Cromwell

Fed up with resistance from the legislature, the South Korean president tried to declare martial law in the name of “democracy.” The public resisted, the military had little appetite for the task, and the constitutional guardrails held. Could you imagine Trump doing the same thing if the GOP does poorly in the midterms?

Of course you can! And, thanks to the Supreme Court, the base, and a core of craven supporters in Congress, he can’t be prosecuted or removed from office through the impeachment process. He will have appointed the new heads of the military, too.

It would be a mistake to assume he won’t try it just because there is no American precedent for it. The consequences for trying and failing will be minimal, and the benefits to him of succeeding would be quite large.

Against the run of play, I predicted there would be no recession in 2022 and 2023. I was right. Today, I’m predicting that there will, in fact, be a Trump slump. Why?

For two reasons that have nothing to do with partisanship. First, the economy, both on a global basis and in America, runs on trust. No one in the world is less trustworthy than Trump, so nothing he says can be relied upon by either consumers or investors. Second, the American economy is fueled by the spending of relatively affluent people in blue states–the kind of people Trump really hates, and the feeling is mutual. When their retirement savings and real estate values are threatened, they will pull back, and then what?

As Dickie V might say, “Recession city, baby!”

When Macron decided to hold legislative elections last year, my hope was that the far right would win and then govern incompetently. That would have served as a message to Americans who thought that Trump would bring back the economy of 2019 instead of chaos and decline. The French did not elect the far right, however, so my theory was never tested.

Now we’re going to see the phenomenon in reverse; Trump’s tariffs and insults are going to make the dangers of voting in right-wing populists clear to European voters. The populists will have to do everything in their power to distance themselves from Trump. That, in turn, will mean that the international alliance of populists that Steve Bannon and his acolytes have been working for will never happen.

Not that it ever could. The notion of an international coalition of nationalists is logically absurd.

Due to deep divisions within the party, the GOP tax cut is moving very slowly through Congress. As a result of the delays and the new tariffs, the Trump slump may well be in full swing by the time the bill gets its final approval. What does that mean for the contents of the bill?

The economy will probably need stimulus by that time, but simply extending the 2017 tax cut doesn’t provide any; it is just the status quo. The large spending cuts supported by House fiscal hawks will actually be a drag on the economy. It seems likely, then, that the final version of the bill will look more like the Senate’s proposal than the one contemplated by the House. The spending cuts will be kept to a minimum, and the Trump trinkets–no taxes on tips, etc.–are a better bet than they were a month ago.

Happy Liberation Day! The new tariffs will raise trillions of dollars from foreigners and result in an American industrial renaissance. Given the importance of the American market and the need for American military protection, the foreigners won’t dare retaliate. The tariffs won’t cause inflation, either, based on the events of the first Trump term. Just trust Trump, and the golden age will be at hand.

Except none of this is true. The tariffs cannot both raise huge sums of money and eliminate imports. They will be paid by American consumers, not foreigners. The industrial renaissance won’t happen for two reasons: since there is no guarantee that the tariffs will remain in place for long, business interests will be reluctant to invest in new factories; and if they did, there is no pool of workers to operate them, particularly after the mass deportations. Most of the foreigners will, in fact, retaliate, so the tariff proceeds will be needed to turn our great farmers into wards of the state. The combination of higher prices and lost consumer confidence will result in stagflation. The first Trump term tariffs, which were also a mistake, were lower and less sweeping, and there was little underlying inflation at the time, which is no longer true. Finally, Trump won’t be able to keep his hands off the wheel; there will be additions and subtractions to this list based on purely personal and geopolitical factors, so no one will be able to rely on it.

When the tariffs fail, as they will, Trump will become extremely unpopular. He will have three choices: get rid of them and spin the episode as some sort of a victory; keep them in place and blame the media, Biden, and the Democrats for any problems; or go full authoritarian to stamp out dissent. The story of the Trump presidency will be defined by the answer to that question.

(It’s a pun, you know)

The DOGE cuts will probably remain reasonably popular with the electorate as a whole until reductions in service levels kick in, which won’t be long in coming. Musk himself, however, is extremely unpopular. The results in Wisconsin, which Musk made a referendum on himself, prove it.

Trump will have learned last night that Musk is a political liability. Expect him to behave accordingly. Musk, for his part, probably views Wisconsin as yet more evidence that foolish Americans can’t be trusted with the vote and that liberal democracy needs to disappear.

Trump has authorized a vicious deportation scheme that includes plenty of people who, for various reasons, are victims of American foreign policy. There is one glaring exception to the new regime–disgruntled Afrikaners are welcome here. What’s going on?

