The US establishment and a Trump presidency
If elected President, Donald Trump promises to reverse US policy withdrawing from foreign affairs and dropping Biden’s climate change agenda. Expect the Deep State to do what it can to stop him.
ALASDAIR MACLEOD
Introduction
Middle America never bought into Biden’s policies.
The human and financial cost of his attempt to defeat Russia in Ukraine is senseless to them.
Most of them don’t even have passports and have never left the country.
America is their world: why get involved beyond it?
Why rack up enormous debt, when the money is better spent on the US’s creaking infrastructure?
Then there’s climate change and decarbonisation.
America was built on oil, and Biden’s pledge to reduce greenhouse gases by 50% from 2005 levels in 2030 while plentiful American oil is left in the ground makes no sense to Hilary’s deplorables.
Shrewdly, Trump says he will lift Biden’s bans on fracking and ensure that oil prices fall on this additional supply, reducing inflation and allowing interest rates to decline.
Simplistic maybe, but the voter appeal is obvious.
In this respect, the selection of Kamala Harris as Biden’s Democratic Party successor has probably increased the likelihood that the swing states will go Republican, despite allegations of voter fraud.
Harris is left wing, woke, and a gender and racial identity promoter.
Attempts to capture the middle ground will not be credible.
The choice for voters will be simple: do you want more wokism and higher taxes, or do you want to back away from them?
Harris’s selection has almost certainly improved Trump’s chances of winning the Presidency, to the dismay of the permanent establishment.
Trump’s foreign policies are a worry for Washington and Langley.
These entrenched bureaucracies have had a long-standing agenda of controlling the world in US interests.
They succeeded under Reagan’s Star Wars in bringing an end to the Soviet Union, opening the door to capitalism, and Mao’s death led to an even more dramatic conversion in China.
But inevitably, reformed China and Russia would eventually grow to challenge America’s hegemony.
The Deep State failed to come to terms with this reality.
The entire armaments industry, the Department of Defence, the dollar-based monetary system, and US global business interests all depend on America’s military and financial power over the rest of the world being maintained.
But in perpetuating it, America has made many strategic errors fighting reality.
Ukraine, Israel, and the denial of peace
The CIA had a strong legacy network of Nazi agents in Ukraine, dating back to Germany’s defeat in 1945 and the post-war Soviet occupation.
Therefore, if Russia was to be undermined, Ukraine was the practical route due to its location as well established intelligence links.
The CIA’s strategy to destabilise Russia first surfaced in the 2004 Orange Revolution, continuing through Euromaidan in 2014.
When Russia commenced her special military operation in February 2022, Putin was aware of US intentions to use Ukraine as a bridgehead for destabilising Russia.
His SMO was to head off further American action.
The problem for the Deep State is that its long-term plans to destabilise and gain control of Russia and her natural resources have failed.
The alternative to abandoning this proxy war is to double down, perhaps encouraging it to spread to Poland and the Baltics in an attempt to stretch Russia’s military resources.
If it comes to peace negotiations, so far as the Deep State is concerned this is an affair for the US Secretary of State and no one else.
It cannot sanction Viktor Orbán’s remarkable success in discussing a potential peace agreement with first Zelensky, then Putin, Xi, and finally Trump.
Despite having the rotating presidency of the EU, Orbán does not have the support of Brussels, which is in the Deep State’s pocket.
The European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, rudely dismissed Orbán as just an employee (presumably she meant not a policymaker — that responsibility is only for unelected officials).
The EU, its members states, and the UK toe or are expected to toe the CIA line as members of American-controlled NATO.
Orbán is seen as a Putin admirer and a loose cannon.
But being cornered between a Russian rock and a CIA hard place, Zelensky almost certainly wants out — evidenced by his willingness to discuss the matter with Orbán and on his recent call discussing peace with Trump.
What are the CIA’s options?
The Deep State handbook suggests a false flag operation.
I’ve already mentioned drawing in EU NATO members (Poland, the Baltics, or even Finland) more directly into confrontation with Russia, which risks a wider European war.
But that might not concern insensitive Deep State operatives, who have shown no regret about creating a Europe-wide refugee crisis as a direct consequence of its actions in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.
Europe is over there, and we are here. Ergo, Europe is expendable seems to be the Langley view.
Furthermore, Europe appears to be falling apart politically, with Orbán being in tune with ordinary Europeans, who according to a poll by the Institute for Global Affairs referenced later in this article overwhelmingly want peace negotiations.
Then there’s the situation in the Middle East.
It is clear that Israel is counting on drawing the US into a war against Iran and her proxies.
A Trump presidency would bring huge uncertainty to Netanyahu’s gamble, and if Trump withdrew US support it could even threaten Israel’s future existence.
In its dying days, perhaps an escalation of tensions in the Middle East could be the Biden administrations’ last desperate attempt to unite the American people behind its Democrat government and vote for Harris.
But Harris is sympathetic to America’s Islamic voters, so on the face of it not likely to support Israel’s war on Gaza.
However, the permanent establishment has the means to manipulate this demonstrably ineffective politician.
