I’ve already said all I plan to (for now) about what’s happening in the US. But if others want to discuss it, here’s an open thread.
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John Quiggin 
Trump has withdrawn the US from the Paris Agreement. The rest is commentary.
There is only one war. So how to hide inequality? What can Trumpists do? (What can other vested interests such as mainstream media, the LNP, ALP, Teals, Greens, and most mainstream economists in Australia do?) Deploy (or suppress or deny) immigration as an issue to divide and wedge.
What does Musk want? One independent economist, “Gary”, says from 2:46:
What does Elon Musk want? – YouTube
“Gary” may come across as being super pro-immigration, but he is not. He says, e.g. at 13:55 below, to recognise that it is massively in the interest of the rich and other vested interests on the so called right and left to promote immigrants as a problem.
Again, in “The Issue I’ve Been Avoiding” (immigration), e.g. at 9:47 below, he says he is neither for more immigration, nor for less immigration:
The Issue I’ve Been Avoiding
Boot stompin’ Elon, putting the boot in, from “The Dusty Show” channel:
“F*ck Your Feelings!” – (Elon Musk H-1B Visa Parody) MUSIC VIDEO – YouTube
There is only one war: class war.
There are hardly any posts so far on this open thread. I wonder why? Have people:
I feel it is a bit of all four.
There is certainly a lot to write about. We can note a few of the main facts. The new President has:
This is just a short list. To what does all this tend? People should be able to figure it out. Will they? No, or not yet apparently. They will continue blindly until collapse. It won’t take long for consequences to manifest.
Maybe words just feel a bit inadequate right now. (I don’t think many people have “given up” – that’s not an option.)
We do still have a robust federal judiciary, and many, many lawyers, at both state and federal levels. It would be a mistake to underestimate them.
It is probably going to be a bad two years, but I think we will survive. I hope so. People will just have to step things up on the state and local level. Again, we don’t have a choice.
And don’t forget to pray or meditate for us! Whatever you can spare.
Limiting immigration + Boosting AI = Productivity growth + Capital Deepening = Trump + Larry Fink et al:
Low immigration countries to boom with AI
Low immigration countries to boom with AI – MacroBusiness
Svante,
It depends on the use to which the AI is put. In the case of plutocracy / kleptocracy / kakistocracy (the current USA) the uses are very likely to be elite crime, exploitation, manipulation, economic system gaming, crypto gaming and the everlasting favourite of certain elites, war.
“Low immigration” is relative to a country’s needs and capacities. Some countries might need high immigration to boost AI. Australia needs lower immigration overall because of high costs of living, housing crisis, health crisis, public services crisis and the environmental / unsustainability crisis. It might need higher immigration of IT and other STEM workers. Nobody seems to mention how we are brain draining poorer countries by doing that. Is that ethical? Few care in the me-first / us-first world.
Iko – that expression of identities above could be strung out further in various ways, such as: = GDP growth, and = GDP per capita growth. Sure, as has been the case for ages with but few and short interruptions, the plutocracy always swallows most of the pie.
Fink’s comments are focus limited. He says “large, developed countries…” followed by “xenophobic immigration policies…” The relatively few countries he has in mind are clear: some assortment in Europe and likely more soon, UK, USA, Canada likely soon, possibly/probably Australia soon, Japan, and China. Australia would benefit from radically reduced immigration. Global economic developments may force that outcome sooner rather than later. Australia may be too far down the hole already to benefit much from consequent productivity growth potential as capital likely may flee too.
Iko, WordPress has swallowed two reply attempts.
But not that one liner! I give up.
Paul Krugman and Gordon Brown have been raising the alarm about the assault on public health by Donald Trump and his even more deranged acolyte RF Kennedy Jr. The risk of another global pandemic in the next four years must bee quite high. In this fight, the USA will shift from an ally to the civilised world to a feckless enemy. I trust that rational governments worldwide are drawing up contingency plans too ban all travel by American citizens and residents of the USA, if it becomes a focus of plague. Limited steps should also be made to protect international medical research projects in which US participants are important, though the scale of the besieged NIH will make full replacement of its budget cuts infeasible. I hope that blue US states led by California, New York and Massachusetts will also step up to protect medical research in their universities.
