Cromwell

Donald Trump may be ahead in the polls, but he needs money badly. And so, according to Ross Douthat, he has been telling donors with deep pockets that his second term will look like the first one. Sure, there will be plenty of white noise to keep the base happy–that’s his brand, after all. But he will actually govern as a typical Republican. Ignore the populist sound and fury; just pay attention to what he actually does in office.

Should they trust him? Should we trust him?

Of course not! This is a man who told 30,000 lies during his term of office. Furthermore, we know from his first term (and, to some extent, from his history before that) that he hates Ukraine, the EU, and NATO, despises the law and the MSM, loves dictators, rejects the whole idea of climate change, and embraces tariffs as a way to bring back the economy of the 1950s. This time, he will be surrounded by advisors who know better than to try to restrain him, and he is angry at his opponents and desperate to avoid prison. Why should anyone believe that he will govern as a man of moderation?

Just in case you were looking for another historical precedent, German industrialists ultimately decided to ignore Hitler’s extreme racist and nationalist rhetoric and back him as the lesser of the evils, too. How did that turn out?

Do you really believe you have the legal right to deport asylum seekers who have complied in every respect with federal immigration law? And what will you do if the Mexican government refuses to accept the deportees? Use your paltry law enforcement resources to start a war with Mexico?

Texas decided to stop being a sovereign state in the 1840s because it didn’t have the resources to protect itself. It’s time to accept that fact, once and for all. The best you can hope for is to be an American equivalent of Viktor Orban doing battle within the EU.

Even though I completely agree with him, I think it was a mistake to call for elections and a new Israeli government. That looked more like meddling in Israeli internal affairs than a statement about American interests and sentiments.

The rest of the speech was right on point. The Israelis need to understand that they are in grave danger of losing support from even its best friends in the Democratic Party, which will have impacts on them both now and in the future. A substantial portion of the blue team sees Israel, not as an imperiled island of democracy in a sea of Arab extremism, but as the bully in the neighborhood. The more the Israeli government treats vast numbers of Palestinian civilian deaths as acceptable collateral damage, the less material and diplomatic support it can expect from us in the foreseeable future.

Trump’s initial response to the terrorist attack was to blame Bibi. This was done purely because Bibi recognizes that Biden won the 2020 election. More recently, however, Trump is demanding unconditional support for the Israeli invasion and accusing American Jews who disagree of being untrue to their religion. It’s the usual toxic stew of personal grievance and political opportunism.

But consider that Trump’s only real overseas friends in his first term were Bibi and MBS, and that his one diplomatic success was the Abraham Accords. How is encouraging Bibi to bounce the rubble going to play in Saudi Arabia? How would Trump 2.0 finish the job of creating a regional alliance by offending public opinion in the Arab world?

Let’s hope we never find out.

It is likely that the principal objective of Hamas on October 7 was to disrupt the negotiations between the Israelis and the Saudis. If that is your measuring stick, are they succeeding?

Let’s put it this way: if Israel doesn’t change course, it will face complete diplomatic isolation and lose any hope of a regional alliance with moderate Arab states for the foreseeable future. It will also be on the hook for all of the costs of an expensive occupation that it cannot afford. For all of that, it probably won’t be able to destroy Hamas, because killing lots of people and persuading them of the fallacy of an idea are two different things entirely.

That sounds like a Hamas victory to me.

The Trumpist right purports to believe that China is an existential threat. If you accept that premise, the logical response is to seek out as many allies as possible to contain the Chinese. Trump, however, has made it clear that America neither has nor needs any real allies; his program, including universal tariffs, withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, and the abandonment of Ukraine, could not possibly be more offensive to our friends. What will come of this, if he is elected? How will America be able to project military, diplomatic, and economic power in the Pacific without friends?

The inevitable result of “America First” is a division of the world into spheres of influence. Japan, South Korea, and Australia will become Chinese vassal states–still democratic, but without the ability to conduct an independent foreign policy. Taiwan will fall completely into Chinese hands. Europe will become a free agent, pursuing its own interest apart from either America or China. America’s predominant influence will be limited to the Western Hemisphere.

Of course, if we go to war with Mexico, even that will be in jeopardy.

Christianity basically consists of two components–ethics and metaphysics. What does this look like on a graph, and what does it mean for American politics?

The first quadrant includes people who genuinely believe in both Christian ethics and metaphysics. These are the true Christians; they used to be CDs and voted overwhelmingly for Republicans. Today, they don’t really have a home in either party; they reject both Trumpism and the secular elements of the Democratic Party. Most of them will vote for Biden.

The second quadrant contains people who accept the ethics, but not the metaphysics, of Christianity. They are mostly liberals; they believe in a strong, secular state with a healthy safety net. They will vote for Biden.

The third quadrant has people who accept Christian metaphysics, because they think Christianity supports a state controlled by white male Christians, but reject Christian ethics. They are great haters, and Trump voters.

The fourth quadrant consists of pure pagans. These people have little regard for humanity, but great regard for themselves. They think they have a right to remake society in their own image. Most of our tech bros, Bronze Age Pervert, and Trump fall into this quadrant.

