As Trump is gonna put his insane tariffs in place, what do you guys think is the goal here? Because I fear that he is playing 4D chess but making it look like he is playing checkers, and if his tariffs are out into place it’ll undoubtedly anger and radicalise lots of Americans especially, and just cause a general shitshow for approval ratings and threaten the domestic safety of capital. Thoughts?
I don’t think Trump himself plans much at all. More insightful is probably looking at the sort of vultures who keep company with him and/or are in his ear, or considering what the alphabet agencies’ view would be. US electoral politics is largely spectacle and Trump is an expert in spectacle. The power brokers are more so the donors and the alphabet agencies and such. I’m not claiming it’s all a binary switch, where the elected officials don’t hold any real power, but probably more akin to a mafia-like thing where they are supposed to stay within certain boundaries and can get threatened or worse if they step too far outside them. And Trump is a useful distraction spectacle of a leader for a more overt consolidation of power attempt for an empire whose “soft” power neoliberal order is in question. He acts chaotically, he gets people to have lots of “wtf” moments, and he can be hard to take seriously at times even as he does in broad daylight the kind of stuff liberals hide behind decorum.
His personal interests are a factor (and they are probably to enrich himself as someone else said), but he could do that a lot of ways that don’t require becoming president. So why is he keeping at it? Is it ego? Is he in too deep? Whatever the reason, he’s one part among mixed fascist factions and infighting, with a lot of power that goes beyond him as an individual.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, yeah, he’s powerful, but I wouldn’t advise spending too much energy laser focused on him as individual. More important are the surrounding conditions and what the most powerful factions are doing as a whole. We know he’s a piece of shit ten times over. What we maybe don’t know as clearly is what is the factional interest in gathering around him as a figurehead and what the overall goal of that is, if they figure they can steer him through his TV programs as a useful lightning rod of attention or a useful cult of personality or what. Trump as a person I’d argue acts more like “chaotic evil”, but the US empire as a whole doesn’t and that’s a strange contrast, isn’t it? What is the purpose of allowing that? Or has he broken beyond what they allow and enough of them have eaten the onion on being part of his cult?