Ian Welsh – Page 88 – The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

So, a very partial list of donors to Trump’s second inauguration includes:

Apple’s Tim Cook.
Ken Griffon of Citadel.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.
Sam Altman of OpenAI.
Zuckerberg of Meta/Facebook.
Dara Koroshawi of Uber.
General Motors, Ford and Toyota.

Trump imposed a lot of sanctions on China in his first term but somehow Apple avoided most of them. Not coincidentally Tim Cook supposedly talked to Trump every week. I’m sure he spent that time being Trump’s good friend and toady.

I don’t blame him for it, it was his job. Apple sold a ton of phones in China and made most of their gear in China. Trump could have (and can) tear the heart of out of Apple.

The FTC is planning to take Meta to court over anti-trust violations this year. Want to bet they change their minds?

Amazon is nothing but a giant sucking anti-trust violation.

Olds will remember that Microsoft was almost broken up by an anti-trust suit. The government was clearly winning its case in 2000, but when Bush Jr. took power, the government suddenly decided to drop the case. Saved Gates billions and billions.

Trump’s tariff plans are going to hit a lot of companies hard, but some will likely get waivers, as Apple did. Wouldn’t you pay a million dollars, or ten million, to predispose Trump to make sure you get a waiver that will save you billions?

Sure you would.

Wearing kneepads for the President and other important political figures is part of the CEO’s job. And Trump, more than most Presidents requires sycophants and courtiers around him. You make him feel good, he takes care of you.

You tell him he’s wearing the Emperor’s “New Clothes” and that doesn’t end well for you. You steal the limelight from him too often (like Bannon did and Musk seems to be) and that may end badly for you.

Musk, by the way, is in particular trouble. Though most people haven’t caught on yet, Tesla, which is the vast majority of his wealth in terms of over-inflated stock, is in huge trouble. Chinese EV firms produce better cars for half the price. Even domestic firms like GM are now producing cars which are, arguably, better and given how slow Tesla’s model cycle is, it won’t be arguable for much longer. Musk needs government protection and aid, like the 100% tariffs Biden put on Chinese cars. He should be very careful not to irritate Trump and be eager to get down, not just on his knees, but on his belly,. All it would take is Trump providing a waiver for BYD and Musk would be lucky to be worth a hundred billion let alone be the richest man in the world.

Of course if you run a small or medium business, you aren’t going to have a personal relationship with Trump and are a lot less likely to get a business-saving waiver or a rule made especially to help your company. That’s America under imperial Presidency rule.

In the meantime, the kneepads are on, the CEOs are kneeling and Trump’s enjoying himself. Welcome to the second Trump Presidency.

SUBSCRIBE OR DONATE

Canadian PM Trudeau’s Resignation is Perfectly Normal

By Ian Welsh

On January 6, 2025

27 Comments

He ruled for about the normal time for Canadian Prime Ministers. This, from Taibbi, is well-written nonsense:

Canadian Prime Minister and feminist heartthrob Justin Trudeau resigned this morning. His departure completes an unprecedented popularity cliff dive, dropping from 65% to an incredible 16% approval rating over the course of a nine-year reign that men will chuckle over, from now through the end of time. Centuries from now, fathers will sit sons on their knees and tell The Fall of Trudeau as a cautionary tale.

Trudeau had about nine years:

Harper had 9 years;
Martin had 3;
Chretien had 10;
Campbell had less than one, but was an unelected caretaker PM; and,
Mulroney had 9.

American red-pill nonsense is just that. Trudeau was was a gifted politician who was bad at policy. He resigned because his own caucus wanted him gone, as they think they’re more likely to keep their seats without him.

The Liberals won’t win the next election, the standard pattern in Canadian politics is for the Liberals and Conservatives to alternate. Barring some huge surprise, the Conservatives will rule next. But how much of a majority they have will depend a lot on who the next Liberal leader is.

This is a nothing-burger. Yes, Trudeau could have been a better Prime Minister. He mishandled Covid in the same way as almost every other western leader; let in way too many immigrants, and inflation, especially in rent and food hurt him just like it did every other neo-liberal government of the era.

I despise Trudeau. He’s an empty neoliberal suit coasting on being le dauphin. (Son of Pierre Trudeau, one of Canada’s greatest Prime Ministers.) But he was a gifted politician, and his fall is bog standard for Canadian post-war Prime Ministers. It is entirely normal and has nothing to do with red-pills, cucks, soy, pick-up artists, feminism or any other culture nonsense. All of that is just noise, he may have been attacked on the cultural politics of the day, but he lost because people became worse off under his rule and because his time was, essentially, up. Even a very good Prime Minister finds it hard to hold on for more than two terms in Canadian politics.

