Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

[kidoftheblackhole]

The left is coalescing (on the internet, yes, but not confined to it) in many different places from the KKE to MLToday to BAR and Donbass.

The contribution we can provide is not advice per se, but a bit of guidance in a few vital areas where history, tradition, and scholarship already exist to lean on, build out of, and expand from. More than anything it is CLEAR THINKING.

Its the clarion bell rather than the tocsin that we're ringing here.

[blindpig]

'Trade wars are good,' Trump says, defying global concern over tariffs
Susan Heavey, Philip Blenkinsop

WASHINGTON/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump struck a defiant tone on Friday, saying trade wars were good and easy to win, after his plan to put tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum triggered global criticism and a slide in stock markets.

The European Union raised the possibility of taking countermeasures, France said the duties would be unacceptable and China urged Trump to show restraint. Canada, the biggest supplier of steel and aluminum to the United States, said it would retaliate if hit by U.S. tariffs.

U.S. stocks opened sharply lower on Friday, fueled by fears of a global trade war. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 1 percent and the broader S&P 500 index was down 0.5 percent as investors dumped shares of U.S. manufacturing companies that would have higher production costs if imported steel became more expensive.

The U.S. dollar fell against most currencies, dropping to its lowest level in more than two years against the yen.

Trump said on Thursday that a plan for tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum products were designed to safeguard American jobs in the face of cheaper foreign products and would be formally announced next week.

“When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win,” Trump tweeted on Friday.

In a later Facebook post, Trump said his aim was to protect U.S. jobs.

“We must protect our country and our workers. Our steel industry is in bad shape. IF YOU DON’T HAVE STEEL, YOU DON’T HAVE A COUNTRY!” he wrote.

Many economists say that instead of increasing employment, price increases for consumers of steel and aluminum such as the auto and oil industries will destroy more U.S. jobs than they create.

RETALIATION LIKELY
The prospect of retaliation from Canada, China and Europe sent world stocks tumbling toward a 2.5 percent weekly loss.[MKTS/GLOB]

ArcelorMittal SA, the world’s biggest steelmaker, slumped nearly 5 percent and shares in automakers such as Fiat Chrysler suffered on concerns U.S. tariffs could increase the cost of key materials used in cars. [.EU]

“It is a real worry because Europe is an open global economy so it isn’t just about U.S. versus China,” said Ian Ormiston, European equity fund manager at Old Mutual Global Investors.“And we will see retaliation, there are no two ways about it.”

Home appliance maker Electrolux said it was delaying a $250 million expansion of its plant in Tennessee as it was worried U.S. steel prices would rise and make manufacturing there less competitive.

Peter Navarro, a White House adviser with largely protectionist views on trade, brushed off the drop in U.S. stock prices and the negative effects of tariffs on U.S. industry.

“I think the smart money right now is buying this market,” he told Fox News.

He said a 10 percent tariff on aluminum would add one cent to the cost of a can of beer, $45 to a car and $20,000 to a Boeing 727 Dreamliner.“Big price effects? Negligible price effects,” he said.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive, called the U.S. tariffs a blatant intervention that amounted to protectionism and promised to act“firmly” in response.

The EU, which sees itself as a global counterweight to a protectionist-leaning Trump, made no mention of retaliation but spoke of countermeasures that conform with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules.

“We don’t see this as a situation where, like in a zero-sum game, one party loses because another party wins. Trade is beneficial for everyone. It needs to take place on the basis of rules and these rules are in place,” a European Commission spokesman said.

Safeguard measures, last deployed by Europe in 2002 after then-U.S. President George W. Bush imposed steel import duties, would be designed to guard against steel and aluminum being diverted to Europe from elsewhere if U.S. tariffs come in.

But to conform with WTO rules such measures would have to apply to imports from all countries and could also hit producers including China, India, Russia, South Korea and Turkey.

Officials have not said whether the tariffs would include imports from Canada and Mexico, Washington’s partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which is being reworked.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Friday that Trump’s tariffs announcement“seemed” to apply to all countries.

