Introduction
In an earlier post titled “The Specter of Fascism,” I considered the fascist aspects of Trump’s rhetoric and plans (https://vitalissuesbobsheak.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=4124&action=edit). This was sent out on May 25, 2024. There I quoted Federico Finchelstein, who has written extensively about fascism.
In his most recent book, The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy (publ. 2024 by the University of California Press), he identifies “the four pillars of fascism,” including: (1) “violence and the militarization of politics; (2) “lies, myths, and propaganda”; (3) “the politics of xenophobia” and racism; and (4) dictatorship (pp. 16-17). He argues that Trump is not quite a full-blown fascist, but rather a “wannabe fascist because he has not yet become a “dictator,” or a leader with unlimited power.
“Well before January 6, 2021,” Finchelstein writes, “Trump had already established (to some alarming extent) three of the four pillars of fascism: violence and the militarization of policies, racism, and lies. The element that Trumpism was missing was dictatorship. And then the attempted coup d’etat happened….Had this attempt succeeded, Trump would have most likely become a dictator. In that scenario, it would have been more appropriate to think of him as a fascist. Because he wavered and failed, I [Finchelstein] calls him a wannabe fascist” (p. 18). This could all change if Trump wins the presidential election in November, 2024 (as he did). The plans of Trump and the Republican Party are clearly anti-democratic and revolve around the idea of Trump as the permanent leader, a “one-person [with] absolute and permanent rule” (p. 152).
As we all know, Trump narrowly won the presidential election in 2024 under extraordinary circumstances. The authors of the book 2024, Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf, document how Biden’s long delay in withdrawing from the presidential campaign, left Kamala Harris with too little time to mount an effective campaign. She almost managed to win the election anyway and would have won if not for so many gerrymandered elections and financial support from the rich and powerful, especially but from Elon Musk and other billionaires.
Now, well into his seventh month of his second term in the White House, Trump has striven to extend his power over more of the country’s institutions, advancing rightwing, often anti-democratic policies. His efforts are supported by his MAGA base, by the Republican Party, by many rich people and big corporations, by the Supreme Court, and by right-wing media.
In recent weeks, Trump’s popularity has been weakened by the economic dislocations and hardships on most citizens related to his firing of many thousands of federal workers and the related loss of services and jobs. These were exacerbated by Trump’s tariff policies, the arbitrary expulsion of law-abiding, employed immigrant residents, and the highly regressive tax policies in his Big Beautiful Bill. His low poll numbers now reflect how the majority of Americans are unhappy with what Trump is doing and attempting to do.
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Trump’s Tariff Debacle
John Feffer considers the effects of Trump’s tariff policies, August 6, 2025 (https://fpif.org/trumps-tariff-tsunami). He is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus. His latest book is Right Across the World: The Global Networking of the Far-Right and the Left Response. Here’s some of what Feffer writes about in the article.
It’s not difficult to imagine that seasoned trade negotiators are squaring off against Trump’s team, which includes the unseasoned and frankly incoherent Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, to make deals that contain holes big enough to drive a truck through (all the way to the United States). The early evidence is that Trump’s tariffs are backfiring in many ways, including the one statistic that obsesses the president. America’s trade deficit with the world is only increasing.”
China.
“Consider the administration’s approach to China, the third or fourth largest U.S. trade partner depending on the metric. In early April, Trump decided to apply tariffs of about 145 percent on Chinese products. The Dow tanked, and U.S. businesses freaked out at the prospect of huge price increases on components and finished products coming from China.
“Negotiations with the Chinese followed, during which Trump backpedaled like a prizefighter sustaining a series of body blows. The Chinese economy is doing pretty well, and they have natural resources like rare earth elements that the United States desperately needs. So, when China retaliated with high tariffs of their own and threatened restrictions on rare earth elements, Trump was forced to deal. He reduced U.S. tariffs to 30 percent (while China reduced its tariffs on U.S. goods to 10 percent).
“But here’s the kicker. Trump also approved the sale of sophisticated computer chips—Nvidia’s H20 chips, which are designed for artificial intelligence applications—that previous U.S. administrations had blocked. This kind of compromise has signaled to various economic actors that perhaps Trump is not so serious about his tariffs—or, at least, he can be negotiated with.”
