It’s rare to see a president undermine his country’s foundations by claiming to help its development. That’s exactly what President Trump is doing; and one wonders how long American bosses and unions will tolerate such a policy.
On the surface, the American president is doing everything in his power to help American businesses: he is changing the tax system in their favor; he is devoting more and more public money to the defense and artificial intelligence industries; through unlimited deregulation, he is freeing American bosses from any risk of criminal prosecution for bribing foreign officials or violating international environmental rules and treaties, which he denounces day after day; it forces US partners to buy American oil and gas instead of Russian; it makes any trade agreement with any country conditional on a commitment to invest hundreds of billions in the United States. He is just as demanding and brutal with Europeans as he is with Indians, Canadians, Australians, Indonesians and Africans, all of whom are natural partners and markets for American companies. In Europe, he supports only two tiny countries, Hungary and Slovakia, whose only characteristics are that they are open allies of the Russian president.
In reality, despite appearances, this policy is destroying the very structure of the American economic system: by seeking to impose leonine rules on others, and on Europeans in particular, by no longer guaranteeing their defense and allying themselves with their worst enemies, it is pushing them to trade more with each other, to stop buying American aircraft, American military equipment and American digital systems, and to develop independent data centers. It’s also prompting Europeans and others to stop studying or living in the United States, or visiting as tourists; it’s encouraging them to form new geopolitical alliances, among Europeans, or with Latin Americans and Canadians; and to diversify their industrial partnerships, including with Chinese companies, hitherto considered the enemy.
In fact, Europeans are beginning to give serious thought to acquiring European credit cards and digital systems, and more generally to stop using the services of American digital firms; European banks are at last beginning to push seriously for the integration of their capital markets, in order to get rid of the American stranglehold; European and Asian countries and private funds are beginning to sell their US Treasury bonds. And even if no one in Europe or elsewhere, not even China, can do without American natural gas for the time being, the temptation is growing to do everything possible to create the conditions for doing without. The same goes for the dollar. These choices, which Europeans, Indians and Latin Americans are beginning to make, are distancing them from the United States for good, and will continue to do so, whoever succeeds Trump as president.
American companies are beginning to pay the price: huge contracts that have practically been signed are being cancelled; promised investments are being called into question.
All this will have consequences for American living standards, both in terms of inflation and unemployment, as we can already see.
How long will American bosses, from Silicon Valley to Texas and New York, who have until now been fascinated by Trump, if not terrified of him, continue to support him? How long will American banks let him pursue this crazy policy, which is discrediting their financial system and accelerating the fall of the dollar, inflation and the debt crisis?
How long will GAFAM let him undermine the huge global market potential they were in the process of conquering?
If these American bosses continue to support their president, so objectively contrary to their long-term interests, they will either have to resign themselves to withdrawing to their domestic market, or push their president into a brutal confrontation with his former allies, to regain by force what they have lost through defiance. The President will then have no choice but to become increasingly aggressive with the rest of the world, especially the Europeans, in an attempt to obtain by force what he can no longer hope to obtain from them through negotiation, however brutal. He will openly say: “Buy American weapons or you will no longer have access to the Internet or your credit cards; we will no longer protect you, and your American-made software and aircraft will no longer work”. As Europeans and Indians will not be able to yield to such blackmail, a strategic and potentially military confrontation between the United States and the rest of the world, including the European Union, unthinkable as it is today, will become inevitable.
On the other hand, if American business wakes up and understands that all this is fatal for it, it will form an alliance with the unions and with the reasonable forces of the Republican and Democratic parties, to put an end to this disastrous experiment and try to return to the old world in which the United States enjoyed the confidence of its allies. They will impose a reasonable president in the White House, one who is at least in line with their interests. If they fail in this coup d’état, they will then seek to relocate their command centers, to no longer appear as American firms, which will only accelerate the decline of the currently dominant empire.
In both public and private life, trust is the condition for peace; in both cases, it is very difficult to restore lost trust, and conflict or separation then almost always becomes inevitable. By losing the trust of the world and of American business, President Trump is inevitably leading to a confrontation between the United States and the rest of the world, including the European Union, from which only a revolt by the American living forces against their President could protect us.
Image created by IA.