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These were global issues, not USA issues:
"the rise of government economic planning across the global south and its threat to corporate autonomy at home, and the challenge to the material basis of organized labor’s power in the old manufacturing industries of the US Northeast and Midwest"
Labor unions hit the peak of their power in the mid-20th century, in most of the Western developed nations. The developed nations all suffered different kinds of deindustrialization after 1973, though the English speaking nations suffered the most, perhaps because their currencies were overvalued relative to the changing circumstances in the global South (in other words, overvalued in the era of OPEC).
When we try to figure out the real role that Nixon played in history, it is important to tease apart which issues he faced that were uniquely American, versus those issues that were global, and faced by every leader.
The Fed simply devalued the dollar to keep the cost of post '73 OPEC crisis oil down.
This sustained heavy and extraordinarily polluting industries in the US until the nineties.
Coincidentally, reducing the influence of unionized labor also reduced the potential for employee health pressures on polluting industries. If I still had the feeds, I'd love to back traces how much this propped up the largest commercial banks and insurance companies who, coincidentally when environmental protection began to matter, did away with the prohibition of gambling with consumer deposits and abolished Glass Steagall, ushering in the last twenty years of economic horror story.
> The Fed simply devalued the dollar to keep the cost of post '73 OPEC crisis oil down.
How does devaluing your currency lower the price of an imported commodity? Being the currency in which that commodity is priced doesn't help.
I think this may be the most relevant quotation to our contemporary predicament:
"The military escalation had, like all those before it, coincided with an increase in the cost of living for working-class Americans."
Give or take the interest rate holiday.