“That’s what the president seemed to announce yesterday,” Ross told CNBC.

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland called any trade restrictions“absolutely unacceptable” and said Canada would“take responsive measures to defend its trade interests and workers” if needed.

Mining company Rio Tinto, the largest producer of aluminum in Canada, Alcoa Corp and the United Steelworkers union, which represents workers in the United States and Canada, all said Canada should be spared tariffs.

PROTECTIONISM
Steel has become an important focus for Trump, who said he would restore the U.S. industry and punish what he sees as unfair trade practices, particularly by China.

Republican U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, who has been critical of Trump, said there were only losers in trade wars.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKCN1GE1PM

So now, tell me again that Trump was the secret choice of the ruling class...The Prez understands neither trade nor imperialism, an anal retentive rentier whose understanding of the world is entirely mediated by personal aggrandizement and TV. And seemingly such a titanic egoists that his minders can only exert sporadic influence upon him. This looks more like a distraction and base-shoring action than anything else. Interesting times.

[blindpig]

Trump Threatens Peace In Korea
The mainstream commentariat:

Then: Trump is a madman who wants to lead us into war against North Korea.
Now: Trump is a madman who wants to lead us towards peace with North Korea.

Rory Yeomans

I welcome the announced meeting of Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump.

The imperial military-industrial complex will do its best to sabotage it. Billions of dollars of planned revenue may soon evaporate.

Kim Jong Un has so far shown himself as an excellent strategist. He offered direct talks at the exactly right moment. Trump blindsided all the hawks, worrywards and bureaucrats in his staff by suddenly agreeing to them. If this brinkmanship succeeds the South Korean President Moon deserves a peace price for arranging it.

The best venue for the meeting is?

Posted by b on March 9, 2018 at 03:55 PM | Permalink

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/03/tr ... korea.html

'b' has got some kind of hard-on for Trump which makes me wonder...... Yeah, the 'hawks', or whatever you want to call the imperialist consensus, were caught by surprise again, not hard to do when you make random thoughts and petty politics your program. And while potential great results are there I doubt their fruition because 1)Trump will surely expect a dramatic 'win' which he ain't gonna get and I kinda doubt that something can be concocted that could fool him into thinking he's getting a win.2) The imperialists simply ain't gonna let it happen, there will be sabotage of some nature if it looks like it might work. I would disagree with Phil Greaves on this, he's speculated that it's all a set up with the goal being to drive reunification off the table and make nuclear surrender the only game in town. It may well end up that way but I think they are often playing catch-up with this guy. The idea that this fella was the choice of the ruling class consensus weakens by the day, the surprise tariff announcement, universally reviled and decried, is case in point. Trump was a crash of the normal operation of bourgeois democracy which happened cause the contradictions are growing out of control.

[kidoftheblackhole]

An underrated consideration is that bourgeoisie democracy is fairly easily gamed to defend the "minority' -- only the minority in question is the minority bourgeoisie viewpoint rather than any popular conception. There is certainly a faction of the ruling class using Trump as their representative (Trump himself being irrevelent).

It might simply be a side effect of the fact that if the sky really is falling, running around in a blind panic is a perfectly reasonable action.

[blindpig]

An underrated consideration is that bourgeoisie democracy is fairly easily gamed to defend the "minority' -- only the minority in question is the minority bourgeoisie viewpoint rather than any popular conception. There is certainly a faction of the ruling class using Trump as their representative (Trump himself being irrevelent).

It might simply be a side effect of the fact that if the sky really is falling, running around in a blind panic is a perfectly reasonable action.

To be sure, Trump has his fans among his peers , the 'extractive' industries initially and 'national' manufacturers, then the masters of war as his careless isolationism melted before his generals and deep-seated jingoism. We'll see how he tries to finesse his was out of this tariff debacle, which was definitely not in anyone's playbook but his. They can certainly 'game the system' for a little while anyway, and having the military on your side is no small thing either. But the deeper pockets will out, sooner rather than later, they ain't gonna put up with losing money.