He’s not an extraordinary cautionary tale and no one except historians will remember him in fifty years, let alone centuries from now.

SUBSCRIBE OR DONATE

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 05, 2025

By Tony Wikrent

On January 5, 2025

9 Comments

By Tony Wikrent

Guide for the perplexed – Google is no longer the best search engine

[The Register, via The Big Picture 01-01-2025]

Perplexity offers several advantages over Google as a search engine, making it a compelling alternative for many.

Stand Out: How to Prevent Obeying in Advance

[3 Quarks Daily, via Naked Capitalism 01-03-2025]

Wikileaks has just put all its files online. It’s all there!

DefendDemocracy.Press, January 1, 2025

Wikileaks has just put all its files online.

It’s all there: Hillary Clinton’s emails, McCain’s guilt, the Vegas shooting perpetrated by an FBI sniper, Steve Jobs’ letter on HIV, Pedo Podesta, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iran, Israel, the military-financial complex, the mafia/mafias, CIA agents arrested for rape, conspiracies, CIA false-flag attacks, the WHO pandemic, etc…..

Strategic Political Economy

How Fascism Came

Chris Hedges, December 29, 2024

For over two decades, I and a handful of others — Sheldon Wolin, Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Barbara Ehrenreich and Ralph Nader — warned that the expanding social inequality and steady erosion of our democratic institutions, including the media, the Congress, organized labor, academia and the courts, would inevitably lead to an authoritarian or Christian fascist state. My books — “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” (2007), “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009), “Death of the Liberal Class” (2010), “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” (2012), written with Joe Sacco, “Wages of Rebellion” (2015) and “America: The Farewell Tour” (2018) were a succession of impassioned pleas to take the decay seriously. I take no joy in being correct.

“The rage of those abandoned by the economy, the fears and concerns of a beleaguered and insecure middle class, and the numbing isolation that comes with the loss of community, would be the kindling for a dangerous mass movement,” I wrote in “American Fascists” in 2007. “If these dispossessed were not reincorporated into mainstream society, if they eventually lost all hope of finding good, stable jobs and opportunities for themselves and their children — in short, the promise of a brighter future — the specter of American fascism would beset the nation. This despair, this loss of hope, this denial of a future, led the desperate into the arms of those who promised miracles and dreams of apocalyptic glory.”

President-elect Donald Trump does not herald the advent of fascism. He heralds the collapse of the veneer that masked the corruption within the ruling class and their pretense of democracy. He is the symptom, not the disease….

The End of New Deal Liberalism, by William Greider, exactly 14 years ago

Tony Wikrent, January 04, 2025 [RealEconomics]

Bill Greider was the former national affairs editor at Rolling Stone, who left us in December 2019. The man was a prophet — from exactly 14 years ago:

The End of New Deal Liberalism
By William Greider
The Nation, January 5, 2011

(reposted by Physicians for a National Health Program)

We have reached a pivotal moment in government and politics, and it feels like the last, groaning spasms of New Deal liberalism. When the party of activist government, faced with an epic crisis, will not use government’s extensive powers to reverse the economic disorders and heal deepening social deterioration, then it must be the end of the line for the governing ideology inherited from Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson.

Political events of the past two years have delivered a more profound and devastating message: American democracy has been conclusively conquered by American capitalism. Government has been disabled or captured by the formidable powers of private enterprise and concentrated wealth. Self-governing rights that representative democracy conferred on citizens are now usurped by the overbearing demands of corporate and financial interests. Collectively, the corporate sector has its arms around both political parties, the financing of political careers, the production of the policy agendas and propaganda of influential think tanks, and control of most major media.

What the capitalist system wants is more—more wealth, more freedom to do whatever it wishes. This has always been its instinct, unless government intervened to stop it. The objective now is to destroy any remaining forms of government interference, except of course for business subsidies and protections….

Sanders Lays Out Plan to Fight Oligarchy as Wealth of Top Billionaires Passes $10 Trillion

Jake Johnson, December 31, 2024 [CommonDreams]

Tracking the Signs of Decline in America

By Ian Welsh

On January 2, 2025

22 Comments

If you want to be a decent analyst, let alone a forecaster, you need to know how to find real information. A lot of official statistics are either useless (inflation, unemployment numbers) or misleading.

Russia, with assists from Iran and North Korea and China (in non military goods, though often useful for making military goods) is out producing NATO in war material. If you just look at the GDP of NATO vs. Russia/China/Iran/NK you’d predict that couldn’t happen and you’d be wrong and like a lot of people you’d think Ukraine might or would win the war.

