Towards a Theory of 'Trump Ideology'

A few weeks ago we suggested that, while there are clear signs of their being some kind of doctrinaire, ideological approach(es) behind whatever might be called a ‘Trump Programme’, it was perhaps too soon to elaborate it methodically.

Work in progress, maybe: but here’s an interesting stab at it:  Trump as an auto-immune disorder.  What’s particularly good about this is that it offers a thoughtful angle on one critical aspect of the puzzle, namely, why aren’t the legendary Checks & Balances working?   I have a bit of a theory on this myself; but here’s a much more fully-developed one.  It also makes a neat point about the difference between business conducted in markets, and business conducted via barter-like deals, which I think we could profitably come back to another time.

Not too long, and well worth adding to the evolving body of intelligent ruminative literature.  A couple of extracts: 

Other tinpot dictators – like Modi, Erdoğan, Putin, Xi**, Orbán – and their countries are distinct from the US in an important way. These autocrats do not have comparable democratic institutions. They can capture, subvert or sabotage democratic traditions in their own countries, using their own means. In each of them, there are longstanding traditions of inequality (such as caste in India), vigorous and celebrated imperial histories (Turkey, Russia and China) and deep traditions of racial and religious nationalism (Hungary and India).  But they do not have the special strengths of American democracy: a sturdy commitment to separation of church and state; the distribution of powers between legislature, judiciary and executive; and a deep antipathy towards tyrants, royal or otherwise… [Trump] has hit upon an original formula: to reverse-engineer the liberal institutions designed as guardrails against people like him.

 Trump loves wealth, ostentation and deals, but he hates markets, not because of their imperfections but because they, in principle, rest on … supply and demand, the rationality of prices, all of which are safeguards against political fiat, personal greed and efforts to cook up macro outcomes for micro reasons. This hatred of markets unites all of today’s autocrats, because markets make their oligarchies unstable and their nationalist fiscal policies responsive to global finance … they fear the power of global financial markets to shake their national economic goals.  [Trump] disdains the market – because it obeys no master other than its own rules of price, volume and scale. His weapon against it is tariffs, which he wields in the hopes of bringing it under his control. The market relies on the social contract, that agreement between individuals and government that is based in trust and predictability. Since Trump despises the market, he must dismantle the social contract, in all its forms and guises.

ND

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** Not sure “tinpot” is exactly appropriate for Xi …