be opportunities for students here to support research and help us write reports about what we’re learning in these transatlantic exchanges,” Austin said. “And I’m also going to design a course-like program for next spring on how regions and parts of our democracy succeed in economic regeneration.”