Most people go on and on about how the US still has a bigger economy than China, but China has way more industry and leads in about 80% of technological fields even as the US can barely build ships, is losing its steel industry and is only creative in biotech and infotech. These same people will tell you how well the US economy is doing. China’s shifting its house building to primarily government. Meanwhile:

Eighteen percent last year.

Since 2020 billionaire wealth has doubled.

GDP tells you how much activity in your country is conducted thru money, as opposed to unpaid labor. That tells you much economic activity you can easily tax. That’s all it tells you.

It doesn’t tell you how well off your people are. It doesn’t tell you how healthy they are. It doesn’t tell you (directly) how many tanks you can build, or planes or missiles. It doesn’t tell you if you can feed your population if foreign shipments are disrupted. It doesn’t tell you how many of them have homes and how many of those homes are good. it doesn’t tell you how many people do or don’t have healthcare. It doesn’t tell you how advanced you are technologically. It doesn’t tell you if your flagship airplane company can’t design and build good planes any more.

It also doesn’t tell you that America is doing better than Europe and its other allies because US economic policy is set up to cannibalize their industry. When Germany loses energy-intensive firms, a lot of them move production to the US. Burning down America’s allies to slow America’s decline isn’t a sign of strength.

America’s in decline because its entire political-economy is set up not to be productive or to spread wealth around, but to funnel money to the rich without them having to produce much of anything. China’s stock-market trades sideways, like America’s did in the 50s and 60s. Americans make money on housing and stocks without having to do a thing. Private Equity makes money by buying companies with debt, loading the companies up with that debt and then driving them into bankruptcy, destroying real productive economic activity in exchange for dollars in a declining country.

Real power comes from real production, technology, a healthy and loyal population, and the ability to turn all of that into military power when necessary. America’s military, for years now, has been unable to meet recruiting goals. Its enemies are ahead on missiles and drone, catching up on airplanes and outproducing it massively in ships.

China’s rising. Russia’s rising. America and its allies are in serious decline.

THE END

SUBSCRIBE OR DONATE

Happy New Years

By Ian Welsh

On January 1, 2025

14 Comments

I hope you had a good year and that next year is good for you. It’ll be a bad year for the world, but that doesn’t mean it has to be for individuals.

I’ll probably hold off on the promised “what can Europe do” post till next week.

Feel free to use as an open thread.

Well That Was Hell: 2024 In Review

By Ian Welsh

On December 31, 2024

7 Comments

The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole

Not the best of all years. Annus Horriblus.

Gaza: Genocide continues and seems likely to be successful. I’d guess the actual casualties are somewhere north of 700K at this point, they sure aren’t anywhere close to the official numbers. Never again meant nothing.

Hezbollah: Held the Israelis off on the ground, but were devastated by Mossad assassinations and terrorism (the cell phone attack) plus a bombing campaign against civilians they were unwilling to endure. Some signs the war may start up again after the 60 day ceasefire, but without air defense, I don’t think they have it in them to tough it out. Could be wrong.

Syria: I don’t know anyone who expected the Syrian army to collapse the way it did. Israel’s occupied an area about 4X that of Gaza and destroyed most of the Syrian army’s stockpiles, plane and air defenses. Syria’s pretty much defenseless. Some signs of a guerilla war starting against the new “government”. Meanwhile Turkey and its proxies are hammering the Kurds.

Iran: the leadership has proved extremely cautious, though the youngs in the Revolutionary Guard are not and when Khamenei dies, there may be a change in policy. Proved that Israel can’t stop their missile attacks, but unwilling to use them except under extreme provocation and pressure from the youngs. Lost their Syrian ally and Hezbollah has taken hard hits, while the population has lost faith in the system. Not a good year for them.

Russia: continues to grind forward in Ukraine. Economy is doing very well, thanks and they’re now arguably the 4th largest economy in the world, having overtaken Germany. Solid alliance with China. Pretty good year, actually.

Ukraine War: Russia’s winning and all signs are that the Ukrainian army is running out of manpower. Assuming Putin doesn’t accept a peace deal (he shouldn’t, unless Trump offers a better deal than Trump’s likely to offer) I expect the Ukrainian army to collapse in 2025 and the war to go big arrow. Most likely the war will end in a humiliating surrender, perhaps even an unconditional one.

Europe: Industrial collapse, especially in Germany. Germany and France are now ungovernable by either the center-right or left. France is being kicked out of Africa. China is buying fewer and fewer German cars and European goods. America is cannibalizing European industry thanks to lower energy costs. Without a massive turnaround in policy Europe is headed for a massive decline. Wouldn’t expect EU collapse in 2025, but 2026 is possible.

