Donald J Trump believes that he has the magic formula to bring back the glory days and “Make America Great Again” (MAGA). Since the Second World War, America was never called an empire, but its hegemony was never far from the British, Roman, Greek, Abyssinian, Mali, Songhai, and Ghana empires of historical times. The common denominator among these is that they all rose and fell in equal measure. Just like Donald, some leaders who still believed in their past glories, made genuine attempts to resuscitate their hegemonies but failed. They were overrun and outdone by the sands of time.
Today, we have Donald Trump who wants to MAGA. Let us assume we know Trump’s idea of greatness. Does he really know what made America “great”? But how can he MAGA when he does not even know what made America great in the first place? Thanks to his innate and irascible jingoistic sense of racial superiority, Trump’s myopic world view is too warped to even recognise itself. Does Trump know what made America Great in the first place? Unlike other great nations of their time, the gestation period for America was relatively shorter and was not evolutionary.
America was founded on violence, which is euphemistically called The American Revolution. In Britain, albeit wars and uprisings, it went through feudal, monarchical, aristocratic and constitutional alchemy of political systems and unto the constitutional democracy it has today. The French also had a monarchy that topped a class structure. While some countries have maintained their symbolic monarchies, it sounds like Trump wants to introduce a monarchy of his own. America never had the opportunity to grow and evolve into a political system. Its democracy was achieved through the barrel of the gun.
Ironically, Trump wants to make America Great Again by mass deportation of immigrants, the very people that made America “great”. As a descendant of immigrants, and for someone who married immigrants, you cannot get a better demonstration of self-own than this. The irony is not lost on Trump but thanks to an incurable sense of racial superiority, he remains blinded to the obvious. Trump also believes that trying to seize the economic initiative is one of the building blocks to make America great again. This is where he fails to read the room and in effect the script.
The nullification of socialism and communism which saw the birth of Perestroika and Glasnost marked the beginning of the end of the cold war. With the USSR disintegrated, for which Putin has never forgiven the West (in case you’re wondering why he invaded Ukraine), America and the West embarked on the globalisation, the by-product of capitalism, as opposed to communism and socialism. As governments insidiously gave way to the insatiable appetites of capitalism, organisations like World Trade Organisation (WTO) and other regional trade groups like North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA-USA, Canada & Mexico), the European Union Trade Bloc, The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and many more were created to celebrate the new dawn called GLOBALISATION.
The underbelly of globalisation that put profits above all else generated a mad rush for cheap production lines and supply chains in a bid to maximise returns which led to hyper –globalisation. While many Western countries outsourced and maxed out their production in far flung regions like China, Bangladesh, Mexico, India, Brazil and others, countries like America, The UK, and others gutted their own domestic manufacturing industries in exchange for mass profits. While countries like China received peanuts for their work, not only did it create the world’s workshop but ensured maximum employment for its “peasants”, according to J.D Vance. In return for the favour, countries like japan, China, and many others raided American businesses. Let us look at some of the American brands that are owned by foreign countries today.
Seven-Eleven is technically Japanese since 2005. It has 9,000 and 21,500 stores in US and Japan respectively. Popeye, Burger King and American Apparel is Canadian owned. The Dutch car company Stellantis owns Chrysler, Chrysler Building, Jeep and Dodge. Dr Pepper, Krispy Crème, Panera and Trader’s Joe have German ownership. Ben and Jerry, Vaseline etc are owned British Unilever. There is many more where that came from as the remaining opportunities are precariously at the mercy of serious take overs. The most ridiculous and hypocritical ruse of all is that Trump’s MAGA merchandises are all “MADE IN CHINA”. But Trump wants to bring back the manufacturing jobs to America.
This means that he has to compete with the “peasants” of China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia and many more, whose employees receive less than a quarter of the wages of their American counterparts. It will be nice to see how many indigene Americans would settle for such pittance and how many would happily bring back their manufacturing jobs to pay the American minimum wage for those back breaking jobs. Interestingly, and without being condescending, the group of people who would most probably take those back breaking manufacturing jobs with such wage rates are being shipped to El-Salvador and other countries. Talk about cutting your nose to spite your face.
America virulently promoted the Dollar as the world’s currency of choice. This created an unsubstantiated demand that America cannot shore up with its reserve in gold. As many buy and hoard the dollar, its value is artificially inflated. Against other currencies, it therefore becomes more expensive to buy American goods with American dollar than to buy similar goods with American dollars elsewhere. For example, I can get more Gucci shirts with my American dollar in China than in America. Now you know why branded goods, notwithstanding the wilfully inflated price tags by the companies, are insanely expensive. America is currently saddled with trillions and trillions of debt owed to Japan, China and others. The last thing you might expect from a country whose fingers are in the mouth of its debtors is a trade war. The threat of “Government Shutdown” is now part of the calendar and favourite political blood sport for American governments.
This is one reason why Trump wants to crash the markets and with it the dollar, to get some parity and make America attractive and competitive for manufacturing and business. Although the dollar has been falling in value recently, it is still overheating and Trump would need to wreck the whole economy into a recession, if he is to get any semblance of parity. His approach would surely create short term damaging effects. In the long term, it makes economic sense to balance the trade. Trump hopes that America will become cheaper to operate in and would lead to more manufacturing jobs. Sadly, due to his traditionally chaotic Trumpian manner of business, it is difficult to see how long the American public will be willing to endure the short term pangs from his strategy. Besides, with Artificial Intelligence threatening to make employment for mankind obsolete, you wonder where those manufacturing jobs are going to come from.
Trump is now the proverbial rabbit caught in the bright lights of the sands of time. His nostalgia for American greatness would find little room for comfort or manoeuvre. Sadly, his racist tendencies are equally undermining the very essence of his tariff trade wars. On the political front, Trump has taken an authoritarian approach to governing. To all intents and purposes, he is beginning to act like a medieval king, seeing himself as above the law, defying the law and discarding the rule of law. If Trump wants to be King, would he have a Kingdom of USA by the time he gets there? Is this the beginning of the fall of the American Empire?
Don’t forget to turn the lights off when you leave the room.
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