BTW, the macho MAGA belief that today’s Danes are softie woke wimps, i.e. normal civilised humans, is not entirely wrong. But it isn’t entirely right either. Danish tank crews regularly win the annual tank gunnery competition between NATO armies, and the country has a small and very selective special forces unit, the Jaegers, comparable to SEALs or the British SAS, with similar eclectic training and no doubt a similarly ruthless mindset ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaeger_Corps_(Denmark) ). In a shooting war enemy commanders are a legitimate target – and the US Constitution specifically makes the President the Commander-in-chief of the armed forces (Article II.2.1). It’s not just the Iranian Guards Quds Force that the Secret Service has to worry about. The Jaegers have a nice velvet-glove Latin motto: Plus esse, quam simultatur (“rather to be, than to seem”). Hmm. I read somewhere that the SAS do not use the common military euphemisms for inflicting death – take out, neutralise, eliminate. They say “kill”.
There is a serious assault on public health. I mentioned it in my dot point list above. There is also, or will be very soon, a kleptocratic assault on the public purse in the US.
“The Trump administration has fired about 17 independent inspectors-general at government agencies, an action some fear will remove oversight of his new administration.” – ABC.
“The role of the modern-day inspector-general dates to post-Watergate Washington, when Congress installed offices inside agencies as an independent check against mismanagement and abuse of power.” – ABC.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-26/donald-trump-fires-multiple-watchdog-inspectors-general/104860684
With no spending oversight, the kleptocrats (all the usual suspects) will be able to rob the US Treasury, and thus the nation, at will.
Finally, other nations should stay out of US domestic affairs completely. Interference would end very badly for the nation interfering and be counter-productive in every way. The course of America is in the hands of Americans. They must work things out and solve their problems their way.
Ikonoclast, as an aside your list above warrants further attention from another angle, i.e. a brief compare and contrast of the items with respect to what is already standard in Australia (and in “liberal” democracies elsewhere). It isn’t much prettier. There is plenty trumpy in governments well before Trump.
Continued to promote the “Steal” claim re the 2020 election.
Pardoned all or almost all the of January 6 rioters and insurrectionists, even those convicted of felonies. There are no conditional release orders on any of them. This means bashed police, for example, now fear harassment or reprisals.
Pardoned the creator of the Silk Road dark web site which sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of illegal drugs.
Immigration – Mass deportation orders (multiple orders) and end of birthright citizenship. Some orders may be or are subject to legal challenge.
Ended all affirmative action. Ended department or office for same. Ordered that there are only two legal genders.
Ended all abortion and fertility rights where they were not already ended.
Placed federal employees in unwanted roles on paid leave prior to dismissal.
Ordered many or all departments to cease reporting data for an interim period. This includes the CDC which is currently not permitted to publish or report any data on infectious diseases including, for example, COVID-19 and flu including bird flu.
1) Issued orders to withdraw from the WHO and 2) withdraw from the Climate Accords.
Ordered halts to many renewable energy projects.
Ordered the opening or (of) many preserves to oil and gas drilling.
Brought out meme dollars for himself and wife, surely a conflict of interest with the Office of President.
Svante,
I agree. There is much in the way of “grey corruption” and “grey gifts” in the Australian political system.
https://theconversation.com/how-mates-and-grey-corruption-rig-the-political-game-187622
In the US, Trump has taken it to a whole new level. What Trump is doing is not grey anymore. Dutton, his mates and supporters, want to do things that way in Australia too.
Dangerous times, very dangerous times. In a sad sense, “mere” politics does not matter any more anyway. It is all just human vanity and foolishness. Runaway climate change has begun. Nothing can stop it now. There will be nothing left.
Meanwhile…
20250125 – “This is a very big deal. The United States intends to dominate the world in this critical technology and yet the upstart Chinese have not only produced a system that is every bit as good as America’s best, but have made it more affordable, more accessible and more transparent. What’s not to like?“
China’s DeepSeek Bombshell Rocks Trump’s $500BN AI Boondoggle | ZeroHedge
20250124 – “A little-known AI lab out of China has ignited panic throughout Silicon Valley after releasing AI models that can outperform America’s best despite being built more cheaply and with less-powerful chips.”
How China’s new AI model DeepSeek is threatening U.S. dominance
20250126 – US vs Global ex-US equities (relative price performance, USD) 75-year graphic:
zerohedge on X: “deepseek better not be the real deal… https://t.co/qv6vtINl2d” / X
Are the Magnificent 7 toast? Tariff that! Will the global bubble pop this week?
DeepSeek
MartinK
I don’t post much but imagined I would on this. But I haven’t so far because – 1 I can’t keep up and get a feel for what is going on – and 2 there’s too much to comment on. I’m sure others feel that too. I’m also sure that is a ploy of the the dictator’s handbook.