[kidoftheblackhole]

An underrated consideration is that bourgeoisie democracy is fairly easily gamed to defend the "minority' -- only the minority in question is the minority bourgeoisie viewpoint rather than any popular conception. There is certainly a faction of the ruling class using Trump as their representative (Trump himself being irrevelent).

It might simply be a side effect of the fact that if the sky really is falling, running around in a blind panic is a perfectly reasonable action.

To be sure, Trump has his fans among his peers , the 'extractive' industries initially and 'national' manufacturers, then the masters of war as his careless isolationism melted before his generals and deep-seated jingoism. We'll see how he tries to finesse his was out of this tariff debacle, which was definitely not in anyone's playbook but his. They can certainly 'game the system' for a little while anyway, and having the military on your side is no small thing either. But the deeper pockets will out, sooner rather than later, they ain't gonna put up with losing money.

I don't think the relevant split in the ruling class is along industry lines. The upkeep of empire is too expensive (especially the cost of maintaining "prosperity" on the home front). It obviously can't be dismantled (that would be suicide on their part). Therefore they are left choosing the least worst of the remaining options. And as Anax once said, all remaining options are "worst". That's a situation bound to produce a schism. Couple that with the fact that the vast social decay/crisis in America has finally infiltrated the halls of their bourgeoisie government and things get highly volatile.

[blindpig]

An underrated consideration is that bourgeoisie democracy is fairly easily gamed to defend the "minority' -- only the minority in question is the minority bourgeoisie viewpoint rather than any popular conception. There is certainly a faction of the ruling class using Trump as their representative (Trump himself being irrevelent).

It might simply be a side effect of the fact that if the sky really is falling, running around in a blind panic is a perfectly reasonable action.

To be sure, Trump has his fans among his peers , the 'extractive' industries initially and 'national' manufacturers, then the masters of war as his careless isolationism melted before his generals and deep-seated jingoism. We'll see how he tries to finesse his was out of this tariff debacle, which was definitely not in anyone's playbook but his. They can certainly 'game the system' for a little while anyway, and having the military on your side is no small thing either. But the deeper pockets will out, sooner rather than later, they ain't gonna put up with losing money.

I don't think the relevant split in the ruling class is along industry lines. The upkeep of empire is too expensive (especially the cost of maintaining "prosperity" on the home front). It obviously can't be dismantled (that would be suicide on their part). Therefore they are left choosing the least worst of the remaining options. And as Anax once said, all remaining options are "worst". That's a situation bound to produce a schism. Couple that with the fact that the vast social decay/crisis in America has finally infiltrated the halls of their bourgeoisie government and things get highly volatile.

Well, if there's a schism then along what lines, do ya think? If isolationist vs internationalist ain't that roughly the same? Ain't nobody that's anybody suggesting a jump into full-blown fascism though progress in that direction continues unabated.

Interesting times....but where are the communists?

[blindpig]

The CIA takeover of the Democratic Party
13 March 2018
In a three-part series published last week, the World Socialist Web Site documented an unprecedented influx of intelligence and military operatives into the Democratic Party. More than 50 such military-intelligence candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination in the 102 districts identified by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as its targets for 2018. These include both vacant seats and those with Republican incumbents considered vulnerable in the event of a significant swing to the Democrats.

If on November 6 the Democratic Party makes the net gain of 24 seats needed to win control of the House of Representatives, former CIA agents, military commanders, and State Department officials will provide the margin of victory and hold the balance of power in Congress. The presence of so many representatives of the military-intelligence apparatus in the legislature is a situation without precedent in the history of the United States.

Since its establishment in 1947—under the administration of Democratic President Harry Truman—the CIA has been legally barred from carrying out within the United States the activities which were its mission overseas: spying, infiltration, political provocation, assassination. These prohibitions were given official lip service but ignored in practice.

