After being inaugurated and signing a flurry of executive orders, Donald Trump has already added to the increasing chaos of the world capitalist system. The editorial of the February edition of Socialism Today magazine looks at the effects and roots of Trump’s economic policy – promising to “Make America great again”, how far he can go, and the consequences in Britain and across the world:
Trump is back in the White House. Much of the world is gripped by fear about what his second term will mean, as are millions in America – particularly migrants, LGBTQ+ people, and others likely to be on the sharp end of his attacks. In Britain one opinion poll reported that 54% of British people think Trump will be bad for their country, compared to only 15% who think he will be good. An even greater majority of Britons think he will be bad for world peace.
Meanwhile Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, has publicly emphasised his “constructive” relationship with Trump, expressing how grateful he was to Trump for having dinner with him in New York last year, and pleading for a US-UK trade deal. Such warm words for new US presidents are the norm for capitalist governments, as they try to get close to the leader of what is still the world’s strongest power. No amount of sickening sucking up, however, will make Trump prioritise a trade deal with Britain.
More fundamentally, nothing can prevent British capitalism being particularly vulnerable to the negative consequences of ‘maganomics’; as a result of being a weaker power, extremely reliant on foreign capital, and outside any of the major trading blocs. The January bond market jitters, and the fall in sterling are a foretaste of what is ahead. Nor will the consequences of Trump for Britain be simply economic. Starmer’s Labour is currently sticking closely to the traditional script of British capitalism: backing US imperialism to the hilt in all its crimes. Trump will demand the same in future conflicts, but mass domestic opposition and a multipolar fragmented world could make that much more difficult. And of course, Trump draws little or no distinction between political and economic conflicts – and has already shown how he likes to use the threat of tariffs, for example, to try and bludgeon governments into line on all kinds of issues.
Clearly Trump is an idiosyncratic character. As US president he will add a large dollop of chaos and uncertainty into world relations. That in itself will tend to increase global political but also economic turbulence. Even before taking office his election has added to the frenzy on the US stock markets, and led to the further inflation of huge speculative bubbles. In particular, he is actively fuelling crypto-mania. His actions will increase the size of the inevitable financial crash when it comes. At the same time his attempt to abolish the US debt ceiling is an indication of his reckless approach to US government finance, even from a completely capitalist viewpoint, at a time when markets are extremely nervous about the huge scale of government debt in the US and globally. And on his threat to ratchet up tariffs the IMF has weighed in to warn that Trump “could make trade tensions worse, lower investment, and disrupt supply chains across the world”.
Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to see the era we have entered as being the consequence of one reckless individual. On the contrary, Trump’s election both reflects and accelerates the increasingly unstable multipolar character of global capitalism today. The world we are now living in has more in common with the first half of the twentieth century than anything that has been experienced since.
Read this article in full at www.socialistparty.org.uk/maganomics