I usually pick news info from less reliable sources and eventually discard if it isn’t confirmed by a more (relatively) trustworthy news site. This time I am surprised how much of it does get confirmed within a day or 2. (Hopefully what I heard about his Whitehouse staff being compelled to declare loyalty to him personally is not true.)
Seems to me that, compared to Trump’s previous term, we are still getting all the simplistic, vindictive and petty actions and frequent about faces. But there is also a more well planned extreme far right agenda showing, particularly in the executive orders (which I believe are directly from project 2025 though I haven’t seen that confirmed). I don’t think that comes from Trump.
It looks very much a like a push to subvert the constitution and law. Including intimidation of the population in general and of judges and other officials. Fortunately there seems to be some push back. Wonder how that will go.
It looks like the administration is trying for a full on dictatorship. Possibly with brownshirt style thugs and of course many police depts and the ICE will be in on that. I can see that actually happening. No doubt they will try to intimidate voters starting at the mid terms. This could get as bad as any other dictatorship.
There is only one war. Clearly, Trump’s messianic second coming with perpetuity in the offing is what you get from the fake left.
Thomas Piketty and Michael Sandel on the left after Trump – New Statesman
22 January 2025
The left after Trump
In an age of rampant inequality and oligarchic government, two leading thinkers ask: can democratic socialism survive?
By Thomas Piketty and Michael Sandel
<blockquote>TP: Your question makes me think of my recent reading of the new edition of your book, Democracy’s Discontent, which was first published in 1996. There, you make very clear how the excesses of globalisation and the fact that left-of-centre governments in effect supported free trade, globalisation, financialisation, and also the rise of meritocratic ideology contributed to the weakening of democracy and the fact that the Republican Party broadly, and Donald Trump in particular, were able gradually to portray the Democrats as a party favouring the winners of the market.
And something I really enjoyed in the new edition of Democracy’s Discontent is the way you show that both the Clinton years, 1992-2000, and the Obama years, 2008-16 – two very long, eight-year administrations with Democratic presidents – were also administrations that legitimated the neoliberal turning point of Reagan in the 1980s…
MS: …in recent times, it seems to me that the success of right-wing populism, the authoritarian nativist strand, arises as a symptom of the failure of progressive or social democratic politics.
We saw this in the financial crisis of 2008, when first a Republican and then a Democratic administration, in the transition from George W Bush to Obama, bailed out Wall Street. In that moment of crisis, Obama had the choice of whether to restructure the relation of finance to the economy or to reinstate it, and he chose the second. I think this was a decisive moment for his presidency because it represented a departure from the civic idealism that he had inspired as a candidate in 2008, not only in the United States, but around the world – the hope and the expectation that this would be the beginning of a new kind of politics. And then when he took office just after the financial crisis, he appointed the same economists who had served in the Clinton administration, who had deregulated the financial industry. He invited them to try to fix things, and what they did was to bail out the banks and leave ordinary homeowners to fend for themselves.
TP: …Let me come back just a little bit to this term “populist”. You very rightly said that Clinton, Obama, Blair, Schröder, were not able to question the new neoliberal Wall Street kind of ideology about globalisation, financialisation, meritocracy. They were not able to challenge this set of beliefs, but Bernie Sanders, and to some extent Elizabeth Warren, also in 2020, were able to challenge this by putting forward a platform that I like to call democratic socialism, because it goes even further than Franklin D Roosevelt did in terms of progressive taxation. But it also involves a very substantial component of workers’ decision-making power in corporations, with a strong representation of workers on the boards of companies. It also involves a very substantial decommodification strategy through public universities and a public health system. To me, this is not the expression of a sort of populist anger.</blockquote>
Soaring wealth inequality has remade the map of American prosperity
In politics there are always general principles and particular tactics. The general principles seem sound right up until they are refuted by particular tactics. For every truth there are a million lies. Why are we surprised when the lies win? Deception and violence are the way of nature. The war of all against all. Why did we expect “civilisation” to be any different? There is no god and we can have no faith in humankind. The age has arrived which unmasks our true nature.
Leaving aside my nihilism as above, what will Trump’s tariffs do to the USA, Canada, Mexico and China? I guess we need the detail unless it they are blanket tariffs on everything. Subsidiary question, has Trump shown any understanding of how tariffs work and what these tariffs might do?