In the wake of the Watergate crisis and the forced resignation of President Richard Nixon, reporter Seymour Hersh published the first devastating exposure of the CIA domestic spying, in an investigative report for the New York Times on December 22, 1974. This report triggered the establishment of the Rockefeller Commission, a White House effort at damage control, and Senate and House select committees, named after their chairmen, Senator Frank Church and Representative Otis Pike, which conducted hearings and made serious attempts to investigate and expose the crimes of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.

The Church Committee in particular featured the exposure of CIA assassination plots against foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, General Rene Schneider in Chile, and many others. More horrors were uncovered: MK-Ultra, in which the CIA secretly subjected unwitting victims to experimentation with drugs like LSD; Operation Mockingbird, in which the CIA recruited journalists to plant stories and smear opponents; Operation Chaos, an effort to spy on the antiwar movement and sow disruption; Operation Shamrock, under which the telecommunications companies shared traffic with the NSA for more than a quarter century.

The Church and Pike committee exposures, despite their limitations, had a devastating political effect. The CIA and its allied intelligence organizations in the Pentagon and NSA became political lepers, reviled as the enemies of democratic rights. The CIA in particular was widely viewed as “Murder Incorporated.”

In that period, it would have been unthinkable either for dozens of “former” military-intelligence operatives to participate openly in electoral politics, or for them to be welcomed and even recruited by the two corporate-controlled parties. The Democrats and Republicans sought to distance themselves, at least for public relations purposes, from the spy apparatus, while the CIA publicly declared that it would no longer recruit or pay American journalists to publish material originating in Langley, Virginia. Even in the 1980s, the Iran-Contra scandal involved the exposure of the illegal operations of the Reagan administration’s CIA director, William Casey.

How times have changed. One of the main functions of the “war on terror,” launched in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, has been to rehabilitate the US spy apparatus and give it a public relations makeover as the supposed protector of the American people against terrorism.

This meant disregarding the well-known connections between Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders and the CIA, which recruited them for the anti-Soviet guerrilla war in Afghanistan, waged from 1979 to 1989, as well as the still unexplained role of the US intelligence agencies in facilitating the 9/11 attacks themselves.

The last 15 years have seen a massive expansion of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, backed by an avalanche of media propaganda, with endless television programs and movies glorifying American spies and assassins (24, Homeland, Zero Dark Thirty, etc.)

The American media has been directly recruited to this effort. Judith Miller of the New York Times, with her reports on “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, is only the most notorious of the stable of “plugged-in” intelligence-connected journalists at the Times, the Washington Post, and the major television networks. More recently, the Times has installed as its editorial page editor James Bennet, brother of a Democratic senator and son of the former administrator of the Agency for International Development, which has been accused of working as a front for the operations of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid “experts” and “analysts” for the television networks.

In centering its opposition to Trump on the bogus allegations of Russian interference, while essentially ignoring Trump’s attacks on immigrants and democratic rights, his alignment with ultra-right and white supremacist groups, his attacks on social programs like Medicaid and food stamps, and his militarism and threats of nuclear war, the Democratic Party has embraced the agenda of the military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political voice.

This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and expanded the various operations of the intelligence agencies abroad and within the United States. Obama’s endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen candidate of the Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate the confrontation with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine.

The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of resentment over the disruption of its operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that score. A chorus of media backers—Nicholas Kristof and Roger Cohen of the New York Times, the entire editorial board of the Washington Post, most of the television networks—are part of the campaign to pollute public opinion and whip up support on alleged “human rights” grounds for an expansion of the US war in Syria.

The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence operatives are moving in large numbers to take over a political party and seize a major role in Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic Party primaries are “former” agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This “retired” status is, however, purely nominal. Joining the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments.

The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence operatives running in the Democratic primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat experience invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on their websites. And they are welcomed and given preferred positions, with Democratic Party officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies.

The working class is confronted with an extraordinary political situation. On the one hand, the Republican Trump administration has more military generals in top posts than any other previous government. On the other hand, the Democratic Party has opened its doors to a "friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies.

The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an expression of the breakdown of American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose interests the state apparatus and its “bodies of armed” serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working class, the ruling class is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule.