The European Union
“Instead of fighting like the Chinese, the European Union accepted a 15 percent tariff rate. That’s ‘definitively better than the 30 percent threatened by Trump,’ writes Cecilia Malmström of the Peterson Institute. ‘But it is still a lot more than the status of trade before Trump’s second term, when the average tariff rate between the European Union and the United States was only a few percentages. Today we face the highest transatlantic tariffs in 70 years.’”
Canada and Mexico
Feffer: “Canada saw its tariffs rise from 25 percent to 35 percent, though this applies to a minority of goods crossing the border that don’t comply with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Trump was pissed off at the earlier reciprocal tariffs against U.S. products, which Canada hasn’t yet removed. A ‘Buy Canada’ campaign and a diversification of trade partners point to a longer-term reduction in Canadian dependency on U.S. markets and suppliers.
Hope that Trump will retract the tariffs
Feffer: “U.S. businesses are also hoping that Trump will eventually retract his tariffs. Although markets fluctuate with the same kind of volatility that characterizes Trump’s temperament, manufacturers don’t appreciate such unpredictability.
“They’ve responded by employing interim hedging measures that have so far not passed on the costs to consumers. One popular [but limited and short-term] tactic has been to stockpile.”
“Consumers, meanwhile, have adopted the tactic of hoarding: consumer electronics, auto parts, building materials, clothing. Even members of the Trump administration have been stocking up on bulk toilet paper in anticipation of price hikes. But pantries can hold just so many bags of Brazilian coffee beans. And worse is to come.”
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Mass Firing of federal workers
Lauren Kaori Gurley writes on the high unemployment in July
(https://washingtonpost.com/business/2025/08/07/unemployment-claims-rise). She
is the labor reporter for The Washington Post.
Gurly cites a Labor Department report that “claims for unemployment benefits jumped to 1.97 million in late July.” That is the highest level since November 2021. “A separate jobs report released last week showed that employers are hiring at close to the slowest pace in more than a decade, excluding the pandemic.”
“Federal layoffs have also accelerated and will continue to rise this year, which could spill over to other industries. A Supreme Court decision in July allowed the Trump administration to proceed with job cuts.”
Gurley refers to a government jobs report released Friday [Aug. 8] that “showed a much slower labor market than previously recorded, with lower-than-expected job gains in July and far fewer job gains in May and June, 258,000 less than previously reported for those months.” Trump responded angrily to the report by taking “the unprecedented step of firing the top official at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, hours after the data was released. Trump claimed, without evidence, that jobs data had been manipulated for political purposes.”
Rather, Trump’s own tariff policy has negatively affected many retail, construction and manufacturing employers “who have paused plans for hiring and expansion amid the expectation of the higher import costs.” That same is true for hiring in white-collar sectors, which has been stagnant for many months. Gurly’s sources say that if economic conditions continue to deteriorate, employers will increase layoffs even more than they have.
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The Bleak Future of Trumponomics
Ryan Cooper writes on the likelihood of a bleak future with Trumponomics for the American Prospect magazine (https://prospect.org/economy/2025-08-06-bleak-future-of-trumponomics). Cooper is a senior editor at the Prospect, and author of ‘How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics.’ His central point is that “Donald Trump is destroying the world’s faith in America and the dollar.” That will cost the country dearly in lost foreign investors.
Cooper continues. “On July 4, Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed into law. It’s a hyped-up edition of the same old Republican dogma. It contains the largest cuts to Medicaid and SNAP benefits in history, which do not even come close to compensating for giant tax cuts, mostly for the rich. It would increase the national debt by $3.3 trillion by 2034; if we assume that all the tax cuts will be made permanent (a certainty if Republicans have anything to say about it), the total is over $5.5 trillion.”
The global importance of the dollar is now threatened
“Since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, turbulent economic times have reliably led to a flight to the safety of dollars and U.S. government debt. That creates a consistent demand for dollar-based assets, so countries and businesses can settle international transactions, and build up exchange reserves to defend against potential currency crises.
