Trump appears to be using a 1970s, or worse, 1930s playbook; and those playbooks did not work even though the US had a large industrial base at those times
[edit] I started writing on similar themes to this back in 2004, with FrankenMarket Lives.
Progress
Donald Trump appears to have some sort of fantasy about what America is. I share his pride in this country as it was in the WWII era and maybe beyond, into the 1970s. I am, shall we say mature of age as well. Not nearly Trump’s age, but old enough to remember the inflationary angst of the 1970s and interested enough in economics to know about the post-bubble Great Depression of the 1930s.
I write now as a former manufacturing person. As the threat of Japan’s industrial rise grew steadily in the 1980s, we had to abandon the old ways of doing things, like men cranking handles in a profession (precision machining) that was more craft than labor. In short, in this new globally competitive reality it was “automate or die”. We automated. That was progress. America’s industrial base, following the likes of Japan, progressed even as its gross industrial base contracted under global pressure and yes, the productivity of automation.
Regress
In the 1980s and 1990s, America came under the guidance of financial professionals and politicians who’d never gotten their fingernails dirty a day in their life. The industrial economy was realigned in service to Wall Street’s desire to slice, dice and package financial instruments for profit, as opposed to making things for export profit.
The China fox and its vast pool of cheap labor was invited into the hen house by these politicians as part of a cohort with Wall Street financiers who demand every last drop of profit be squeezed out of an enterprise, and to lesser degrees, Mexico, Indonesia, Taiwan and others that had been industrializing to handle the work previously and proudly “Made In America” (MIA).
MIA still means something. As an example, when I buy an electric guitar, I am very biased to a US made Gibson, PRS or Fender. Indeed, I have three git fiddles, a Gibson SG, Fender Strat and a PRS Studio. All made here, all standing the test of time.
But the regression is in the culture at large. From the 1990s trade agreements on, America has been trained to be a consumerist nation. Again, this was under the guidance of greedy and short-sighted politicians and just plain greedy financial institutions (what we call “Wall Street”).
Tariffs Today
Trump is not playing the hand he thinks he is playing. He is threatening more tariffs on our erstwhile allies Canada and Europe if they work together to do “economic harm” to the US. Sir, he who haphazardly implements the proven-failed regime of tariffs is doing economic harm. Especially when he is doing it at the helm of the Good Ship USS Lollipop, a vessel not yet ready to pick up its own industrial slack to the degree that would satisfy a massive and voracious consumerist society.
But there is more to it than that. More than the “who’s right, who’s wrong?” question about the tariff war. Unless we are in the late stages of a “deal”, Art Of The Deal style, a man who probably never labored a day in this life (other than the extreme energy expended from his mouth and his tweeting and executive order signing fingers) seems to think he is carrying a big, heavy club when in reality, with respect to our industrial base, it is one of those over-sized wiffle ball bats. Light as the air it is filled with.
America became a credit (debt)-fueled consumerist society through shortsighted greed, prompted by Wall Street and the Federal Reserve System and aided/abetted by politicians. In short, Main Street America was sold out.
Sure, America has large deposits of materials and energy resources. We have a strong technological base. We have a tradition of hard work. Although with respect to that last item, 30 years as the consumer to the world, helping build out China for example, by increasing debt-for-consumption while they increased industrial output, has greatly impaired our relative industrial standing. We now have a post-hubris culture that (on balance) thinks it’s as easy as pressing a button on your phone and waiting for your cost-effectively produced product to arrive at your doorstep.
Well, it HAS been just that easy! But in a trade war, including against nations with industrial bases not nearly as devolved as ours, not as dependent on credit-fueled illusions of prosperity as modern America… in that trade war… America stands to lose. We stand to lose because we are the buyers, the world’s foremost consumerist nation. In a trade war, buyers pay the price.
Again, as a US manufacturing person in my former life I watched it happen in real time. I and many others of my ilk warned about it, got pissed over it, accepted it and adjusted (automated) to it.
If Trump is not merely pushing an Art Of The Deal play to the limit (is he that smart?), I believe Americans stand to suffer a disproportionate amount of the losses to come in a trade war. Our base has been degraded. Sure, we can build it back over years or decades. But right now we are flat out dependent on too many cheaply made foreign goods from places that many in our hubris addled society might think of as “dirty”, as beneath us. We’ve been bred this way, after all.
I don’t think Donald Trump realizes what America actually is in 2025. It can be something more productive in future years. But in 2025 it remains a vast consumer nation unprepared for what it will take to produce hard goods competitively for its own people and on the global stage. It is not ready for this war.
