329 - The Manchurian President Acts to Subvert and Destroy

Gaza, Tariffs, USAID

Trump is the perfect Manchurian president, pretending to make America great while systematically undermining America's global standing and giving every advantage to China, and by extension to Putin's Russia. Rattling the cages of war by trying to intimidate Panama and Greenland only shifts every advantage to China and lets us join China and Russia as a major threat to sovereignty everywhere.

The Gaza removal ploy, rejected by the possible receiving countries, only diminishes regard for American seriousness and plays, like all of Washington's other precipitous bullying, into the hands of our rivals. If our leader looks and acts like a fool, China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Putin can only smile. And if Trump genuinely wants to take on Gaza himself and expel its residents (in a fit of ethnic cleansing), why not offer them shelter in Florida or Texas? Elon Musk is building a new company town near Brownsville, TX. Why not settle them there?

Sen. Chris Murphy’s comment was among the best that I have seen: “He wants a U.S. invasion of Gaza, which would cost thousands of American lives and set the Middle East on fire for 20 years? It’s sick.”

The Tariff Hoax

By threatening to impose large tariff imposts on allies and relatively tiny additional tariff taxes on China, Trump lashes out directly on the better functioning segments of the global trading system while leaving China to take advantage of such Trump-caused disruption and consternation. Moreover, the U.S. shoots itself massively in the foot or head when it loses its long-praised reliability.

Trump's misguided, even dumb, belief in tariffs simply plays to Beijing's advantage. China can and does now claim the reliable partner sobriquet; it can offer Europe, Canada, Mexico, South American countries, the ASEAN grouping, and all of Africa the kind of steady and sober importing and export procedures and cost structures that were once the proud assets of the U.S.

Trump thinks, possibly, that he can personally boost his own power by flexing the considerable muscles of tariffs. He even acknowledges that imposing tariffs on friends could impose costs on the American consumer. Gas prices could rise, European and Chinese goods could be more expensive, and automobiles will become more costly. Removing the under $800 incoming package exemption (now paused) will eliminate the arrival of inexpensive clothing from overseas while, maybe, stemming a little of the fentanyl import crush. But it is a vast exercise in undermining the respect that the U.S. long received, and that Trump pretends to want to restore. Stupidity is the cause and the result.

China has retaliated by raising their own tariffs on U.S. imports. More worrying is that China has also barred the export to the U.S. of a range of critical minerals that China controls, and that are needed in electronic and other technological manufacturing. How has Trump thus advanced American interests?

Causing consternation only helps China and Russia and reduces the stature of the U.S. Trump thinks that the U.S. is running deficits because Europe doesn't buy sufficient American products. In fact, the last time the U.S. experienced a trade surplus was 1975. We benefit in security and financial terms by having produced a mostly peaceful world with lots of countries gaining good incomes for themselves, using the strong U.S. dollar as the global instrument of exchange, banking through New York, and listing their shares on the New York stock exchange. All of this action helps to sustain American global financial supremacy, which Trump now undercuts.

Everything Trump does to destroy global financial structures must inevitably benefit the number two economic bastion -- China. Russia also benefits if China gains.

Yes, as Trump admits, the citizens of other countries will suffer more than Americans-- at least in the short run. We can impose harm on our one-time friends in Canada and Mexico if we abuse our existing trading arrangements with them, or if we start attacking Europe (which almost exactly today matches us in the levels of tariffs imposed on us by them and by us on Europe).

Canada is (or was) our deep friend, our close and beloved partner. No more. Headline: "Canadians Express Betrayal, See Broken Alliance with US."

Trump may obtain heavier border patrols in the north, with Canada, and in the south, with Mexico, by effectively bullying those countries. But fentanyl production depends on Chinese precursor drug components and Trump has achieved little if Chinese exports of the intermediate product continue. Indeed, everything Trump has done in his first three weeks plays nicely into the Chinese hand, as befits the Manchurian pretender.

The End of Soft Power

Likewise, by massively undercutting our reputation as the world's soft power, principled, do-gooder nation, Trump is doing long-term, possibly irretrievable, damage to everything our presidents have promised for 250 years and were nobly embodied in President Kennedy's inaugural address appeal: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

Kennedy established the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 1961 to help the world's least privileged peoples improve their lives so that they would not be attracted to Communism and could eventually reduce poverty and purchase more American commodities. Today, too, Europe and the U.S. have been trying to boost prosperity across the globe in order to reduce the need to migrate long distances for work. The availability of jobs in the developing world limits the need to flee to the U.S. and Europe.

Now Trump, outsourcing his authority to his own Joseph Goebbels -- Musk, sometime apartheid supporter and nonelected rebirthed racist -- is illegally shutting down USAID. Congressionally established and authorized according to 22 U.S.C §6563, Musk cannot legally substitute his prerogatives for Congress' will. But where are the lawsuits? Why is nothing being immediately held up by judicial action?

Even an intimidated Trump backer like Sen. Lindsey Graham has been upset. "If you don't get involved in the world and you don't have programs in Africa, where China is trying to buy the whole continent, we're making a mistake." Graham reminded us that soft power was the bedrock of American self-interest.

The End of USAID?

Newly elected Virginia Representative Eugene Vindman marched to USAID's headquarters Tuesday with other Congresspersons after saying that Musk's actions were "a clear violation of the Constitution." Congress must approve any changes, he indicated. Mass. Representative Jim McGovern said that as much as Musk and Trump want, "this is not a dictatorship, and we will not allow it to become one."

Without USAID funds and programming across the world millions will die from untreated diseases, especially HIV-AIDS and tuberculosis, fewer Africans will receive impregnated bed-nets to keep them safe from malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Roads and bridges will no longer be built or maintained, potable water piping will end, and support for anti-dictatorial, anti-military rule despotism, will cease -- leaving millions unfree. USAID is the world's largest provider of food assistance.

Instead of such good work that USAID has been doing since 1961 to make the world a better place and to enhance our reputation as a benevolent and well-intentioned big power -- and all for a modest $40 billion in annual appropriations, a mere 1 percent of the total federal annual budget -- Trump seems intent to punish the world and USAID employees for what he has called criminal wokeness. USAID hitherto remained well under the Washington radar, but Trump and Musk view it as an easy target for the kinds of red meat assaults that satisfy some inborn atavism.

USAID's 100,000 employees worked in Washington and sixty foreign nations, providing support for good governance, anti-corruption and accountability initiatives, lots of training, humanitarian relief, and much much more in 130 countries spanning the planet. USAID has been active in helping Ukraine's people survive Putin's invasion, bombardments, and insults to civil society.

Musk called USAID "a viper's nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America." It was, he declared, "a criminal organization. Time for it to die." Trump also called USAID criminal and said its employees were "radical lunatics." Various senators have promised to intervene, but USAID's operations are almost destroyed, along with U.S. soft power. (The State Department's Bureau of Democracy and Labor, which inter alia is active combating Putin and supporting freedom and democracy everywhere, also appears to have been eviscerated, with employees and contractors dismissed.)

Yesterday, too, Trump decided to de-fund and scuttle the Kenyan anti-gang peacekeeping mission in Haiti. Doing so, dumps the Haitians back into their own merciless violent stew. So much for promises, and soft power!

Trumpian fascism and his misguided, anti-woke crusade will continue to do damage to our image of ourselves, our standing in the world, and our self-respect. Judges here and there may be able to slow the wrecking ball, but only a major change in 2026 will save us all from the full onset of wholesale destruction. Along the way, China and Russia will chortle. Be concerned, be active, raise your voices, give to good causes! Let us all attempt to rescue the Republic!

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