It's Gonna Be Really Big. It's Gonna Be Huge - Trump's Economic Policies Bankrupt the World
America Made Great Again?
Donald Trump has described his economic policies as a form of medicine. As a fantasist who imagines himself a 19th Century business tycoon, Mr. Trump's economic cure for what ails America closely resembles that century's cure for syphilis: large doses of mercury.
The United States has, for too long, treated the world as a bordello where everyone can be screwed and everything is for sale. Out of fear, poverty and desperation, everyone else, for too long, has acquiesced to that type of abusive relationship.
"Greatness" as conceived by Mr. Trump, is the United States competing as an apex abuser among other nation-state abusers; and he, as President, is the abuser-in-chief. In his world view there are no truths, no ideals, no laws, no ethics, no morals, no paths to enlightenment, no progress, no social contract (à la Margret Thatcher's 1987 comment that "there is no such thing as society"), and no possibility of civilizational advancement - only a succession of meretricious relationships established in a brutal dog-eat-dog power struggle that is, in Thomas Hobbes' assessment, "nasty, brutish, and short."
The Trump remedy for what ails America - aggressive tariffs, sanctions and mafia bullying - will, more than likely, kill rather than cure the patient. Just like the 19th Century "cure" for syphilis.
I apologize to the select few who subscribe to this SubStack site. I originally intended it to be a platform for short stories, novels, sober commentary, music, parody and satire. But as it turned out, our 21st Century has metamorphosed into self-parody. The auto-satirization of our times have simply overwhelmed many of my attempts at sobriety, humor and fiction.
Francis Fukuyama fatuously claimed that the triumph of "liberal democracy" in the 20th Century meant the literal "End of History." Karl Marx knew better. Contrasting the 1848 French Revolution and the 1789 French Revolution, Marx observed that "Geschichte wiederholt sich, zuerst als Tragödie, dann als Farce."1
So are we in the tragic or the farcical stage of history?
Probably both simultaneously.
Whether you are chuckling or crying depends, of course, on whether you are among those rounded up, beaten or killed. Ask the college students at Columbia University, at Harvard and at the University of Washington who are being arrested, prosecuted and deported merely for opposing Israeli and American policies of genocide. Ask the survivors in Gaza, in Palestine, in Syria and in Yemen. They might have a different opinion whether we are in the tragic or the farcical stages of history. Or, whether Mr. Trump represents the triumph or the decay of the Euro-American 500 year run of global parasitism.
Mr. Trump's persona accurately reflects the anti-intellectual streak that runs through all of America's relatively short and definitely not-so-great history. That's to be expected from a man who is proudly undereducated and ahistorical.
His personality has no moral keel and he changes tack repeatedly. Sometimes Mr. Trump acts like a trash-talking, opponent-taunting TV wrestler who ignores the referees and fights dirty. Other times, he plays the role of Al Capone qua Hollywood Wild West sheriff theatrically shooting "bad guys" at the OK Corral. Too often, he is simply like a petulant ten year old throwing a temper tantrum.
Contrary to Mr. Trump's narrative, tariffs can serve a useful purpose. Tariffs permit an underdeveloped people to become developed, to gain the benefits of civilization.
Let's take a brief journey to America's beginnings. Tariffs - otherwise known as import duties - were one of the reasons for the American War of Independence from Great Britain. Trade policy also strongly contributed to the onset of the American Civil War. The point of the American War of Independence was to emancipate - no, not the slaves - but the manufacturers in New England from the competition of cheap British manufactured goods. Import duties were imposed in the new American republic to give the nascent industries a chance to develop within domestic markets. On the other hand, the southern states were agricultural. They depended on slave labor to grow large quantities of commodities primarily traded with England... in exchange for English manufactured goods.
Although slavery was abolished within England itself in 1838, its industrialists had no qualms about profiting from the slave labor employed elsewhere, such as in the American South. Or, later, in the Confederate States of America. For that reason, British foreign policy tilted heavily in favor of the Confederacy during the American Civil War and came very close to an outright military alliance with it.
In the colonial model refined by the British Empire in the 18th Century, the 'homeland' was the locus of industry and high technology. The colonies existed to provide raw materials to the Empire. Some colonies (like Ireland) were forced by starvation to export humans to labor in the English sweatshops. Others were literally expelled from the old English Commons to work in the urban factories. This, in part, was the subject of Friedrich Engels' 1845 book, The Condition of the Working Class in England. Engels' described large commercial centers with heaps of poor people crammed into "affordable housing," the destruction of cottage industry so that workers could be herded into centralized workshops (read: ‘work from home’ versus work in the downtown office towers), the industrial exploitation of women, the destruction of the family and the atomized isolation of individual workers in the big cities. What Engels described in Victorian England resembles 21st Century life in urban America and Western Europe.
The Trump administration sees the world in the same way as the 19th Century British imperialists. Manufacturing must be done in America. The function of the rest of the world is to export to America cheap raw materials... and to remain "undeveloped" and poor. This, the gentleman says, will Make America Great Again.
It is actually simply a policy of "beggar thy neighbor."
About 25 years ago, 50,000 protesters assembled in Seattle and shut down the annual meeting of the World Trade Organization. At that time - November 30 to December 2, 1999 - "free trade" was the mantra of both the Republican and Democrat Parties. "Free Trade," of course, meant nothing more than the freedom of capital to go wherever it wanted to go in pursuit of profit.