America: Continues its slow decline. Cannibalizing its allies industry to try to sustain itself. Largely unable to create new tech outside of the information sector. Costs are insane, the rabble are getting uppity and Trump is likely to pursue policies better for oligarchs than ordinary people. Loss in Ukraine will be a huge hit to American prestige and power.

Massive eighteen percent increase in homelessness, even as billionaires have doubled their wealth since 2020.

Yemen: The only truly moral nation in the world, as the only one going all out to try and stop a genocide. I don’t like their ideology much, but when they’re the only people standing up, so what?

Anglosphere (Canada, Britain, Australia): experimented with massive immigration and its skyrocked housing and rent and caused massive political instability. Labour and the Canadian Liberals will lose their next elections, but the people who will replace them are Trump-style tards and decline will continue even as looting of the public sector intensifies.

China: Slowing growth but still doing fine, thanks. Massive investment in industry, has taken the lead in about 80% of tech fields, including electric vehicles and drones. Pumping out naval vessels like there’s no tomorrow and has over a 1,000 ICBMs now. Moving up the semiconductor chain far faster than almost anyone (except me) predicted. Eating America and Europe’s lunch in the developing world, since they offer cheaper goods, development and loans without the hypocritcal lectures about human rights.

Generally speaking the decline of the American empire, the rise of a new cold war, the end of neoliberal globalization and the age of revolution and war are all on track as I predicted years ago. Climate change is accelerating, we’re ignoring it and morons are worried about population decline while humanity is in vast population overshoot. This isn’t the worst year of your life, it’s the best year of the rest of your life in geopolitical, economic and ecological terms.

Annus Horribulus will return next year.

SUBSCRIBE OR DONATE

The MAGA Civil War Over H1-B Visas

By Ian Welsh

On December 30, 2024

18 Comments

Is like watching a cage match between the two worst people in the world.

In this corner, the screw the peons billionaires.

In the other corner, the racist anti-immigrant nativists!

Personally I’m cheering for the racist anti-immigrants.

Vivek Ramaswany delightfully opinined that the problem is that American culture doesn’t produce people willing to work hard enough and celebrates prom queens and jocks over math olympiads. (American engineers aren’t keen on 12 hour work days.)

Funny thing, I’m in my 50s so I remember when prom queens and jocks really were worshipped and nerds were beaten up: and back then the US still led the world in engineering. And the 50s, the pinnacle of American power, were not noted for love of nerds. There’s some truth to what Vivek says, but culture isn’t why America has fallen behind. Instead America deliberately offshored its industry to China and China has maintained a cost advantage.

H1-B visas obviously take jobs from Americans. Yes, companies must say they doesn’t, but they do. H1B workers can’t leave their employers unless they have another lined up immediately, so they do what they’re told or go home. As such, they obviously have reduced bargaining power compared to natives or landed immigrants. This drives down wages for natives, “if you won’t do it, we’ll get an immigrant to, and they’ll take the wage we’re offering.”

The left-wing argument against guest workers, and H1B visas are just tech guest workers, is that if we genuinely need workers, then they should be over here either as landed immigrants or on a visa which allows them to quit and have some reasonable time to find another employer. A class of workers with reduced rights will obviously be preferred by management and will reduce the bargaining power of native workers.

Indians, who get most of these tech visas, aren’t culturally superior workers. They’re desperate workers, and desperate workers are good workers, for bosses.

Trump, of course, came down on Musk’s side. Billionaire solidarity is real and Trump has used H1B visa workers often in his own business.

Trump’s in his second term. MAGA got him elected, but the only reason he might care what they want any more is concern for mid-terms. Other than that, they don’t matter.

If they do want to win, the way is to emphasize that Musk and Vivek are in charge, they’re the real Presidents, and that he’s just their “cuck”, to use the modern term.

Trump doesn’t care about anybody but himself, but he has plenty of ego. Use it.

In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy the cage match.

SUBSCRIBE OR DONATE

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 29, 2024

By Tony Wikrent

On December 29, 2024

4 Comments

By Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

A Newly Declassified Memo Sheds Light on America’s Post-Cold War Mistakes

[Slate, via Naked Capitalism 12-27-2024]

…The newly discovered memo, written in March 1994 by Wayne Merry, chief of the U.S. Embassy’s [in Moscow] internal politics division at the time, didn’t make the same impact as Kennan’s for two reasons. First, Merry did not go public. Second, unlike Kennan’s memo, Merry’s was at odds with U.S. policy and was ignored, then buried, and its author was blackballed, by the policymakers at the time. In fact, it was buried so deeply that it was declassified just last week as the result of a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive, a private research firm at George Washington University.

