COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY YANIS VAROUFAKIS IN THE
GUARDIAN AND REMOVED BY AN EDITOR
“Trump and trade
tariffs: big lies founded on small truths”
In all things, Trump's thinking works at a gut level.
It's "my side wins,” always, as his dominating theme.
All the words about workers or about anyone else are just
that, words, some of them thrown out there like crumbs flung to pigeons for his
trailer park-gun meet base of political followers. He is cunning.
And they very much believe him. He does have a faction that
sees him as a heroic general on a white horse, rattling his sabre for them.
The image is especially gripping when it comes to matters
like his wall or migrants or Muslims or gun control, but his blubbering about
American workers gets some of the same reception.
Those are the core matters sustaining his support, which
tells you a very great deal about him.
Ideas and principles of almost any kind are simply
irrelevant.
That is why he is so dangerous. He does seem quite capable
of starting a catastrophic international trade war with his “boyz” rooting for
him every step of the way.
In the case of NAFTA, I don’t think Canada’s Trudeau knows
completely what he is up against. Factual arguments mean nothing. Trump has
told his people in effect that great piles of value were left on the negotiating
table originally, and he’s here to reclaim them.
His position as head of the immensely more powerful partner
plus his personality type really does mean he will push things that hurt Canada
and Mexico. It’s that simple, and I don’t see how it can be avoided.
It provides a model for all his coming acts, and that model
extends beyond just trade and economic issues. The same set of attitudes may
well give us real war, as with Iran when he abrogates a treaty every expert
worth listening to says is working perfectly.
And then there’s China, that immense rising power. He has
ignored them over agreements with Taiwan. He has ignored them over their
historically supported claims to the South Chins Sea. He has pressured them
over North Korea. All that and more on top of the first shots over the bow in
international trade with tariffs.
This is a very dangerous man, but then he does not function
alone. The American Deep State is getting much of what it wants – whether globs
of money and new authorities for the Pentagon and CIA or more ratcheting up of
the threats against Russia - and it seems ready to back him now.