Generally, that meant that American corporations wanted to move their industrial base out of the United States in order to take advantage of 1) low wage, non-union labor, 2) loose or non-existent environmental regulation, and 3) loose or non-existent workplace safety laws. To make more money on their off-shore enterprises, American plutocrats lobbied for lower U.S. tariffs. That would make it more profitable to manufacture goods in Asia and South America and ship them into the United States. The quid pro quo, they argued to a gullible American public, was lots of "stuff," lots of imported "cheap goods."
The blather today about how China "stole our jobs" is, therefore, just blather.
Mr. Trump's criticism of China as "proud" is misinformation. China has earned the right to be proud. Before the Communist Revolution, China was a playground for western imperialism and a dumping ground for opium deliberately imported by Great Britain to create addiction. The West intentionally imported addictive drugs into China to create a demand for something to exchange.
The trade relationship with China that Mr. Trump idealizes is precisely that of pre-Revolution China: an impoverished, debased, drug-addled, subject people laboring for Western industrialists with womens' feet bound and men forced to wear the Manchu queue and shaved forehead of subordination.
This explains Mr. Trump's extraordinary hostility to socialist China. China is where the colonialists were successfully expelled just 75 years ago and where the people were led from shoe-less poverty into economic success that rivals the West. The China that succeeded was led by revolutionary socialists.
The difference between a capitalist state and a socialist state is simple. In a socialist state, the people own the government which tells the large corporations, the investors and plutocrats what to do for the benefit of the people who own the government. In a capitalist state, the large corporations, the investors and plutocrats own the government, and they tell the government what to do for the benefit of the large corporations, the investors and plutocrats who own the government.
It is, thus, not China's alleged "unfair trade" that capitalist supremo Mr. Trump detests. He detests China's successful socioeconomic alternative to the parasitic western model.
Mr. Trump envisions today the same 19th Century colonial world order for China as for all of Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.
He sees Western Europe as simply a troop of trained poodles who will follow orders and eat table scraps. His world vision, such as it is, will further degrade America's MAGAs, too, as in the headpiece photograph of mill town Johnston, Pennsylvania at the top of this essay, when America was, supposedly, “great.”
At a recent political event, Mr. Trump boasted about his tariff plans: “I’m telling you, these [foreign] countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are dying to make a deal: ‘Please, please sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything, I’ll do anything sir.’”
How gauche! How incredibly insulting! How like a Roman emperor lording it over conquered peoples!
Just like syphilis, American industry brought the ills of globalization on itself. If anything, Mr. Trump would like to return the hard, dirty, environmentally toxic factories to America where the newly unemployed (the army of surplus labor) will again will be forced to work... hard, dirty, environmentally toxic and low-paying jobs. Mr. Trump sees profitable loveliness in strip mining of the seas and mountains, smoke-belching smoke stacks, logging of the forests, and resort hotels that despoil Nature's natural beauty.
He calls that making America great again.
I call it returning us to the bad old days of robber barons industrialists, sweatshops and the dangerous factory floors that my grandparents' generation and yours fought hard to escape.
I do not practice bankruptcy law, but I know enough about it to be dangerous.
In the business world, bankruptcy is just another business tool, a normal part of the ebb and flow of profit. Chapter 11 Reorganization under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code is, basically, a way for corporations to stick it to their creditors. Mr. Trump does understand Chapter 11 bankruptcy and he does understand how to "stick it" to people.
Prior to becoming President, Mr. Trump bankrupted six separate businesses. What can he do for an encore? For an encore, he can bankrupt the entire world... in every sense of the word "bankrupt."
Tariffs are simply a tax - a tax paid by all of us. The industrialized world has already tried the high tariffs, protectionist trade policies of Mr. Trump. They failed, abjectly. They led directly to the Great Depression. The Great Depression led directly to World War. World War brought the world out of the Great Depression only to set the stage for more economic imbalances that led to more protectionism, which led to inflation and more colonialism, another economic depression. And more war. This is insanity.
Insanity for all of us, of course; not those who profit from the endlessly destructive cycle.
Mr. Trump is a complete agnostic when it comes to morality and ethics. He is a prophet of profit. Nothing else.
Notwithstanding his professions of peace-making (when running for election), Mr. Trump is a violent and temperamental war-monger, an apex bully who likes to taunt, sucker-punch and humiliate anyone who opposes him. A junkyard dog. A mafia don. I've litigated with opposing counsel like that. And I've beaten and outlived them.
Unfortunately, the Democrats in our two-party system serve the same interests as the Republicans. The Democrats are fundamentally no better than Mr. Trump except that they talk nicer. If the MAGA philosophy is callow, the Democrats' "Hands Off" campaign is no less so. It is just the same pablum as Joe Biden/Kamala Harris 's "I'm not Trump" rhetoric, reheated left-overs full of fat and empty calories. Thus, about the best the Democrats can do is to pile on support for... no, not university students who are being gagged and deported; not Palestinians whose homeland is repeatedly wasted by Israel in preparation for Trump-style golf resorts... but in support of CIA cut-outs like USAID, imperial NATO, and global law firms like Perkins Coie.
Even the supposedly non-partisan Washington State Bar Association has jumped on the Democratic Party bandwagon. I mean, really folks! With so much evil and injustice in the world, the cause that America's bar associations rally around is... a 1,000+ global law firm with deep lobbying ties, giant corporate clients and insider influence around the globe?
Meanwhile.
President Trump who has bankrupted six companies in his business career is determined to do something even more spectacular for an encore.
As his legacy, he is going to bankrupt the world - morally, politically and ethically.
It's gonna be really big. It's gonna be huge. It's not gonna be fun.
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History repeats itself; first as tragedy, then as farce.