Trump's Trade War, Authoritarian Power, and the Oligarchs
Robert Reich in Inequality Media
Hours before the Canadian tariffs went into effect, Trump
was asked if there was anything Canada could do to stop them.
“We’re not looking for a concession,” Trump said, speaking to reporters in the
Oval Office on Friday afternoon. “We’ll just see what happens, we’ll see what
happens.”
The real reason Trump has raised tariffs on Canada and
Mexico is to show the world that he’s willing to harm (smaller) economies even
at the cost of harming America’s (very large) economy.
The point is the show — so the world
knows it’s dealing with someone who’s willing to mete out big punishments.
Trump increases his power by demonstrating he has the power
and is willing to use it.
The same with deporting, say, Colombians or Brazilians in
military planes, handcuffed and shackled. If, say, Colombia or Brazil complains
about their treatment, so much the better. Trump says, without any basis in
fact, that they’re criminals. Then he threatens tariffs. If Colombia backs down,
Trump has once again demonstrated his power.
Why did Trump stop foreign aid? Not because it’s wasteful.
In fact, it helps stabilize the world and reduces the spread of communicable
diseases. The real reason Trump stopped foreign aid is he wants to show
he can.
Why is he disregarding (or threatening to tear up) treaties
and agreements (the Paris Agreement, NATO, whatever)? Not because such treaties
and agreements are bad for America. To the contrary, they’re in America’s best
interest.
The real reason Trump is tearing up treaties is they tie
Trump’s hands and thereby limit his discretion to mete out punishments and
rewards.
Don’t think of these as individual “policies.” Think of them together as shows of Trump’s strength.
If Canada or Mexico retaliates, he’ll retaliate against them
with even bigger tariffs.
If some senior Republican members of Congress object that
he’s stepping on congressional prerogatives, so what? It’s an opportunity to
show them who’s boss.
If a federal court temporarily stops him, so what? He’ll go
right on doing it and demonstrate that the courts are powerless to stop him.
Look behind what’s happening and you’ll see that Trump is
employing two techniques to gain more power than any U.S. president has ever
wielded.
The first is to demonstrate that he can mete out huge
punishments and rewards.
It doesn’t matter if the punishment or reward is justified.
A 25 percent tariff on Canada? Hello?
It’s a show of strength.
If prices skyrocket in America for oil and lumber from
Canada or for fruits and vegetables from Mexico, no problem for Trump. Most
Americans don’t understand how tariffs work, anyway. Trump will blame Canada
and Mexico. And then threaten them with, say, 50 percent tariffs. Kabam!
Which brings us to the second technique Trump is using to
expand his power: unpredictability.
What makes an abusive parent or spouse, or an abusive
dictator, or Trump, especially terrifying? They’re unpredictable. They lash out
in ways that are hard to anticipate.
So, anyone potentially affected by their actions gives them
extra-wide berth — vast amounts of obedience in advance.
Trump keeps everyone guessing.
He demands that Denmark sell Greenland to the United States.
He chews out the CEO of the Bank of America at Davos for allegedly
discriminating against conservatives. He fires independent inspectors general.
He purges the Department of Justice of career civil servants who prosecuted
cases against him. He attacks birthright citizenship.
What’s next? Who knows? That’s the whole point.
How else to explain the bizarre deference — cowardice —
we’re seeing among CEOs, the media, almost all Republican and even some
Democratic lawmakers? Presumably, they’re all saying to themselves: “He could
do anything, so let’s be especially careful.”
Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg kiss his derriere. Bill Gates is
“frankly impressed” with him. Jamie Dimon, chief of JPMorganChase, decides he’s
“not all wrong.”
Nearly 50 House Democrats support a bill targeting
undocumented immigrants charged with nonviolent crimes for deportation. What?
In 1517, Niccolò Machiavelli argued that
sometimes it is “a very wise thing to simulate madness” (Discourses on Livy, book 3, chapter 2).
In his 1962 book, Thinking About the Unthinkable, futurist Herman Kahn argued that to “look a
little crazy” might be an effective way to induce an adversary to stand down.
The “rule of law” is all about predictability. We need
predictability to be free.
But much of what Trump is doing is either illegal yet will
take months or years before the courts decide so, or is in the gray area of
“probably illegal but untested by the courts.” Which suits his strategy just
fine.
The media calls it “chaos,” which is how various people and
institutions experience it.
The practical consequence is that an increasing number of
so-called “leaders” — in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, and around
the world — are telling their boards, overseers, trustees, or legislatures: “We
have to give Trump whatever he wants and even try to anticipate his wants,
because who knows how he’ll react if we don’t?”
Together, these two techniques — big demonstrations of
discretionary power to reward or punish, and wild uncertainty about when or how
he’ll do so — expand Trump’s power beyond the point any president has ever
pushed power.
Which brings us to the obvious question: Why is Trump so
obsessed with enlarging his power?
Hint: It’s not about improving the well-being of average
Americans and certainly not about making America great again (whatever that
means).
Yes, he’s a malignant narcissist and sadist with an
insatiable lust for power who gets pleasure out of making others squirm.
But there’s something else.
The bigger his demonstrable power and the more unpredictably
he wields it, the greater his ability to trade some of that
power with people with huge amounts of wealth, both in the United States and
elsewhere.
I’m referring to America’s billionaires, such as Elon
Musk and the 13 other billionaires Trump has installed in his
regime, as well as the 744 other billionaires in America, and the 9,850
Americans with at least $100 million in net worth.
Together, these individuals have a huge storehouse of
wealth. Many are willing to trade some of it to gain even more, and to tie down
what they have more securely.
They give Trump (and his family) business deals,
information, campaign money, and positive PR (propaganda). In return, he gives
them tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks, and suspensions of antitrust.
I’m also referring to oligarchs in Russia, China, and Saudi
Arabia. He gives them special trade deals, energy deals,
intelligence deals, access to global deposits of riches; or he
threatens to hold them back. In return, they give him (and his family) business
deals, information, support in political campaigns, and more covert propaganda.
This is Trump’s game: Huge demonstrations of power that’s
wielded unpredictably. They’re eliciting extraordinary deals for Trump and his
family, domestically and worldwide.
Trump says he’s doing this for American workers. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He’s doing this for himself and for the world’s oligarchy, which, in turn, is busily siphoning off the wealth of the world.
© 2025 Robert Reich
Robert Reich is the Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. His book include: "Aftershock" (2011), "The Work of Nations" (1992), "Beyond Outrage" (2012) and, "Saving Capitalism" (2016). He is also a founding editor of The American Prospect magazine, former chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." Reich's newest book is "The Common Good" (2019). He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.
