Missing the Point – The Economy is in Charge

Well, well, well.  So, we’ve proved that you can lie your way into the Presidency of the United States.

Apparently, the majority of the American people who care enough to vote are either unaware of who Donald Trump is or, for whatever reasons, are willing to overlook his criminal history, and authoritarian preferences..  His dishonesty is so prolific, how can the American people, our allies, and opponents trust anything he says?

Tradition, law, empathy, and common sense do not constrain him the way they do ordinary, normal people.  Without question or hyperbole, the effects of his second term as President will take years for us to resolve after he’s gone.

He routinely creates chaos for chaos’ sake because it distracts from the reality that he is intellectually weak and, for the most part, has no idea what he’s doing.  He thrives on his belief that he’s in charge, superior, and the focus of all that is happening.  The bigger and more disruptive the process, the better.  The Constitution be damned.

We may have also learned that a great deal of the electorate still finds it difficult to see a woman, perhaps especially a woman of color, in the Oval Office.  We like to think that we’re more enlightened, that we’re past all that, but maybe we’re not.

Heaven forbid Donald should leave office before his four years are up, for whatever reason, and J.D. Vance becomes President.  It all makes you shiver.  If it doesn’t, you’re part of the problem.

With Republicans in charge of the Senate and the House, a dangerously ineffectual Supreme Court, and Donald Trump in the White House, we have entered a political “Dark Ages” which doesn’t bode well for many millions of Americans and our allies around the world.

To all that, I offer some perverted version of “good news.”  The economy is in charge and, in the end, will save us.  To be clear, I’m not talking about the stock market.  The stock market is only part of the economy.  No.  The economy I’m talking about is the collectively millions of markets the persistent interaction of which, like the cells in your body and brain in particular, define the capitalism that supports us.  And without it, Democracy would not be possible.

When I went to college, I majored in Economics, not because I thought it would be a good and lucrative profession.  Honestly, I didn’t have a clue what being an economist would be like.  I majored in Economics because it occurred to me that capitalism and democracy needed each other and that, together, there was no more powerful force.  Politics, on the other hand, was an inherently flawed avocation that would always be subject to mixed reviews depending upon the handful of individuals who might be in charge from time to time.

Here’s the thing…  President Trump is preoccupied with profits, with profit maximization.  It’s a noble objective, but Trump is obsessively focused on profits when he should be thinking in terms of consumption.  While profitable operations by our nation’s companies is certainly a good thing, our economy is driven by consumer demand which makes profitability possible.  If consumer demand is strong, profits will happen organically, without our having to reduce corporate taxes or insulate our companies from foreign competition.

For the consumer, foreign competition is a good thing resulting in lower prices and stimulating our native economy to do better – to innovate, to take the lead in the development of the world’s next generation of technologies and trends.

Trump thinks that imposing tariffs on goods sourced from foreign manufacturing will favor investments by American and other-country competitors in the United States.  In fact, what’s going to happen is that the prices we pay, for goods produced elsewhere and here in the United States are going to rise.  This depresses consumer demand to the detriment of everyone, particularly in middle and lower-income families.

The proceeds of the Trump tariffs will be less than expected because they discourage sales.  The business America does – with China for example, but it will be true everywhere – will be significantly less as will the influence we have with our trading partners.  The less dependent a trading partner is upon its relationship with the United States, the less they’re going to care what we think.  On the other hand, when America buys stuff from foreign countries, the economic links we create encourage international cooperation and communication in a way and to an extent that Trump isolationism can’t possibly accomplish.

Way to go, Donald!  But does he care about any of this?  No.  Quite to the contrary, he cares less about what happens to the millions of Americans who will suffer from his thoughtless economic policies than about the consequences of his Presidency for Elon Musk because their relationship benefits Donald’s self-image.  As long as he thinks he’s buddies with one of the richest men in the world, well, it’s good to be Donald Trump.

Even if the imposition of tariffs were to have the effect he claims to be after, Donald has no appreciation of the time, often years it takes for the economy to adjust – and the damages done to our people in the meantime.

The Biden/Harris administration is handing off history’s most successful economy, “The envy of the world” according to “The Economist,” a well-respected English weekly.  Trump will claim it’s his economy, but soon enough he’ll be busy blaming others for the decline his policies have caused.

Presidents like to claim responsibility for a booming economy and are blamed for a declining one.  The reality is, that our government can affect the course of the economy, but isn’t in charge of it.  The economy is a massively complicated living organism, an entity that government must deal with, can influence, and often screw up, but can’t control in any precise and comprehensive way.

Trump’s particular brand of lunacy can’t help but make a mess out of the really good thing that is the American economy.  If he does any measure of what he’s promised, expect substantial voter remorse to raise its ugly head within only a few months of his inauguration.

What he and his Republican loyalists are about to discover is that the economy is going to resist.  The economy is not impressed with Donald’s bravado, doesn’t care about his lies one way or another, and cannot be intimidated.  Relative to the scope, intelligence, and power of the American economy, Donald J. Trump is an insignificant, annoying twit.  (As is Elon Musk, despite his enormous wealth.)  The economy, the collective expression of the American people that it is, is going to fight back.  Congress will be less and less cooperative as the Democrats reassess their relationship with voters and more and more Republicans feel the need to rebuild the “Good Old Party” Trump has trashed.

Donald lives in a Trump-centrist world in which he imagines he’s in charge.  Unfortunately, his particular disorder – malignant narcissism – prevents him from understanding that’s it to the economy – and the people of which it is composed – to which he will need to answer, not the other way around.  Google the definition of this disorder and its symptoms.  It explains so much of Trump’s behavior.

Knowing full well who and what he is, we just knowingly re-elected a person to the office of President who should be spending the rest of his life in therapy or jail or both, but certainly not in the Oval Office.  Does he know what he’s doing when it comes to the economy, social programs, and foreign affairs?  Of course not.  He’s going to blow it.  He can’t help himself.  He believes he is infallible and has few constraints on his behavior.  President or not, missing the point is who he is.