The Deep State has shown itself to be increasingly desperate to preserve America’s global supremacy.
And it is almost certain that the next President, if he is Donald Trump, will be its enemy.
Orbán has shown that if nothing is done, Trump, Zelensky, Putin, and Xi will find a settlement between Ukraine and Russia.
And Trump’s determination to isolate America from foreign affairs and international trade strikes at the heart of America’s Deep State.
Assuming a Trump presidency…
Events and a more politically astute Trump Version 2 have conspired to make him favourite to become the next US President.
He will have to survive until November in a fight against the permanent establishment, likely to be hell-bent on stopping him.
Let us assume that he survives and succeeds.
Trump’s economic policies are simple: to protect and to promote US businesses.
It is a point not lost on California’s tech titans, who have abandoned Biden/Harris and are now contributing to Trump’s campaign funds.
They see a friendlier approach to the crypto industry, less regulation, and protection from foreign competition.
The only fly in the tech ointment is Trump’s antipathy towards electric vehicle subsidies, but Tesla’s Elon Musk appears to be pragmatic on this point.
Other than the drift towards deeper wokeness and identity politics, the wider electoral support is for job protection from Chinese competition, and a weariness of incessant military ventures abroad.
Fatigue of America’s proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is confirmed by pollsters.
According to a recent poll by the Institute for Global Affairs:
“There is broad transatlantic support for urging a negotiated settlement to end the war in Ukraine.
In both the US and Western Europe, respondents selected reasons to support NATO countries pushing for a negotiated settlement more than twice as often as reasons to oppose exerting this influence.”
On this evidence, the Biden/Harris administration is at odds with the American electorate, while Trump is in tune with it.
That the administration is being denied even the relative luxury of a pyrrhic victory is not lost on the American people, and increasingly they want out.
And Trump’s no nonsense approach to foreign relations, exemplified by his parley with “little rocket man” in 2017 is undoubtedly a vote winner.
From his statements, Trump obviously believes that Ukraine is fundamentally a European affair, and that the US should not be involved.
He believes that Europe takes US military spending for granted.
He sees peace negotiations as the way out for America and has indicated as much.
Trump is all about MAGA — making America great again, achieved by only pursuing America’s direct interests and not being the World’s policeman or the principal buyer of its goods.
It is an autarkic policy, which signals that America doesn’t need the rest of the world.
The assumption is that others, particularly China exploits America undermining American businesses and jobs.
Stop that through tariffs for a double win: American business can then rise again.
Tariff revenue and defence cuts will pay for income tax to be reduced.
Oil supplies can be boosted through fracking, which will lower energy prices, and as inflation drops, interest rates will fall.
If only life and economics were so straightforward, but it is a simple message with enormous electorate appeal.
With respect to climate change policies, by challenging the status quo Trump will take the lead against eco-warriors everywhere.
Governments fully committed to the WEF-coordinated climate change agenda will be badly wrongfooted, as will be the entire decarbonisation industry, particularly in China.
The resumption of fracking will undermine OPEC+’s management of oil prices, with negative consequences for both Russia and the Saudis.
It promises to be the greatest revolution in political direction for decades.
A Trump win may lessen the likelihood of a global war, but it is likely to create other problems for the Asian axis.
An analysis of these challenges will be the topic of a future essay.
The problem with Trump
The changes a new Trump administration can be expected to bring have much to commend them.
The problem with Trump is his simplistic grasp of economics.
He believes in Laffer-curve Reaganomics which posit that lower taxes promote economic growth and therefore higher tax receipts.
There is some truth in these assertions, assuming trade tariffs produce the necessary revenue without side effects, and proposed defence cuts are actually implemented, curbing the budget deficit.
Both suppositions are highly questionable, and Trump’s reference to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 as proof of tariffs’ potential to raise revenue merely demonstrates his ignorance of how and why it destroyed much of American industry, intensifying the depression not just for America but for the whole world.
The Reagonomics argument is what tripped up Liz Truss, who tried to implement similar policies of tax cuts to stimulate economic growth and therefore tax receipts.
The essential condition to make it work is to have the time to allow it to do so.
When Reagan became president in 1981, US debt to GDP was 31%.
He had time for Reagonomics to work without leading to a debt crisis.
Today, that horse has already bolted and with major foreign holders selling US dollar debt and a debt to GDP approaching 130% the US Government’s debt trap is already sprung.
Under Trump, therefore, budget deficits are likely to rise leading to higher borrowing rates just as the debt problem is intensifying.
The consequence of stifling imports by raising tariffs with be increasing, not falling consumer price inflation.
If we learned anything from the Liz Truss debacle, it is that the underlying fragility in financial markets will be exposed by an attempt to revert to lower taxes without cutting public spending.
The US Government system with its pork-barrel politics simply does not allow for the necessary cuts.
Consequently, while there is much to commend in Trump’s foreign policy agenda, his economic policies will fail potentially more rapidly than under Harris.
Wise observers will therefore continue to get out of dollar credit and into real money, which is gold whoever wins.
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