Image by heblo from Pixabay.
What is Donald Trump?
He seems like an “abortion of nature.” In a country where hypocrisy has ruled politics, it was unlikely that a man with the personal characteristics of Donald Trump would become president— an exponent of conduct without ethical filters and a well-known criminal record. To top it all off, he was perched on a rare combination of exploitative millionaire and, at the same time, a populist leader, enemy of a supposedly perfect political system, and crusader against corruption that is not recognized as such.
Probably, at first, he himself did not believe in this possibility. It is said that his political career had no other intention than a marketing operation in one of his many moments of financial misfortune. However, at the cost of extravagances, lies, and insults to his opponents, exacerbating the worst instincts of a part of American society, he first won the Republican nomination and, later, against all odds, defeated none other than Hillary Clinton, who many believed destined to become the first female president of the United States.
What Trump thought of himself and justified his idolatry had been confirmed: he was a “genius,” more skillful than others, destined to do whatever he wanted and benefit from the effort. He did not want to acknowledge defeat in 2020 and was willing to “set Washington on fire” so as not to give in to “such injustice in the system.” His victorious return, which also seemed impossible, reaffirms the evidence of his greatness, this time with a messianic component – backed by a failed assassination attempt – which until then was alien to his beliefs. Donald Trump has discovered God, and that makes him even more dangerous.
This is the character’s political history. However, for those who do not believe in miracles, it would be better to analyze the objective conditions that have made what seemed impossible a few years ago a reality.
After reaching the peak of its hegemony with the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the last century, the United States has undergone a series of changes related to the evolution of capitalism itself. The so-called “neoliberal globalization” was built on the premise of American supremacy, but it inherently included the rise of the transnationalization of capital, a phenomenon central to the model itself, characterized by the tendency to surpass national boundaries in the operation of the global economy.
Due to globalization, the competitiveness of American industrial production in the international market has declined, resulting in undesirable economic and social consequences within the United States. Faced with the prospect of lower wage costs and other advantages in different countries, particularly in the Third World, substantial sources of employment have shifted to those markets offering better profit rates. Additionally, the rise in immigration, a consequence of uneven development among nations—a characteristic of capitalism—affects sectors providing large-scale employment, such as lower-skilled services, which could help alleviate the previously mentioned job migration.
Even when statistics indicate low unemployment levels, as they did at the end of the Biden administration, the aforementioned factors condition the quality of the labor supply and the level of wages, preventing the reproduction of a mass of workers particularly benefited by the “American Way of Life,” identified as the hard core of the so-called “North American middle class,” the social base of the system.
The discontent of those displaced by these processes feeds the social base of Trumpism and is expressed in the reinforcement of white supremacy, religious fanaticism, rancid conservative fundamentalism, and all imaginable “phobias” aimed at “recovering a past of greatness” snatched away by “foreign criminals” who need to be expelled by any means, as the current president proposes.
According to Bernie Sanders, the three richest men in the world possess as much wealth as half the population of the United States. When the rich are wealthier and the poor are poorer—a well-known phenomenon in the Third World—it is not because the rich are greedier than before, but because the system has lost its ability to address its internal conflicts. As Sanders also points out, this was much less evident when the three richest men sat next to Donald Trump on the day of his inauguration.
No matter how much Trump wants to change this reality through excessive protectionism, harsh immigration policies, and sanctions on other countries to impose his government’s rules, these rules contradict the logic of the system and undermine significant national interests, including those tied to international financial capital, which also has its center in the United States.
This is one of the fundamental contradictions of his “America First” policy. If Trump exists, it is because he is supported by a segment of the American establishment, particularly those who have capital invested in high-tech industries, large energy consumers in need of protectionist policies, substantial government contracts, and a specialized workforce primarily based in the United States, as there are no substitutes in the Third World, including the manufacturing sector and other industries. The three aforementioned magnates own these types of companies, which also offer new means of social control through digital networks, artificial intelligence, and significant investments in politicians who are willing to cater to their agenda, as is the case with Donald Trump.
To what extent this capital linked to high technology will be complemented by international financial capital is a matter to be elucidated since capitalism’s capacity for metamorphosis has been one of the great strengths of the system. For now, it is possible to observe a fairly ostensible division between Republicans and Democrats in terms of their support for one or the other. Two tendencies of thought regarding the role of the United States in the world and the way it exercises it are also exposed.
However, what appears to be a conflict focused on international politics actually reflects the struggle of major economic groups for political control of the country, particularly concerning large investments in the American military complex, whose maintenance is assured, regardless of how bellicose individuals may be.
The militarization of the border, the space race, the deregulation of arms production, and the demand for allied countries to invest more in defense, as well as Trump’s renewed geographical expansionism and his unexpected cult of President McKinley—who knows which advisor suggested it to him—are all part of this claim. Military spending, seen as the guarantee of American dominance and the real engine of the economy, is also key to a balanced budget, essential for Trump to fulfill his promise to reduce inflation and revitalize the national manufacturing industry without raising taxes, as he proposed during his campaign and as his populist rhetoric demands.
This encompasses his proposals for reducing social investments and the state apparatus, implementing environmental controls to promote oil production, exploiting other natural resources, disregarding international agreements, and imposing trade tariffs on foreign products.
However, these policies can harm very large segments of the population and be highly inflationary. This will increase social discontent and dissatisfaction with the government, which, in order to sustain itself, will have to violate existing standards of conduct and legal operation. It will also increase repression in many ways, as is already happening.
It’s true that Donald Trump has extraordinary powers; ultraconservatives have managed to advance at all levels of the system, even controlling the institutions designed to balance contradictions, as the “founding fathers” intended. He aims to uphold the oldest Constitution in the modern world, which everyone, even its violators, claims to respect.
Some might suppose that the application of new knowledge technologies, in the hands of these highly resourceful individuals, should have allowed them to select someone with better skills than Trump, to demolish the system’s molds with more grace and intelligence without affecting its credibility so much. Perhaps they even tried it without success, which demonstrates the limits of technological knowledge and the scarcity of offers.
What they have is what there is: a guy without scruples or democratic posturing who is capable of mobilizing a mass that worships his defects. That is Donald Trump, a product “Made in USA.”