Millions of working people want to fight the Trump administration and its ultra-right policies. But it is impossible to carry out this fight through the “axis of evil” that connects the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx of military-intelligence candidates puts paid to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, that the Democrats represent a “lesser evil.” On the contrary, working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the corporate-controlled two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils.

Patrick Martin

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/0 ... s-m13.html

Trots might do pretty good work when they forget they're Trots. (but then they fuck up and say "authoritarian".)

[blindpig]

Trump Votes For Rexit - Torture Girl To Become CIA Director
U.S. President Donald Trump just fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump - 12:44 PM - 13 Mar 2018
Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!
According to the anti Russian propagandists (vid) Tillerson got the job because Trump loves Russia and Tillerson was in good standing with Putin. The same people now claim that Tillerson was fired from his job because Trump loves Russia and Tillerson was not in good standing with Putin.

Neither is correct. The plan to oust Tillerson and elevate Pompeo to State has been rumored and written about for several month. The plan was "developed by John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff". It had nothing to do with Russia.

Tillerson never got traction as Secretary of State. Congress disliked him for cutting down some State Department programs. Trump overruled him publicly several times.


There is some contradiction in the statements coming from the White House and the State Department. According to the Washington Post:

Trump last Friday asked Tillerson to step aside, and the embattled top diplomat cut short his trip to Africa on Monday to return to Washington.
Last Friday Tillerson suddenly fell ill while traveling in Africa and canceled several scheduled events.

But a statement by Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein contradicts the Friday claim:

"The Secretary had every intention of staying, because of critical progress made in national security. [...] The Secretary did not speak to the president and is unaware of the reason.”
Tillerson knew he was fired but did not tell his staff?

[UPDATE:]
From the Associated Press White House correspondent:

Zeke Miller @ZekeJMiller - 3:49 PM - 13 Mar 2018
WH official says chief of staff John Kelly called Tillerson Friday and again on Saturday. Both calls to Tillerson, the official says, warned that Trump was about to take imminent action if he did not step aside. When Tillerson didn't act, Trump fired him.
[End-Update]

With Tillerson leaving Secretary of Defense Mattis is losing an ally in the cabinet:

t starts with me having breakfast every week with Secretary of State Tillerson. And we talk two, three times a day, sometimes. We settle all of our issues between he and I, and then we walk together into the White House meetings. That way, State and Defense are together.
Mattis sometimes calming influence over Trump on military issues will now become less effective.

CIA head Pompeo, the new Secretary of State, is a neoconservative with a racist anti-Muslim attitude and a special hate for Iran which he compared to ISIS. That he will now become Secretary of State is a bad sign for the nuclear agreement with Iran. The Europeans especially should take note of that and should stop to look for a compromise with Trump on the issue. The deal is now dead. There is no chance that a compromise will happen.

The new CIA director Gina Haspel is well known for actively directing and participating in the torture of prisoners at 'black sites':

Beyond all that, she played a vital role in the destruction of interrogation videotapes that showed the torture of detainees both at the black site she ran and other secret agency locations. The concealment of those interrogation tapes, which violated multiple court orders as well as the demands of the 9/11 commission and the advice of White House lawyers, was condemned as “obstruction” by commission chairs Lee Hamilton and Thomas Keane.
Haspel would be in jail if former president Barack Obama had not decided against prosecuting the CIA torture crimes.

Both, Pompeo and Haspel, will need to be confirmed by Congress. Both will receive a significant number of 'yes'-votes from the Democratic side of the aisle.

Posted by b on March 13, 2018 at 11:01 AM | Permalink

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/03/tr ... ector.html

Trump oughta go on tour with DEVO, can't ya see it?

[blindpig]

Capitalist flunky sez Trump is ruining capitalism.

