A century and a half later, President Donald Trump is betting that the political and economic might of the US is such that it can win a trade war aimed at compelling the rest of the world to adopt a trading system more favourable to the US. Like the Confederate leaders before him, he exaggerates American strength and is self-isolating the US rather than making it stronger.
When Trump produced his shoddily-calculated list of tariffs in the White House Rose Garden, he unwittingly cut through the branch on which American hegemony has rested for 80 years. Instead of the US being the central decision-maker in international alliances and organisations, Trump has unilaterally abandoned this role, declaring that the US will in future act solely in its own much-neglected interests.
Trump and the Maga Republicans are no longer prepared to pay the price for that leadership, a cost they denounce as a swindle directed against America by greedy foreigners. A fast-diminishing band of politicians and business leaders hope optimistically that Trump’s hit list of tariffs – effectively a sales tax on goods entering the US to be paid for initially by the importer, but ultimately by the American consumer – will be dialled down to more modest figures. They suggest that “reciprocal” tariffs, the bizarrely varying levels of which are the product of kindergarten mathematics, are simply negotiating positions.
But the comforting belief that punitive tariffs will be dramatically reduced to more rational levels underlines a contradiction at the heart of Trump’s weird project. If giant American and international companies are to be persuaded to invest in a protected US market, sealed off behind a permanent tariff wall, they need to be convinced that the wall is there to stay and will not crumble away as negotiations and lobbying get under way.
As for the reassuring idea that Trump is invariably open to a compromise, this belief becomes less alluring when it is recalled that the dealmaker-in-chief is a compulsively mendacious man who inhabits his own fantasy world and who is surrounded by a menagerie of courtiers, crackpots and conspiracy theorists. After the last few explosive months since he returned to the White House, what foreign leader is going to bet his political future on what Trump does, or does not do, next?
square PATRICK COCKBURN
Analysis
Trump is trying to turn back the clock - but it will cost Americans dearly
Read MoreNo wonder Chinese citizens are asking foreign visitors, politely but with ill-concealed relish, if the US is now beginning its version of the top-down anarchy of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-76), with Trump playing the role of Great Helmsman, as Mao Zedong was known. China may be damaged by the 54 per cent tariff imposed on its exports to the US, but its leaders see opportunities opened up by America’s self-harm.
The disruptive impact of the new tariff regime is seen most immediately in Northern Ireland where UK and EU authority over trade is delicately interwoven. Suppose the EU retaliates against the US; Northern Ireland would then be part of that retaliation, though the rest of the UK would not. As with Brexit in 2016, changes in superficially dry-as-dust regulations over tariffs swiftly disturb explosive constitutional issues and the balance of power between nationalists and unionists.
Not that everything can be blamed on Trump. President Joe Biden’s decision-making capacity was degraded by senility for much of his term in office. The inability to produce sane and competent leaders is often the most damaging symptom of a political system that can no longer cope with its problems.
Further Thoughts
One of the negative consequences of living in “the age of Trump” is that important stories in the media get buried and ignored because of the latest piece of Trumpery. I hope this will not be the undeserved fate of a very lengthy and detailed piece called The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine, which appeared in the New York Times on 29 March.
The article is highly detailed and is about the military, rather than the political, side of the conflict. It describes the “evolution and inner workings [of the Ukraine-US alliance] visible to only a small circle of American and allied officials, that partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology would become the secret weapon in what the Biden administration framed as its effort to both rescue Ukraine and protect the threatened post-World War Two order”.
In another passage from the article, the authors write: “One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback to learn how deeply enmeshed his Nato counterparts had become in Ukrainian operations. ‘They are part of the kill chain now,’ he said. The partnership’s guiding idea was that this close cooperation might allow the Ukrainians to accomplish the unlikeliest of feats — to deliver the invading Russians a crushing blow.”
Beneath the Radar
Writers like Hannah Arendt have identified the “banality of evil” or “the normalisation of evil” as one of the toxic developments of the 30s. Cruelty, violence, torture, mass murder simply become the way the world worked. Nothing to see here.
The mass slaughter and starvation of the people of Gaza has become a normal feature of the nightly news in a horrifying way that Arendt would have recognised. Nobody can deny they knew what was happening. Here is one typical news item from the latest BBC report about everyday life in Gaza this week:
“Dozens more were wounded when the Dar al-Arqam school in the north-eastern Tuffah district of Gaza City was hit, it cited a local hospital as saying.
“The health ministry earlier reported the killing of another 97 people in Israeli attacks over the previous 24 hours, as Israel said its ground offensive was expanding to seize large parts of the Palestinian territory.”
Cockburn’s PicksWith so much of the Western media convinced that President Donald Trump will fail in his tariff war – an opinion I largely share – it was useful to read this well-balanced article in Unherd by Wolfgang Munchau, explaining how Trump might succeed, at least in part.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Trump has abdicated America’s superpower status )
Also on site :