Trump for Dummies

The US spends more on health per capita than any other country but is ranked 33 out of 50 OECD countries for life expectancy.

Crime was out of control in certain cities, with judges and prosecutors refusing to enforce the law. International borders were porous to a flood of illegal immigrants who were almost waved over the border by the authorities.

There was political violence, and suppression of free speech, and the country is still traumatized from COVID lockdowns and vaccine mandates. The security agencies had also been weaponized against opponents of the Democratic administration, as well as some of the law courts. Business was being slowly strangled by regulation, particularly environmental legislation, and the country was deindustrializing leaving pockets of hopelessness throughout the country.

Added to that internal environment, in the external one the US was in a “hot cold war” with China, as well as a hot war with Russia in Ukraine, and Iranian proxies in the Middle East.

Mercantilist China, which has abused the rules of the free trade world to strip the West of manufacturing power, is its greatest threat and has been waging a grey war against the rest of the world for at least a decade.

It has cornered the market in high tech materials, like rare earths, which it wields as a weapon of coercion. It supplies the pharmaceutical precursors that allow the drug cartels to eat the heart out of the generation that would have to fight a hot war. Cyber war is unceasing, and technicians find imports of Chinese products like solar panels equipped with trojans capable of overriding controls.

Theft of intellectual property is endemic, and influence is exerted over universities via funding, and diasporas via agents of influence.

What does the recovery specialist do in this situation?

He needs to either rein in spending or increase income, or both. Company morale and culture has to be recovered. The armed forces need to be made fit for purpose again. The drug-addicted generation resisted, and the casual invaders repelled and repatriated. And the country has to start making the products its competitors won’t sell it.

The promoter would call this “Make America Great Again” and his corporate enemies would call it isolationism. But the word “great” signals it’s not isolationism, just a recognition that if the US wants to be great again, it has to recalibrate.

Trump is also a game show host, and there is a game show element to this. In the peculiar ways that US politics works, Trump has at most 24 months to get all this done before he loses control of the Congress, piling urgency upon urgency. The clock is running down.

Do Trump’s policies make sense to you now?