After Tuesday’s testy exchange between Donald Trump and Democratic leaders, it seems quite possible that the tweeter in chief will shut down the government in an attempt to get funding for a wall on the Mexican border. What’s remarkable about this prospect is that the wall is an utterly stupid idea. Even if you’re bitterly opposed to immigration, legal or otherwise, spending tens of billions of dollars on an ostentatious physical barrier is neither a necessary nor an effective way to stop immigrants from coming.
So what’s it about? Nancy Pelosi, almost sure to be the next speaker of the House, reportedly told colleagues that for Trump, the wall is a “manhood thing.” What other policies are driven by Trump’s insecurity? What’s driving this administration’s policy in general?
The answer to these questions, I’d argue, is that there are actually three major motives behind Trumpist policy, which we can label Manhood, McConnell and Moola.
By McConnell I mean the standard GOP agenda, which basically serves the interests of big donors, both wealthy individuals and corporations. This agenda consists, above all, of tax cuts for the donor class, with cuts in social programs to make up for some of the lost revenue.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump posed as a different kind of Republican, someone who would protect the safety net and raise taxes on the rich. In office, however, his domestic policy has been totally orthodox.
Trump’s foreign policy has, however, made a break, not just with previous Republican practice, but with everything America used to stand for. Previous presidents may have made realpolitik accommodations with unsavory regimes, but we’ve never seen anything like Trump’s obvious preference for brutal despots over democratic allies, his willingness to make excuses for whatever people like Vladimir Putin or Mohammed bin Salman do, up to and including murder.
It’s hard to escape the suspicion that Moola — financial payoffs to Trump personally via the Trump Organization — plays an important role. After all, unlike leaders of democracies, dictators and absolute monarchs can direct lots of cash to Trump properties and offer the Trump family investment opportunities.
So where does Manhood come in? The wall is an obvious example. When Customs and Border Protection solicited bids from contractors, it specified that the wall be “physically imposing,” and further that “The north side of wall (i.e. U.S. facing side) shall be aesthetically pleasing.”
But I’d argue that Trump’s desire to assert his manhood is playing a big role in other areas, too, most notably trade policy.
I’ve been tracking the adventures of Tariff Man, and what strikes me is not just the overwhelming view on the part of economists that the Trump tariffs are a bad idea, but the fact that the tariffs are a political dud. That is, there doesn’t seem to be any large constituency demanding a confrontation with our trading partners.
Who wants a trade war? Not corporate interests, not farmers and not working-class voters that were crucial to Trump’s 2016 victory. Belligerence on trade, it turns out, is pretty much a one-man affair: It’s what Trump wants, and that’s about it.
What’s Trump’s motivation? Well, he made trade his signature issue, and he wants to claim that he’s achieved big things. It’s telling that even when he leaves policy mostly the same he insists on a name change. That way he can go around pretending that the “U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement” — or as Pelosi calls it, the “trade agreement formerly known as Prince” — is completely different from NAFTA, and that he had a big win.
So major affairs of state are being decided not by the national interest, nor even by the interests of major groups within the nation, but by the financial interests and/or ego of the man in the White House. Is America amazing, or what?
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