Historical Adamism, nationalist unilateralism, sentimental victimhood, tariffication militant and divine protection to the people and the elected leader. All of these isms make up the fabric of Donald Trump’s inauguration speech – more precisely, the rally. The fat dressing of so many hyperboles and exalted adjectives hid the exact scope and pace of application of their economic recipes, also prepared with those prejudices.
It was clear that Trump-2 is preparing to be brutal in a decisive socio-economic chapter, immigration. The stated purpose is to “return millions and millions of criminal foreigners” – but are there so many criminals? – to their places of origin, arrest those entered without papers, and send troops to the southern border against this “invasion”, something difficult legal fit, since its deployment within the country is prohibited. But not a word about its problematic impact on reducing available labor. Nor about the flows of highly qualified Indians in engineering and digitalization, which are so convenient for the consortia of the worthy Elon Musk and company.
And in the executive orders chamber, one of them denies citizenship to the children of immigrants born in US territory, something that the Constitution prohibits (14th amendment). In short, a series of deportations, humiliations and deprivations of rights that contrasts with the supremacist arrogance due to the – admittedly wonderful – history of a country created by immigrants often from a past… torture, fugitive, criminal.
Nor did his announcement of shelving Joe Biden’s green agenda that favored clean energy, and support for electric vehicles – in favor of combustion vehicles, to “return to being a manufacturing nation” – offer any doubt, two complicities until now. key between the US and the EU. And the push for fossil energy, oil and gas, even in Alaska: “We are going to drill, baby, to drill,” he had recited during the campaign.
The objective is to multiply extraction, lower prices and flood the market: “We will export American energy to everything the world,” he said, pronouncing that design with an emphasis that the rest of the proclamation lacked. The underlining evoked the mandate of the historical “colonial pact” that forced the old colonies of the British Empire (there was nothing of a voluntary agreement) to supply themselves in the metropolis at a high price, and offer their goods to the lowest price, without being able to place them in the free market.
Something similar lies in his ratification that he will impose unilateral tariffs. According to the executive orders, after his “federal agencies” – omitting, of course, the World Trade Organization, his old multilateral enemy – investigate US trade deficits.
But the purpose is not only to try to balance them by multiplying North American exports. “We will tax foreign countries to enrich our people,” Trump said. It is exactly that spiral strategy, consisting of “beggar thy neighbor” (“beggar my neighbor“), in which developed countries engaged almost a century ago. And that deepened the Great Depression of 1929, initially a stock market crisis. He led the world into the abyss.
