John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY LARRY ELLIOTT IN THE GUARDIAN
“The rust belt is being sold a lie – China has funded US spending
“The president’s bizarre solutions to the US trade deficit threaten to send his country into recession”
"Make no mistake: Trump’s strategy is a sign of weakness not strength.’
That is correct.
However, this can be looked at from various perspectives. Besides, it is not at all certain that Trump even understands these economic matters.
If you look at it from Trump’s political perspective, he is showily, noisily serving the interests of his political base, which consists of folks who go to gun meets, get angry about football games marred by protest, dislike the very idea of migration, love Walmart, are fans of NASCAR, treat the American Flag as a holy relic, and not infrequently live in trailer parks.
They hate the UN and all international organizations. They regard any kind of talk about global relations as stupid or treacherous, and they believe America is involved with any of these only because of the treachery of "liberals," never for a moment realizing there are almost no such critters resident in America.
NAFTA and other trade agreements plus international affairs generally have long been angrily bellowed about by this crowd. The only acceptable exception in international affairs is bombing people, and that's always welcome.
In a sense, too, Trump is serving the American power establishment. They were doubtful about him at first, but I think he has won them over with his immediate capitulation as any kind of maverick or independent thinker, his enthusiastic embrace of the Bush-Obama imperial wars, his support for extrajudicial killing on an industrial scale, and his readiness to spend the United States into the poorhouse on the military, which by the way, if you count all the true costs, such as veterans’ affairs, is running at about a trillion dollars a year.
The power establishment couldn’t care in the least for Trump’s belly-over-belt crowd. They indeed care little for most Americans, only caring for their own privileged crowd. But it appears that Trump’s efforts for his political base also happens to serve some of their interests, the major one of which is an aggressive reassertion of American dominance everywhere in hope of being able to shape future events in a changing world.
They have adopted this goal because they recognize America’s relative decline since the lucky glory days post-WWII when America didn’t have a competitor standing. Today, it has many, and more emerge regularly. That is a reality which will not change. So, the idea is to dominate and push them all around, shaping future events by might and not right or fair hard work, and Trump has proven he is pretty good at pushing people around.
It all makes a highly dangerous situation, but it could have the positive side effect of realigning thinking and friendships and trade relations among many countries, perhaps marking an historical watershed. I am hopeful for this, as something immensely more positive and economically creative than everyone’s saluting the American flag daily and awaiting new orders for sanctions or bombing somewhere.