“That assumption is now being called into question. Trump’s wildly erratic behavior, abolishing whole federal agencies by fiat and yanking up and down tariffs at random via social media post, has created vast turbulence in the international economy. But instead of a flight to dollar safety, since Trump has taken office, interest rates on 10- and 30-year Treasury bonds are up modestly, while the dollar’s value has fallen about 15 percent against the euro, and about 10 percent against the pound and yen.
This suggests that a new economic order is taking shape, “after the keystone nation of the global economy decided to elect an unhinged maniac, again. Absent some kind of reckoning with MAGA …America will never live this down, and all future administrations will be burdened with Trump’s legacy of lower growth, lower employment, higher inflation, higher interest rates, and a dramatically higher cost of financing the national debt.”
The dollar’s role as global reserve currency
Cooper continues, “as the issuer of the global reserve currency, America has an obligation to provide dollar assets. As Michael Pettis and Matthew Klein argue in their book Trade Wars Are Class Wars, if the government won’t provide them in the form of Treasury bonds, demand for other dollar assets will drive up its value, tanking American exports and widening the trade deficit.
Indeed, the dollar’s reserve status is partly to blame for America’s chronically large trade deficit. As economist Paul Krugman points out, much of these deficits have been financed by foreign investment in the U.S. If those investors lose confidence in America, they might pull back, similar to a “sudden stop” crisis that countries like Argentina and Portugal have faced.
“There are built-in shock absorbers in place for a country as critical to the global economy as America. But those guardrails are buckling under Trump’s leadership. Cooper elaborates.
“Trump has regularly attacked Powell for not cutting rates and might fill the Fed board with toadies to do the job. But rate cuts, combined with other factors, would boost inflation even more. Tariffs are already spiking some prices. New home prices are likely to rise as Trump is deporting so many construction workers. The enormous tax cuts will drive up borrowing, as will the cost of rolling over existing debt, some $14 trillion of which must be refinanced over the next three years. IRS cuts carried out by DOGE, with the obvious goal of preventing audits of wealthy tax cheats, will further cut revenue by an estimated $500 billion this year alone; that’s more money out there to be spent. As a result of all of this, either interest rates will have to stay high, or prices will keep rising.”
International faith in the dollar has been jolted
Withal, the unquestioned faith in the dollar has been shaken by Trump’s erratic tariff policies.
So, while dollars will continue to be used around the world, Cooper expect[s] a steady erosion in the dollar’s hegemonic status, with a greater share of foreign exchange using a basket of other currencies—the euro, the pound, the yen, the Swiss franc, and so on.
“Trumponomics, by contrast, will produce the opposite: a poorer, weaker America, with structurally higher prices, dedicating a large and growing share of its economy to financing debt created by Republican tax cuts for the rich. And it will all be entirely self-inflicted.”
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Trump’s Unforgivable Sin
Peter Wehner and Robert P. Beschel Jr. delve into this issue in an article for The Atlantic, Aug 10 2025 (https://theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/08/trump-incompetence/683779)
Voters have proved willing to tolerate corruption, but there’s one thing they won’t ignore.
“Tens of millions of Americans voted for President Donald Trump in the belief that he would be competent. They might not have been thrilled that Trump is a convicted felon or pleased with his role in the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Many worried that he posed a threat to democracy. But enough were willing to overlook all that, because they convinced themselves that Trump would be an effective chief executive, that under his stewardship their lives would get better, and the country would prosper.
A little more than half a year into Trump’s second term, however, the public’s confidence in Trump’s skill as a chief executive is shattering. Wehner and Beschel cite a recent AP/NORC poll, which found that “only about one-quarter of U.S. adults said that Trump’s policies have helped them.”
“Roughly half report that Trump’s policies have ‘done more to hurt’ them, and about two in 10 say his policies have ‘not made a difference’ in their lives.
“Remarkably, Trump failed to earn majority approval on any of the issues in the poll, including the economy, immigration, and cutting government spending.
“As a result, a politically toxic impression is hardening. Trump’s approval rating in the most recent Gallup poll is 37 percent, the lowest of this term and only slightly higher than his all-time low of 34 percent, at the end of his first term. (Among independents, Trump’s approval rating is down to 29 percent.) Americans already understood Trump to be corrupt and proved themselves willing to tolerate that. But now they are coming to believe that he is inept. In American politics, that is an unforgivable sin.