Looking at it today, more than 30 years after the fact, it’s a remarkably prescient document that should prompt several lessons about how to run foreign policy.

Merry’s memo, titled “Whose Russia Is It Anyway: Toward a Policy of Benign Respect,” was written as Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s experiment with democracy and free-market economics was in heightened turmoil. The party of his prime minister, Yegor Gaidar, the architect of his economics policy, had recently lost an election—the result of popular discontent with the policy’s extreme inflation and displacement. Yeltsin mobilized tanks in downtown Moscow to put down an attempted putsch—launched for a variety of motives—in Russia’s Parliament. Yet, to the frustration of specialists in the U.S. Embassy, including Merry, many senior officials back in Washington saw Yeltsin as a still-strong figure and his “shock therapy” economics—which they had been pushing, along with a bevy of academic advisers, many of them from Harvard—as a success.

Merry stressed the urgent need for a course correction:

Democratic forces in Russia are in serious trouble. We are not helping with a misguided over-emphasis on market economics. There is no reason to believe the Russian economy is capable of rapid market reform. There is reason to fear that an intrusive Western effort to alter the economy against the wishes of the Russian people can exhaust the already-diminishing reservoir of goodwill toward America, assist anti-democratic forces, and help recreate an adversarial relationship between Russia and the West.

The West, Merry continued, should focus more on helping Russia develop “workable democratic institutions” and a “non-aggressive external policy.” U.S. interests “are directly tied to the fate of Russian democracy but not to the choices that democracy may make about the distribution of its own wealth” or “the organization of its means of production and finance.”….

With Help From NAFTA 2.0, US Strikes Brutal Blow Against Mexican Food Sovereignty, Health and Global Biodiversity

Nick Corbishley, December 24, 2024 [Naked Capitalism]

…Mexico has lost the dispute settlement panel brought by the US and Canada over its attempt to ban imports of genetically modified corn for direct human consumption. On Friday (December 20), the arbitration panel ruled in favour of the United States, asserting that Mexico’s 2023 decree banning the use of genetically modified (GM) white corn for human consumption violated the terms of the trade agreement.

It wasn’t even a close run thing: the panel’s three judges agreed with the US on all seven counts in the case. The panel has given Mexico 45 days to realign its policies with the ruling. Failure to do so could result in stiff penalties, including sanctions.

As we’ve noted before, this case may be an important battle for Big Ag lobbies and biotech companies but it is an existential one for Mexico, for whom corn is the cornerstone not only of its cuisine and diet but also its culture….

Support for Luigi Mangione Reflects Working Class Weariness of Top-Down Violence

Megan Thiele Strong, December 28, 2024 [Common Dreams]

Some fear the positive regard of Mangione is indicative of a shift into a new era where violence is glorified and humanity is lost. As a sociology professor who teaches Poverty, Wealth, and Privilege, I disagree. This failure of subsets of the public to broadly denounce the actions of Mangione does not herald a cultural shift in appreciation of violence….

Second, the working classes are weary from surviving an unnecessarily violent and unjust society. We live amid staggering class, race, and gender-based stratification and life and death stakes everyday. The ruling class profits from our blood, sweat, and tears. And yet, when one of the elite passes, they want us to give them more. They ask us to give them our love. Yet, they remain calloused to our pain and ignore our pleas for fairness.

We all deserve the same sanctity of life given to wealthy insiders. However, when it comes to many of our social systems, such as healthcare, respect and care are not institutionalized; instead, harm is normalized. We see “out-sized returns” to private equity investors….

Our healthcare system is not pro-health. The World Health Organization (WHO) names universal healthcare as a worldwide goal. The United States has not complied. Most Americans are insured through private companies. Many Americans struggle to pay for healthcare, they postpone receiving care, and are in medical debt. The healthcare system has practices, such as using AI to deny a high number of healthcare claims, which put profits over people. There is something deeply inhumane and harmful about this disregard for health in a healthcare system. It may not be illegal, but it is savage.

The elite and their apologists ask, “How could they not be appalled by Thompson’s murder?” Instead we, as a community, might ask, how are the elite and their apologists not appalled by a harm-rich system that normalizes the idea that humans are only as valuable as their economic worth? Decades ago, Larry Summers, currently on the board of directors of OpenAI, famously wrote that people who produce less are more expendable. This classist ideology pervades our healthcare system….

Global power shift

The Plan To Carve Up the World Is Underway