10/1/2024 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2024/10/18/18870079.php

Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election was based on his successful staging as an anti-establishment candidate. His predecessor, Barack Obama, had pursued a course of “internal devaluation” of costs and wages as a way out of the global financial crisis. Since then, income and wealth inequality, precariousness in the labor market have increased dramatically:

Make America Supermacht again?

Trump 2.0: The idea of a paradise with high walls and no unions

by Ingar Solty

[This article posted on 10/1/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.sozonline.de/2024/10/make-america-supermacht-again/.]

A second term in office for Trump is likely to be even more extreme than the first. Trump is planning mass deportations of “undocumented” immigrants. Basically, he wants to implement what the AfD dreamed of at its “Wannsee Conference 2.0”: a “remigration”. More than ten million undocumented immigrants live in the United States, some of them for decades. Since, unlike in Germany, there is no obligation to carry identification, such a project would only be conceivable through raids in residential neighborhoods and at workplaces. Such a deportation offensive is inconceivable without a civil war.

When Trump pursued similar plans during his first presidency, many cities declared themselves to be so-called Sanctuary Cities (“asylum cities”). Some authorities refused to carry out the federal government’s orders. Trump therefore wants to centralize the state’s monopoly on the use of force and expand the powers of the National Guard. The reach of the central repressive apparatus should also extend to the politically liberal states of the east and west coasts, which are hostile to him.

Where state legislators and their police chiefs do not comply with national directives, Trump wants to be able to govern from above. His plans to strengthen executive power, his announcement that he wants to govern by executive order, and his announcement of purges of the permanent bureaucracy mark a significant escalation.

Trump’s tax gifts

Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election was based on his successful staging as an anti-establishment candidate. His predecessor, Barack Obama, had pursued a course of “internal devaluation” of costs and wages as a way out of the global financial crisis. Since then, income and wealth inequality, precariousness in the labor market, and the number of bullshit jobs have increased dramatically: according to a study by the US Federal Reserve, one in five lost jobs was in the low-wage sector, but one in three new jobs was.

As a result, the number of people living from “paycheck to paycheck” grew to over 40 percent. They have no savings to fall back on in the event of a stroke of fate such as unemployment, illness, incapacity to work, interest rate hikes (e.g. for a property and student debt), inflation or the birth of a child. Unaffordable medical costs are the most common cause of personal bankruptcy.

Donald Trump’s term in office between January 2017 and 2021, however, was characterized by an extremely liberal economic policy. The government cut corporate taxes from 35 to 21 percent, and the top tax rate on annual income of over $518,400 for single-person households and over $622,050 for married couples from 39.6 to 37 percent. Environmental regulations for companies were radically deregulated.

The tax cuts in favor of the super-rich and corporations were supposed to boost the economy, thereby financing themselves and raising wages, all without the unions and class struggle.

The result was predictable. While real wages stagnated, the budget deficit almost doubled from $585 billion to $1.1 trillion. The national debt rose from 20 trillion to 28 trillion.

Trump’s foreign economic policy

Trump’s foreign trade policy attempts to square the circle. The total war and victory of US capital over the labor movement has made globalization and household debt the means by which the living standards of the working class have been reasonably maintained. Trump’s planned protectionism with regard to everyday goods imported from abroad will therefore significantly worsen the situation of the working class, because it will make all imported goods more expensive. The notion that the textile industry could be brought back from Southeast Asia, or microtechnology from the Far East, is a dangerous illusion.

Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is right when she says that Trump’s “tariffs on Chinese goods have harmed U.S. consumers and businesses.” At the same time, the Biden administration has taken this form of impoverishment policy even further. It has escalated the economic war against China. Protective tariffs on Chinese e-cars and solar panels rose from 25 to 100 percent; in this way, it also brought climate policy and social justice into opposition.

Trump’s fiscal policy again relies on massive tax cuts for capital and the super-rich, as well as renewed deregulation for fossil capital. He also plans so-called “freedom cities” on federally owned properties. In doing so, he is tapping into the wet dreams of the writer Ayn Rand. In her novel Atlas Shrugged (1957), she described the withdrawal of capital owners (“service providers”) from society.

Accordingly, in a truly radical market paradise, as in the 19th century, with no trade unions, no labor protection measures, no standard working day, etc., the market is now supposed to unfold its wondrous power and conjure up flying cars.

The left is weakened

Regardless of whether Trump or Harris wins, the US left is considerably weakened. It will hardly be able to exert pressure on Harris from the left if she wins, unlike at the height of her influence in 2020. This could in turn reduce Harris’s chances of election if she pursues a centrist course. The Black Lives Matter movement was virtually absorbed by the party apparatus. Bernie Sanders and the left wing (“The Squad”) have supported Biden on the Ukraine war and largely also on the Gaza war in order to push through their domestic social agenda. However, this has alienated them from the left-wing base, especially from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

There was a dispute within the DSA about direction, the positions of which were summed up by member Eric Blanc in the following formula: “Alignment” (socialist organization in the Democratic Party), “Clean Break” (creating a class-based party outside of it) or “Dirty Break” (using the party as a platform to build a strong class-based wing that then splits off at the right moment). Today, there is hardly anything left of the “dirty break”. “Alignment” is a fact, the disappointment is great.

Confrontation with China

The confrontation with China was already begun by the Bush administration (2001–2009) and systematized by the Obama administration (2009–2017). The Biden administration has further escalated Trump’s economic war and linked it to the policy of military encirclement developed by Obama. This includes the planned establishment of U.S. military headquarters in Japan and, more generally, a significant military build-up in the region. The US is increasingly breaking with its traditional one-China policy, which consists of not taking a position on the Taiwan issue.

Will the left in the US be able to develop an independent position on foreign policy? To do so, it would have to recognize its economic and social policy goals on the one hand and the prevention of a possible war against China on the other and bring them into line. It is questionable whether it will succeed in doing so.