Prices up, employment down
Wehner and Beschel continue. “On the economic front, Trump’s tariff increases—announced and then altered, often without rhyme or reason—are only now beginning to percolate through the economy, and the steepest hikes haven’t yet kicked in. The economy appears to be slowing down. Consumer prices are up 2.6 percent from a year earlier, which is keeping the Federal Reserve from cutting interest rates despite intense pressure from Trump. The jobs report for July showed a gain of only 73,000, a sign that the labor market is weakening. Perhaps more significant, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the jobs totals from May and June downward by more than a quarter of a million. Unemployment ticked up to 4.2 percent. Consumer spending is well below what it was last year. More than half of all Americans say the cost of groceries is a ‘major’ source of stress in their life right now. Many industries are postponing hiring, and the national hiring rate is near its lowest level in a decade. Customers appear to be holding off on large, long-term purchases. The Budget Lab at Yale University calculates that the American consumer is dealing with an average effective tariff rate of 18.3 percent, the highest since 1934, and it estimates that price increases will cost each household $2,400 on average this year.” General Motors reported last month that Trump’s tariffs have cost the company more than $1 billion. And the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said in a statement that Trump’s latest tariffs “would disrupt essential transatlantic supply chains, to the detriment of businesses, consumers and patients on both sides of the Atlantic.”
Cut backs in the Social Safety Net
Wehner and Beschel point out that the number of Americans without health insurance is going up, increasing by more than 10 million in less than a decade, “with particularly devastating impacts for vulnerable rural populations.”
Delayed tax refunds from the IRS – “Eliminating a quarter of the IRS workforce may well undermine tax collection and increase the wait time for Americans to receive refunds.
“Slashing the Social Security Administration, which is serving more people than ever before, with the fewest workers in half a century, will increase wait times for those needing help. It will lead to field-office closures that will hit seniors in rural communities the hardest and may well delay the processing of retirement, disability, and survivor benefits.”
National Institutes of Health have been devastated — “The Trump administration has devastated the National Institutes of Health, one of the world’s foremost medical-research centers and the biggest sponsor of biomedical research in the world. Nearly 2,500 grants have been ended or delayed, disrupting vital medical research, reducing the pool of available researchers, and compromising public health and disease prevention.”
Massive cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, resulting in the loss of some of the weather service’s most experienced leaders and impeding the collection of data that are essential for accurate and timely weather forecasting, will place Americans at greater risk of experiencing extreme-weather events.
The upcoming elimination of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “As The Atlantic’s David A. Graham has written, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is in disarray, headed by a person who is clearly out of his depth. Trump wants FEMA eliminated by the end of the year. It has already lost about a third of its permanent workforce, and its program dedicated to helping communities prepare for natural disasters such as floods and fires has been canceled.” What are the consequences?
“In the immediate aftermath of the recent Texas floods, FEMA’s earlier decision to lay off hundreds of call-center contractors resulted in thousands of unanswered calls for recovery assistance. (The administration dismissed reports about this as “fake news.”) FEMA didn’t deploy to St. Louis for several weeks after a tornado destroyed parts of the city, leaving people unable to apply for even basic payments for fresh food and medicine, let alone get help addressing uninsured losses from the natural disaster.”
Despite these cuts that national debt is expected to rise by over staggering $3 trillion, largely as a result of Trump’s tariffs and the reductions in federal government spending.
Concluding thoughts
Trump continuously claims that he and his administration are encouraging a strong economy, perhaps the strongest since the high-growth years of the mid-1930s to the mid-1970s. However, as the evidence considered in this post shows, the overall U.S. economy under Trump is doing poorly. It is not clear how this will impact the mid-term elections in November 2026, but poll data indicate that a majority of Americans are unhappy with Trump’s policies.
The future of democracy is in question. If the Republicans continue their control of both houses of the U.S. Congress, along with Trump in the White House and a conservative majority in the Supreme Court, then democracy’s future is dim.
Vital issues - challenging pol and econ power 