Racism is probably part of it. Elon Musk’s ties to white South Africans may also provide some of the explanation. But I think the principal reason is that Trump and the base identify both themselves and the Afrikaners as supporters of traditional values and civilization against an overwhelming tide of barbarism. Whether this view bears any relationship to reality, either here or in South Africa, I leave to your imagination.

Trump will be in his eighties by the time he finishes his term, which means the notion of a third term would be implausible even without the 22nd Amendment. So why does he keep talking about it?

Part of it is to tweak the left, of course. Part of it is because he has grown to love exercising power. He probably can’t imagine the country without him, and he may fear future legal problems in spite of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision. But the biggest reason is that it keeps him from sounding like a lame duck. It gives him leverage against any opposition, and it keeps the GOP’s factions in line. The techno-aristocrats and the populists may despise each other, but they don’t dare break into open warfare as long as he’s in charge.

Of course, the problem for him is that his presence galvanizes the left like nothing else. He will feel that in 2026.

Trump has spent the last two months wrecking the parts of America he dislikes. What exactly is motivating him?

The destruction can be divided into three parts:

1. PERSONAL VENGEANCE: Trump is, of course, determined to punish any individual who, in his eyes, persecuted him over the last four years. The retribution has taken the form of firings, lost security measures, and the harassment of law firms. The remaining question here is whether the people involved in the January 6 Committee and the two state prosecutions will face some sort of federal criminal investigation. Thus far, we have seen no indication of that, but the day is young.
2. DOMINATING THE DEEP STATE: Instead of decapitating the “deep state,” restocking it, and using it for his own purposes, Trump has used DOGE to hobble and terrify it. Domination has also been the motivation for Trump’s behavior relative to Europe, Canada, and Mexico. DOGE is mostly done, however, so this kind of behavior will probably fade away after a few more months, at least domestically.
3. THE REACTIONARY PROJECT: Here, the scope of the task is almost limitless, and has just begun. The most prominent adversaries have been the elite universities and immigrants. More will follow; the key players here are the blue states, particularly New York and California.

Looking at the big picture, the real questions for the administration are whether its tariffs will actually help red America prosper and whether the efforts described in #3 above will turn America into an illiberal or even fascist state. Those are the great known unknowns.

It’s 1898. America doesn’t have an income tax, a web of federal regulations, independent agencies, or a welfare state, but it does have a large tariff. It doesn’t aspire to be a democratic shining city on a hill, but it demands to be taken seriously as a great military power. It is about to engage in a war for the ostensible purpose of eliminating human rights abuses in Cuba, but the war will end with satisfied imperial objectives in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Most people used to think that America was last great in 1950, but Trump’s ultimate objectives have finally become clear; he wants to be William McKinley. After he gets around the 22nd Amendment, retakes the Panama Canal, and annexes Greenland, will he try to repeal the income tax?

For all of his partisanship and incompetence, I will give Pete Hegseth credit for one thing; instead of trashing America’s friends in Asia, he is genuinely trying to bolster our alliances. In the meantime, however, his boss is imposing automobile tariffs that will seriously damage the Japanese and South Korean economies. Will this end well?

No. At some point, the Japanese and South Koreans may decide, like the Europeans, that being vassals to a relatively benign and predictable lord is better than serving a despotic and unreliable one.

An old twist on the Golden Rule is that he who has the gold rules. This is the ethic that governs Trump and his administration. His primary means of achieving his reactionary objectives are tariffs and federal aid cut-offs.

But he and his GOP allies should give more consideration to the original meaning of the Golden Rule. They won’t be in power forever, and what goes around, comes around.

By all accounts, Trump admires Erdogan at least as much as Putin. Erdogan just put his principal political rival in jail. What conclusions should we draw from this?

It would be a mistake to assume the elections in 2026 and 2028 will be free and fair. The current administration, particularly if it is unpopular, may take the position that Americans shouldn’t have the right to vote irresponsibly; it will have the resources to see that it doesn’t happen.

In 2009, Obama decided the government had to save the auto industry. There was no playbook for it, and he received a lot of criticism for what was an unprecedented peacetime interference with the market. He did it because the industry was extremely important in and of itself, and because the cascading effects of losing millions of jobs would have taken the Great Recession to a completely different level. Against the odds, it worked. It was the signature accomplishment, along with the approval of Obamacare, of his tenure in office.

Trump’s tariffs are exactly the opposite. For no good reason, they are going to wreck the auto industry. And then what? Will he change his mind and spin it as a victory when things go wrong, or will he double down? TBD.

AMERICA THE IMPERIAL

Imperial

We own the skies.

We own the minerals, too.

Trump takes the best.

He leaves the rest.

It’s all for me and you.

America, America

We’ve lost what we hold dear.

But we’re the boss

At such great cost

Of the Western Hemisphere.