A recent study indicated, to no one’s surprise, that Trump’s first round of tariffs was an extremely inefficient way of saving profits and jobs but was nonetheless popular. That’s why Biden left most of them in place.

The Trump 2.0 tariffs would be different, because this time, the consumer would feel them directly in the form of increased prices on retail goods. The public is more sensitive to inflation now than it was in Trump’s first term as a result of our experience over the last few years.

Biden really needs to make a major issue of this tax increase on the poor and the middle class during the campaign. I have to believe he will.

On the subject of Trump’s proposed tariffs.

There’s more than just costs to beware of.

They will anger our friends,

Which won’t work in the end

If we want to keep playing world sheriff.

After the end of World War II, there was a general consensus that tariffs had exacerbated the impacts of the Great Depression. As a result, the nations of the free world created institutions that were biased in favor of free trade. Tariffs, in that regime, were only a legitimate tool to force other countries to open their markets. They could not be pursued as an end in and of themselves.

The new system worked. Free trade created new efficiencies that brought billions of people out of poverty and kept the cost of goods low. Inflation disappeared as a problem for a generation. But while the benefits of globalization as a whole far exceeded the costs, they were not distributed equally. Right-wing parties, at the behest of wealthy businessmen, prevented governments from creating adequate welfare states, and workers in America and Europe saw their wages stagnate.

The 2024 election will feature two different views of tariffs that are based on the new global realities. Biden’s approach is “friend-shoring.” He wants to use tariffs in a limited way–to prevent America from becoming dangerously dependent on China for goods that have a clear nexus to national security. Trump’s vision, on the other hand, is America as it existed in 1950, minus the extremely heavy taxes on the wealthy. He wants to use tariffs to make America totally economically self-sufficient, regardless of the cost that would impose on American consumers. It is the kind of import substitution scheme that one commonly finds in countries that are run either by populists or dictators. Or both.

From an economic perspective, the British government ran the American colonies as, wouldn’t you know it, colonies, the most obvious example being the Navigation Acts. The second-rate status of the colonists was, in the end, the principal cause of the American Revolution. After the new nation had been established, it made sense to protect industry for two reasons: first, to provide a viable source of revenue for the government; and second, to shield infant businesses from competition that had historically been unfair. The latter is the classic case in which even economists who prize efficiency above all can support some measure of protection.

But once established, the tariff long outstayed its welcome. By the 1830s, it was the source of great sectional friction, and the nation’s first secession crisis, although everyone knew that it was largely a proxy for the greater issue of slavery. The tariff question revolved around money and numbers, so it could be compromised; slavery was a moral issue which could not. Still, protection continued to be a source of friction between agricultural and industrial interests.

By the 1880s and 1890s, the tariff was once again front and center in American politics. Northern manufacturers insisted that it permitted them to pay higher wages to their workers but did not behave that way in practice. The public noticed. The GOP largely lost the election of 1892 over the tariff, and only prevailed in 1896 because the 1893 depression and the currency issue took precedence in the minds of most of the voters.

Tariffs started to take on different meanings in the 20th and 21st centuries. For a discussion of that topic, see my next post.

Next to liberals and illegal immigrants, Trump thinks China is Public Enemy #1. In order to keep Chinese ambitions in check, he will need allies. The basis for his “America First” foreign policy, however, is that our allies are just grifters. As a result, he plans to take steps–abandoning Ukraine and possibly NATO, leaving the Paris Agreement, and imposing universal tariffs–that are designed to alienate our friends, both in Asia and Europe.

I have to assume that Trump believes that American military might and markets are so important to our friends, we can order them about as we see fit. If we make the mistake of electing him, it won’t take long before he is disabused of that notion. “America First,” in practice, means America alone.

Rising auto and property insurance rates are one of the biggest components of today’s inflation rate. Regardless of how you may feel about the insurance companies, this is not greedflation; it is based on objective factors, including the increasing complexity of cars and the effects of climate change. What conclusions should we draw from this?

Higher insurance costs are more akin to a tax increase than a driver of next-level inflation, because they reduce demand for other goods and services. In addition, they have no logical relationship with interest rates. As with, say, food price increases caused by bad weather, there is no reason for the Fed to base any portion of its decisions on interest rates on them.

When will you know if Trump plans to operate as a dictator or not? Most likely, when he is confronted with federal court orders enjoining various of his new, radical immigration policies. If he obeys them, you can probably breathe a sigh of relief; if he doesn’t, on the basis that the president can do no wrong (particularly when he is carrying out a perceived mandate from the American people), you can expect the worst.

As for me, I have very little faith that Trump 2.0, after his most recent experiences with the law, will pay any attention to court orders that he dislikes. And don’t expect his Republican buddies to do anything about it. Some of them will be cheering him on, while the rest will grumble a bit in private, but keep quiet in public for fear of offending the base.

If you accept Marx’ statement about history repeating itself twice, you have to be a bit worried, because January 6 bears a significant resemblance to the Beer Hall Putsch. What would be the 21st century equivalent of the Reichstag fire?

It would almost certainly be either the “invasion” at the border or a violent demonstration in a city in a blue state. Either could provide the pretext for Trump to use emergency powers to stifle dissent and destroy American liberal democracy.