Survival Or Looting? What Trump’s Revolution Is Really About
Many people, including me, are still not sure what Trump’s revolution – in trade, international relations and in his fight against the U.S government at large – is all about.
Trump, it seems, sees that the current path the U.S. is on, with ever increasing deficits and debt, is unsustainable. He and his people argue that the dollar as a reserve currency is doing more harm than good for the country. They point to the decrease in manufacturing as the main symptom of a larger disease.
They believe it is necessary to destroy the old system before a new, more glorious one, can arrive. They know that the process will be painful for many but hope for a better outcome on a new trajectory. (There is also a motive of personal profit.)
Alastair Crooke is alluding to all that when he writes (also here):
The Trump ‘shock’ – his ‘de-centring’ of America from serving as pivot to the post-war ‘order’ via the dollar – has triggered a deep cleavage between those who gained huge benefit from the status quo, on the one hand; and on the other, the MAGA faction who have come to regard the status quo as inimical – even an existential threat – to U.S. interests.
…
Vice-President Vance now likens the Reserve Currency to a “parasite” that has eaten away the substance of its ‘host’ – the U.S. economy – by forcing an overvalued dollar.
Just to be clear, President Trump believed there was no choice: Either he could upend the existing paradigm, at the cost of considerable pain for many of those dependent on the financialised system, or he could allow events to wend their way towards an inevitable U.S. economic collapse. Even those who understood the dilemma the U.S. faces, nonetheless have been somewhat shocked by the self-serving brazenness of him simply ‘tariffing the world’.
Trump’s actions, (as many claim), were neither ‘spur of the moment’, nor whimsical. The ‘tariff solution’ had been pre-prepared by his team over recent years, and formed an integral part to a more complex framework – one that complemented the debt-reduction and revenue effects of tariffs, by a programme to coerce the repatriation of vanished manufacturing industry back to America.
Trump’s is a gamble that may, or may not, succeed: …
A similar argument can be found
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
