By S. I. Wells
Senior Columnist
USA
From pulling out of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to ending the United States participation
in the Iran Nuclear Deal
(JCPOA) to threatening to pull out of the nuclear INF,
Donald Trump has begun a process of terminating the United States hegemony in
the post- World War II era. By withdrawing from multi-state, arms-length,
negotiated agreements and partnerships, Trump’s “America First” policy is
reshaping the global diplomatic landscape by ceding the playing field to the
Europeans, Russians and Chinese.
Trump would have everyone believe that the United States previously
entered into deals that are fundamentally unfair to America and that allowed
other countries to take advantage of Americans. His worldview is simply that
the United States has become weak and that it is time to flex America’s
military and economic muscles in order to bully everyone else into submission.
Or, if no one wants to play ball Trump’s way, he will just walk off the field
and take the bat and ball with him.
If you give Trump the benefit of the doubt, maybe his
aggressive, “do it my way or I’ll walk” approach could restore America to
Trump’s alpha dog image. Continuing the seven-decade long, post-war global
peace is clearly not a status quo that Trump thinks benefits the US and,
actually, provides few opportunities for him to benefit. Reshuffling the deck,
the players and the relationships, economically and militarily, and creating
chaos and instability are circumstances that Trump relishes; a global drama
where he can play the role of master manipulator.
All of these changes are being done in the name of furthering
Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again). After all, he gave Americans a big tax
cut, ordered the abolition of untold Federal administrative rules and
regulations, appointed two conservative Supreme Court justices, plus tons of
lower court judges with conservative ideologies. Of course, abolition of Obamacare
has not been successful (yet) nor has the implementation of rebuilding
America’s aging infrastructure. Adding import tariffs, however, gave Trump extraordinary
leverage and power to help industries he favors vs. those he doesn’t
particularly like.
However, what if none of the foregoing motives is true? What
if the real, sub-rosa motivations for Trump had nothing to do with MAGA at all?
What if everything that Trump did was in the nature of a con artist distracting
the public with “shiny objects” to keep attention away from his real goals?
And that’s what I think is going on. If you change your
perspective and don’t look through the lens of evaluating the impact of each
thing Trump is doing as he rips apart the foreign policy of the United States,
hollows out the State Department, runs the White House more like a one-man dictatorship
based on whim, bile and greed, and instead look at Trump as just a bullying,
unscrupulous, ruthless robber baron, the world suddenly becomes crystal clear.
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| S.I. Wells |
Let’s go through just a few of Trump’s actions and analyze
them according to the robber baron theory:
1.
The
Paris Agreement – leaving it helps US corporations save money because they
won’t have to spend untold sums on pollution controls – think about the auto
and fossil fuel-related industries, like coal for example;
2.
The
Trans-Pacific Partnership – leaving it frees US corporations from international
agreed-upon pollution constraints and leaves Trump in charge of reshaping
corporate America and the global economies via import duties as he sees fit;
3.
The
Iran Nuclear Deal – leaving it allows Trump to impose sanctions on Iranian oil,
thereby cause the price of oil to rise, which will help the profitability of
the US oil industry, and will also help the economy of Russia (often referred
to as a gas station masquerading as a country);
4.
The
tax reform bill makes massive tax cuts for corporations permanent (Trump’s
buddies), but sunsets individual tax cuts by 2027 that will eventually hit
ordinary Americans with an involuntary tax increase at the same time the
estates of the ultra-wealthy go basically untaxed;
5.
Cutting
administrative rules and regulations – helps companies to trim their expenses of
complying with regulations in areas energy, food and drug, environmental
protection, FCC, and many more;
6.
Spending
more to “rebuild” the US military – helps the bottom line of the defense
contractors and makes America more warlike, but does not make America any safer…just
poorer;
7.
Changing
the laws that protect endangered species in favor of economic gains for oil and
lumber companies;
8.
Increasing
the deficit and the national debt to near crisis levels – helps those with the
resources prepare to “steal” assets from Mr. and Mrs. America who get into
trouble from higher interest rates as the economy suddenly reverses.
So if we look at Trump’s policies through the lens of a
robber baron, you can see that everything he is doing with the United State is
clearly aimed at enriching the few at the expense of the many. By blowing up
the national debt by over $2 trillion from the tax cuts, by permanently
shifting the cash flow to the big corporations through those tax breaks, by
permanently cutting corporate expenses through the elimination of regulations
that have brought America cleaner air and water, by riding roughshod over the
poor and the disadvantaged in reducing their health care and food stamps, Trump
is working to displace robber barons of old, like Morgan, Carnegie, Mellon and
Rockefeller, and to become the most successful robber baron in US history.
The power of the Presidency is extraordinary and can be used
for good or for evil. What America has not witnessed in modern times is someone
using it for his own personal gain (much like a banana republic dictator or
Vladimir Putin) and that of his cronies, allies and supplicants. And, let us
not forget his family. What good fortune Ivanka Trump must have to obtain sixteen
key trademarks in China. And, one has to wonder if the Trump Organization will
somehow secure the exclusive hotel and golf club rights to prime locations in
North Korea.
The fact that Republican members of the House and Senate are
standing by with their hands in their pockets while this charlatan’s con goes
on means they are complicit in all that is happening and will ultimate bear the
burden for the damage Trump is doing to America both at home and across the
world.
Trump knows how to appeal to people who are looking for a way
to improve their lives and knows that they are vulnerable to believe his
razzle-dazzle. The truth, however, is that Trump ran for President as a populist,
governs as an elitist/robber baron and is on the way to doing to the American
economy exactly what he did to Atlantic City. The post-Trump era to follow will shatter dreams and lives and leave America so much in debt that it will take a generation to dig its way out.
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