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Well said Gary! Not only does it take a long time to bring back those manufacturing jobs that were exported during the Clinton era, do Americans even want those factory type jobs?
As I watched my industry contract, I resented the easy-peasy way Wall St. and the Clinton era politicians simply found “prosperity” in financial gerrymandering. Hence, I could only view America, on balance, as a hubris addled consumer culture believing its own myths. So no, they don’t want those type jobs. But what they want and reality may be two different things.
The tariffs on Canada are not warranted. Everyone looking at actual data, including Trump, know this.
So why? The Permian Basin is plateauing. Pres. Trump does not want OPEC+ to blackmail the USA… again.
To Pres.Trump, the crown jewels of Canada are the oil & gas reserves of Alberta, Saskatchewan and BC.
The rest? Nah Quebec? A hard no. The Maritimes? Whatever. Ontario? Too many new Democrats created.
The goal? AB=51st, SK=52nd, BC=53rd states.
For Pres.Trump versus Canada, tariffs are a tool to crush Canada into submission.
Personally, I think it is a strategic and tactical mistake. The deep sense of betrayal will last generations.
And Powell’s soft landing was going so well..
Nicely articulated. You can’t turn a battleship around in a bathtub!
Thank you. I got criticized by email for not providing solutions. But that was not the point. Trying to turn that battleship around in a tub is the point. Right on. If the plan gets stuck to, it’ll take a long time.
We are living in interesting times…
Quite!
One thing is for certain, we can’t keep going down the road of endless consumption based on debt and huge trade deficits. If Trump tariffs cause price spikes which in turn reduces consumption, while over time brings back U.S. manufacturing especially for critical items, I’m prepared to make the sacrifice.
Yup. It’s the “over time” aspect that is the concern. We are vulnerable in the near-term. But as a manufacturer, I hated it when it was happening back then and theoretically/fundamentally, it would be a good thing to unwind it. A society can’t just go on living on credit while other societies do the heavy and productive lifting.
I was born in 64, and at age 28 I woke up and realized the country the founders envisioned had been co-opted by internationalists infesting our land who quietly dreamed and acted to deliver America into the hands of an eventually formed world governing body with no regard for the America I grew up in.
Their “dreams” were not driven by economic or political ambitions as much as they were by ideological determination of eventual take over codified in the texts tapestries writings and Lodge murals of secret societies who migrated over to the Americas about the same time as the Mayflower did. In fact these folk were present cooperators in the formation of the new American system of Government at the time (1776).
The system of checks and balances forged in the deliberations which occurred in Independence Hall in those days were intended to allow 2 sides to co exist peaceably in the new land, despite differences of outlook, since neither had the strength (or the right) to eliminate the other. Masonry and Christianity (yes I said it…. Gasp! “But you’re not supposed to do that”- too bad, yes I violated the polite but insipid standards of British reserve, but full disclosure… I ain’t British) were forced by the circumstances of history to negotiate a compact that would ensure equal ideological opportunity for both… or else they could look forward to a repetition of the same exhausting and bloody controversy they had experienced in Europe prior to their emigration to the New world. The implied and expressed expectation was that the compact signed by the founders was to be signed in good faith… but the unfolding of history would quickly reveal that one side made their pledges with their secret fingers crossed behind their secret backs.
It was that side that never minded the application of intrigue to further their aims, and that is how they proceeded. With winks and nods, secret handshakes, passwords, rudimentary encryption, and secret meetings with macbre rituals and blood oaths they planned and executed their designs to gain comprehensive control of America from the inside out. These are patient folk, willing to apply gentle incremental pressure, with an occasional violent bashing here or there when necessary to effect take over… and it was because of their relentless experimentation that the Republic was never allowed to rest ( Yes it was founded as a republic, not a democracy, the Greek concept of democracy was never enshrined or even expressed). Murder and treason not excepted from their regimen, the left made progess with the help of European Banking dynasties whose wealth was plied to gain control of congressmen and senators judges and even presidents, in the interest of authorizing and imposing a previously “unthinkable and unallowed” central banking system. They succeeded, and mortgaged the freedom of America after financing both sides of the civil war and then placing the citizens of the country bankrupted by that war- under terms of debt obligation by “Emergency measures” that have never been lifted and led to the eventual
creation of the Federal reserve and IRS in 1913. The establishment of these two handy dandy offices of money extraction from the pockets of the citizenry provided all the capital necessary for the expansion of Government – which is why we have 454 mostly corrupt excuses for Government agencies today that the Founders never authorized, and we were taken off the Gold standard, and given a fiat elastic currency to facilitate deliberately induced cycles of ensuing inflation, by a head scracthing Fed that feigns puzzlement as to how such a phenomenon could occur in its “carefully” regulated economy.