********************

Why Trump’s Tariff Travesty Will Not Re-Industrialize the US
by SHARMINI PERIES - MICHAEL HUDSON FacebookTwitterGoogle+RedditEmail
SHARMINI PERIES: It’s The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or known as the OECD, predicted on Tuesday that Trump’s tariffs on aluminum and steel imports could initiate a wave of protectionism and slow global economic growth. The tariffs have already spurred various countries to announce retaliatory measures. For example, the European Union plans to impose tariffs on Harley Davidsons and blue jeans. China has also promised to retaliate. Meanwhile, US companies that use steel and aluminum as raw materials for their production processes already report significant cost increases by as much as 40%.

Joining me now to analyze Trump’s tariffs is Michael Hudson. Michael is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri Kansas City. He’s the author of several books, the most recent among them is J is for Junk Economics. Michael, welcome back.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Great to be here again, Sharmini.

SHARMINI PERIES: Michael, what do you think of Trump’s tariffs on aluminum and steel, will they protect US manufacturing industries?

MICHAEL HUDSON: On the one hand, it’s supposed to protect and rebuild US manufacturing. But to really rebuild manufacturing, you need much more than a tariff against foreign goods. You need public infrastructure, and that’s not going to happen. You also need a different tax system, and that’s not going to happen. You need a more competitive economy; that’s not going to happen. So I think there’s not really any attempt to repeat how America built up manufacturing by what Henry Clay called the American System in the 19th century: infrastructure, public investment, tariffs and an industrial banking system.

We’re still in a Thatcherite economic policy, so I think what Trump really wants to do is use diplomatic leverage and economic threats against Canada and Mexico. I think what is on his mind is “We’ll let Mexico’s steel in, but it’ll have to build the wall and pay for it. If it doesn’t do that, then we’re going to punish it. For Canada, you’re going to have to surrender to all of our renegotiated NAFTA demands. You have to buy more American cars. You have to do whatever we tell you to, otherwise we’re going to create unemployment in your steel industry.”

That’s called national security somehow. But how can it really be national security if he’s willing to let in most of the aluminum and most of the steel if Canada and Mexico do things that have nothing to do with national security at all?

His policy is what we call an internal contradiction that doesn’t make sense. Canada has already announced that it is not going to renegotiate NAFTA and let the tariff be used as a threat. The Canadians are getting fed up with American pushing special interest favoritism against it. The Mexican president refused to come up a few weeks ago when it was obvious that Trump was going to make demands on Mexico that were so much against its national interest that they just canceled.

SHARMINI PERIES: So then why is US manufacturing, steel manufacturing in particular, predicting a 40% increase in prices?

MICHAEL HUDSON: It’s not just a prediction, Sharmini. The Financial Times just had a chart, and steel prices have already gone up 40%. Aluminum prices have already gone up one-third. If you look at the forward market, the prices are already up. We don’t have to say this is a dire prediction, it’s already happening.

SHARMINI PERIES: Michael, historically tariffs and protectionist policies have been used by countries as a strategy to industrialize. Can this strategy work again in light of the fact that US has been de-industrializing for several decades now?

MICHAEL HUDSON: It can’t work again, for a number of reasons. For one thing, from the very beginning of the 19th century, ever since Henry Clay put forth the American System in the 1840s of internal improvements, protective tariffs, and a national bank and financial policy to fund an industry, those three had to go together. In order to make industry competitive, you need not only tariffs to block imports, you need to support manufacturing by infrastructure investment, roads, canals, an educational system.

By the end of the 19th century, you had the Conservative Party in Britain, Benjamin Disraeli, saying “Health is everything. We have to have a health policy to promote our workforce.” In Germany, Bismarck said “We need a pension system. We need an industrial banking system to fund Germany. We need government spending on infrastructure, on railroads.” You had European, French, German and English investment in public spending. But Trump is a Thatcherite. You cannot have a Thatcherite economy, which is basically an asset-stripping economy, you cannot have a tax policy like Trump has, which is basically a financialization policy, and at the same time, have an industrial policy.

