"When voters in a democratic society yearn for a CEO as president, they are responding to their own fascist impulses… If democracy looks like a successful business, if the CEO is tough-talking and cares little for democratic institutions, even denigrates them, so much the better." - Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works
Bill Clinton sealed his 1992 upstart election campaign with the slogan: "It's the economy, stupid." The meaning was simple: if the economy is tanking, it doesn't really matter what big ideas the president is floating. Clinton made the comment when both Republicans and Democrats still believed it was their responsibility to oversee a strong economy.
With MAGA, such views seem so antiquated.
Donald Trump is delivering an economy by the stupid and for the stupid.
In less than three months, he has tanked the American economy. There is no one else to blame. His decision to pick a trade war with every United States trading partner has caused chaos. This week, the chaos spread to global markets as investors scrambled to get as far away as they could from Trump's latest tariff threat.
He has threatened a massive new wave of tariffs to drop on April 2nd, the so-called “Liberation Day” for the American people. Liberation Day is an outlandish misnomer for a plan threatening to drive the country into a serious recession.
Economists have grown increasingly concerned that Trump's monkeywrenching of the economy risks dragging the nation into the vortex of chronic stagflation - high inflation, low economic growth, and increased unemployment.
It is a total car wreck. And a deliberate one.
Remember last August when Trump boasted that his priority was lower grocery prices?
"When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One."
Then, on January 6th, he told the nation:
"I will direct all members of my cabinet to marshal the vast powers at their disposal to defeat what was record inflation and rapidly bring down costs and prices."
Instead, he threw 25% tariffs on many of the major food items Americans rely on at the grocery stores - essentially a tax on the already overstretched family budget. Targeting products from Canada, Europe, and China threatens to create grocery scarcity as a wide array of products cease to be marketable.
And then there's auto.
Those studying the extremely integrated automobile sector predict "Carmageddon" as tariffs and counter-tariffs hammer the assembly line production.
Recently, Trump stated that he initially held off his threat of car tariffs for two months to give US automakers the chance to move Canadian and Mexican production to the United States.
There is no way that any automaker is able or willing to tear down a multi-billion-dollar production facility based on the whim of the president. The investments in these plants are factored over years of careful planning.
Auto is the key economic driver of Central North America. The just-in-time delivery model is dependent on parts that travel back and forth across the border. The tariffs threaten to shut down assembly lines in record time.
It also means a massive increase in domestic prices from $6,700 to $16,000 US per vehicle. This will cost jobs and drive inflation even higher.
Yet, when asked about the inevitable price hikes, Trump shrugged and told the media he "couldn't care less.”
The Strongman Grift
Trump's disinterest in the chaos he is causing is something to behold. It's like watching the malevolent antics of a supervillain in a Batman comic.
But comic book villain is not how Trump sold himself. He told voters they could trust him as the CEO dealmaker who would be a strong and decisive ruler of the economy.
The myth of a strongman leading a strong economy has been one of the abiding myths of the fascist playbook.
This, of course, is a total con.
Benito Mussolini did not make the trains run on time, he just boasted that he did.
Adolf Hitler's "miracle" of putting Germany back to work was another myth. The massive pre-war building projects depended on forced labour, and his economy was overheated and unsustainable. He had to rely on smash-and-grab plunder to keep the con going.
And then there was Chile.
The Myth of the Chilean “Miracle”
The 1973 fascist coup by Augusto Pinochet led to a massive right-wing economic experiment led by University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman. The experiment in economic freedom was delivered through torture, military oppression and throwing university students out of helicopters.
Under Friedman's watch, Chile's economy went into free fall. Inflation spiralled to 375%, and more than 177,000 jobs were lost in the manufacturing sector between 1974 and 1983.
It was catastrophic for the Chilean middle and working class. The Chilean upper class, however, viewed Friedman as a miracle worker because his economic policies resulted in a massive transfer of public assets into the hands of the super-wealthy.
Friedman was the original king of Oligarchy economics.
In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein writes:
"Chile never was the laboratory of 'pure' free markets that its cheerleaders claimed. Instead, it was a country where a small elite leapt from wealthy to super-rich in extremely short order—a highly profitable formula bankrolled by debt and heavily subsidized (then bailed out) by public funds … Chile under Chicago School rule was offering a glimpse of the future of the global economy … a huge transfer of wealth from public to private hands, followed by a huge transfer of private debts into public hands."
For the last half-century, right-wing politicians have imitated the Friedman model and praised the so-called "miracle" that was inflicted on the people of Chile.
One thing about Trump is that no one will ever accuse him of being a miracle worker or getting the trains to run on time.
But maybe that's not what he has in mind.
Trump’s intellectual guru, Steve Bannon, boasted that the Trump era would be "as exciting as the 1930s."
And Trump seems determined to deliver.
Consider this: when the American economy tanked in 1929, right-wing politicians jumped on the idea of imposing a high tariff wall to protect jobs. The result was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which threw high tariffs on a wide array of products.
Other countries retaliated with their own punishing counter-tariffs. The economy went from recession into deep depression as American production and exports fell by 67%. Millions were thrown out of work.
The tariff war of 1930 turned the Wall Street crisis into a lost decade of heartache and economic loss. The tariff disaster has long been an economic cautionary tale about how not to handle a recession.
Trump is causing the recession, and “Liberation Day” offers a disastrous solution to the trouble he has created.
Will Trump push the button on economic chaos on April 2nd, or will it just be another day of bluster, threat and backing down?
Who knows?
Regardless, the economic uncertainty will continue to drag the American and global economies into the undertow of stupid and vindictive leadership.
Good morning. I read your daily articles with a mixture of anticipation and dread. In fact, that's pretty much how I face each day, getting out of bed. I appreciate your perspective, and the perspective of others; it helps me form my own.
What I can't handle, though, and it's effecting me harder than I realized it would, is having my reputation, reliability, compassion, willingness to serve, and work ethic tied up in American "maga". To the question of "when are you going to do something about it?" - that rests with Congress, and in extreme cases, I guess, the military? Are we going to need a military coup? I've written, cajoled, shouted at and demanded answers from my elected officials. I've attended rallies. Will be going to the "big one" on April 5.
The Republican party in this country has obviously gone off the rails, and it is completely irredeemable. We will find out, and slowly are (note the anti-gay Republican who was just outed as gay), that everyone in that party has a secret, and they are willing to sell out their country to keep it, to hold onto their "power", to get all the perks of being in Congress without doing any of the work.
When are we going to do something about it? We are trying. We're writing, phoning, we're out in the streets, but you don't see much of it on mainstream media. We are doing what we can within the confines of the law. The problem is, we're the only ones obeying them.
I guess I just wanted to ask that our neighbors and friends remember that a great, great many of us hate what's going on, and we are doing what is available to us to do. We wake up and start our days heartbroken. We feel shame that we don't even own. We sometimes cry ourselves to sleep at night. And in between, we do what we possibly can.
If only this was an April Fools joke.