So… Mr. Article Author – when you ask the stupid question “Does Trump realize what country America is” – I have to laugh and write this response.
Yes he (Trump) does realize what America is…. and he is unraveling the damage and treason done to America by the corrupt left…. which no doubt comprise a significant portion of your readership. Now go ahead and get mad and go light some Tesla’s on fire or donate to Soros Open Society or adopt an illegal or tag a building or whatever you people need to do to live with yourselves in your miserable heads.
But as for me…. I want the real Constitutionally promised America back… and I think Trump does know what that is… and… I think you do not.
Cheers – C.A.
And you were doing so well, Mr. Commenter, until you betrayed emotion and got political (and insulting). If you open your lug holes and listen (read), you will see no commentary that should have prompted that. You will also not see any dispute about your views, fundamentally. What you will see is a theme that we are not prepared as a society for the shall we say, “adjustment” back to a productive economy. I was impaired by the offshoring of our industry all those years ago. What were you? I got my hands dirty. Did your pro-Trump sensitivities get hurt when I said he probably never did get his hands dirty (or some such thing)?
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In short, don’t put your dogma and bias on me. You don’t know me. It seems like you saw a title you didn’t like, skimmed the article (maybe) and then popped off.
yeah I popped off…
“Trump doesn’t know America” is just articulate, intellectualized, condescending pop off as well. Yes, he damn well does know America, and better than most.
I defend.
So far he demonstrates uncommon capability and fidelity. He is angry. I’m angry.
Ships in bath tubs and that sort of commentary tritely ignores the core issue of the grotesque theft of a Nation away from its people
and the creation of an intolerable situation that begs the discomfort of adjustment that you just don’t want to endure – by someone (Trump) that for the first time in history since Jackson or maybe Mckinley has the brains and balls to effectively oppose the twisted left…
Too many profiteers have sat idly by and made their sums while they tolerated the takeover.
We’re in a war. For reals. We live on a battleground disguised as a playground.
The enemy isn’t conveniently isolated to some foreign geographic locale that’s ripe for kinetic engagement; rather they are right here, in our midst, blended in, and here on this board, some are just profiteering lurkers.
“against all enemies Foreign and domestic” means the founders anticipated infiltration of the body politic.
I jab that pervasive spirit of corruption in groin. Let it scream.
Trump is blatantly unapologetic and unorthodox… and that’s whats needed, and it is exactly tactical, and part of an effective and elaborate counter coup… (a legitimate one). He is handling the ignorant populace as delicately as he can, but they need to wake up. By no means can it be business as usual any more, so wean yourselves off that.
I don’t care about Canada, those arrogant socialist pricks never cared about us… they thought everything was going swimmingly in Montreal. What – you think our NATO alliance made us Chums?
No we’re different.
NATO? – that’s all a bunch of contrived crooked crap as well, which is really easy to see now. Trump and company are shining the searchlight on the whole rotten NATO construct.
Damn the torpedoes I say…
At least we are in the fight, if it doesn’t go well… too bad… it sure as hell wasn’t going well before – or did we already forget?
I was never prepared to settle for a gilded cage.
And get that damn yellow fringe off my flag…
PS:
I’d be happy to work as an executioner at GITMO for minimum wage…. just let me change my apron once a day.
Again I tell you I was right there when the theft was happening. I had to fight outsource pressure for years. For a long time we competed well with automation. I finally said “screw this” (symbolically, at least) when a customer that had taken a big order away from us and sent it to China for cheaper, then tried to come back. Well, we were bare bones on it too. Customer came back after China could not produce the quality needed at the price point (it was a medical device component). I told them “here is the new [and still very fair] price”. They wouldn’t pay it. That is when I realized the whole shootin’ match was flying up its own asshole.
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Anyway, my point to you was that I realize the stuff you are indignant about. I lived it too. Do I like Donald Trump? No. Did I like Biden or heaven forbid, Harris? Ha ha ha, no. This is not a website where politics gets played. My whole point was that it was a blight what the politicians and Wall Street did to our industrial base in the 90s, substituting productivity for credit/debt. We have since been bred (IMO) as a hubris addled nation of consumers to expect something for nothing (less than nothing, actually, debt).
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If you read the 2004 article I linked at the top of this post you’ll see I’ve been writing about this for 20 effing years. Long before Trump was a twinkle in MAGA’s eye. So don’t call me a liberal or any other label you pull out of your ass. Or at least READ first, before you sling it.
Alright.
Setting my guns down.
Mine is set down too, secure in its safe.