In fact, what Trump is saying is that he wants this to be the first salvo in a trade war against the whole world that has a mixed economy. He’s announced pretty much that within the World Trade Organization he’s going to promote blockages against any country where the government plays a role. For instance, if they tax companies that pollute with a pollution tax, any government that regulates, any government that provides subsidized services like subsidized education, subsidized healthcare, subsidized roads and railroads, this is somehow not a free market economy.

A free market economy is an austere economy sort of like Thatcherism. This aim is to dismantle industry, and Trump is essentially saying “Any economy that has an industrial strategy, we’re going to exclude from the American-centered way of reorganizing society.” Basically, this means that either you’re going to join the neoliberal Thatcherite block, or the rest of the world is going to be a state socialist or other socialist, or just plain mixed economy block.

But no other country outside of the neoliberal countries is going to say “Okay. We’re going to privatize our education just like America’s doing. We’re not going to give free education or subsidized roads. We’re not going to regulate industrial monopolies.” No country is going to go along with this attempt to essentially declare war on countries that are not “free enterprise economies,” meaning financialized economies.

SHARMINI PERIES: Michael, legally, trade policies are supposed to be coordinated through Congress. However, Trump is sidelining Congress and saying that he has the right to negotiate and to do his wheeling and dealing from The White House. We just saw a recent decision where he’s denied the $177 billion Broadcom takeover of Qualcomm that he considers this a national security threat. We don’t know whether it is or not but let’s take it for granted that it is. This kind of wheeling and dealing and sidelining Congress, does that concern you?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Yes, for two reasons. Number one, it’s the imperial presidency. It’s an attack on the American Constitution. You’re right, Congress is supposed to be in charge of trade policy, just as it’s supposed to be in charge of declaring war, but the president can say that there’s a national security emergency. The problem with this is that ever since the World Trade Organization was created anew in the 1990s, no country, not even the United States, has used the national security excuse to impose tariffs. George W. Bush thought about it, but then he was told that there was no persuasive basis for it.

But what’s most interesting in the Qualcomm case is the logic for national security. What Trump and the government said was that the problem of letting Singapore take over Qualcomm is they’re financial people, and finance lives in the short-run. The official Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) letter says (quote): “Broadcom has lined up $106 billion of debt financing to support the Qualcomm acquisition, which would be the largest corporate acquisition loan on record. This debt load could increase pressure for short-term profitability, potentially to the detriment of longer-term investments. The volume of recent acquisitions by Broadcom has increased the company’s profits and market capitalization, but these acquisitions have been followed by reductions in R&D investment.”

In other words, if we let a financially organized company take over a technology, they’re going to cut back research and development to bleed the company and extract dividends. That’s what finance is all about. That’s how private equity funds operate. That’s the Wall Street modus operandi. So what Trump has said is that the way in which Wall Street behaves, the way in which the banking system behaves, is against national security.

This is a wonderful argument that I think is worth following up. The main violator of national security in this case would be financializing the economy, Wall Street. It would be the hedge funds and private equity that are backing Trump. At the same time, you have the Republican congress working with the Blue Dogs in the Democratic Party to dismantle bank regulation, deregulate the banks, and essentially make it easier to oppose national security, whose time frame is supposed to be long term.

National security also has to be long term. If having a manufacturing and an industrial base is national security, then what you need to do is what every other government in the world, led by the United States in the 19th century above all, has done: You need public investment and infrastructure, not privatized infrastructure, because public investment in infrastructure lowers the cost of roads and schooling … as we’ve talked about on this show before. Privatization aims at raising the price and extracting a monopoly rent from infrastructure. So in a way, Trump has just said “The policy that I and the Republicans are promoting violates every condition of national security in the United States, and we’re not going to let Singapore do that either. But we’re only going to block Singapore from doing it, because it’s Singapore and they’re Asians, not Wall Street.” That’s my translation of his policy.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/16 ... ze-the-us/

He doesn't understand how capitalism works any more than he understands imperialism. He has the mentality of a rentier or 17th century merchant, and while these modes survive in corners of the economy most suited to them the really big money has superseded them. He is fucking up shit.

You go, Donald.

It's gonna be a killer opera.