The Big Man just keeps getting bigger. America’s strongman is pushing for more power…testing the limits of his authority.
Good or bad? Substance or mere style? There’s certainly a lot of bluff, bluster and blah blah involved. But there are real changes, too…ones that will affect our lives and our money.
Trade with Canada and Mexico goes on much as before. But on the whole, US consumers face tariff taxes much higher than they used to. And they were imposed by the Big Man, not by the peoples’ representatives in Congress. This is a new way to govern. And it seems to confirm Oswald Spengler’s prophecy — that around the year 2000, consensual democracy would give way to ‘Caesarism.’
Last week, Caesar flexed his muscles.
Not in chronological order…
Mr. Trump took it upon himself to offer a part of one sovereign foreign nation (the Ukraine) to another sovereign nation (Russia). It was as if the French president had offered to give North Dakota to Canada to solve the tariff spat. The Jerusalem Post:
US President Donald Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end of the war in Ukraine on August 15 in Alaska, Trump said on Friday. “There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both,” Trump said.
Zelensky apparently said ‘nyet’ or whatever the Ukrainians say when they mean ‘no deal.’ But Zelensky will flanked by two big men – Trump and Putin.
Then, Mr. Trump threatened the cutting edge of the electronics industry with draconian new taxes. The Wall Street Journal:
Trump Announces 100% Tariff on Chips, With Exemptions for Companies Investing in U.S.
How much must they invest? On what? When? The big man will decide that later.
In the meantime, the president is also setting up a new ‘terrorist’ threat…and proposing to sic the US Army on it. El Pais:
Trump orders US army to combat foreign drug cartels
US troops in Mexico? To that, Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, replied ‘no way, Jose.’
Then, POTUS accused a foreign head of state of being a ‘terrorist’ drug pusher…and put a price on his head. BBC:
The US has doubled a reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to $50m (£37.2m), accusing him of being “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world”.
And now he’s expanding his own internal paramilitary force, with a $75 billion budget increase for ICE and signing bonuses of $50,000 for the first 10,000 new recruits. Trump claims ICE has the power to arrest, imprison and/or deport people, basically on his say-so alone.
The Soviets had the Cheka. North Korea has its Ministry of State Security. Why not ICE for the US? Former US diplomat, James L. Bruno, spent many years in ‘authoritarian’ countries. He worries that…
The administration is laying the groundwork for a police state with the rapid expansion of ICE…
But returning to the matter of style…that too suggests a strongman motif. Previously, the White House was a model of refined Episcopalian grace. It was ‘restrained neoclassicism,’ with the understated elegance of the British upper classes or the American elite.
In aesthetics, however, the Trump Administration echoes its ham-handed approach to statecraft. It tends toward a gaudier, Mar-a-Lago look. Melania doesn’t look like Mamie Eisenhower. And now the White House is getting a trophy look, too. It has been tarted up in gold — just as though it were Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. The rose garden has been covered in concrete. And Trump is planning a new 90,000 square foot ballroom.
Big Men think Big. And as with Louis 14th’s Versailles, or Mussolini’s Coloseo Quadrato, their projects signal the majesty of their creators…but not necessarily their good taste.
Regards,
Bill Bonner,
For Fat Tail Daily
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