Trump’s Economic Policies: Road to Ruin

Donald Trump, with his lack of decorum revealing his white supremacist agenda, is following the Project 2025 playbook laid out for him by the Heritage Foundation (the same playbook presented to and utilized by every president in some form or fashion for decades). It calls for the prevention of working class solidarity, implementation of austerity measures, cutting funding to essential programs that help workers, deportation of immigrants, investing of tax dollars into stocks and crypto currencies, and the overall plunging of America into a trade war against the rest of the world.

Donald Trump’s austerity measures levied towards the American working class seek to cut federal spending on programs that help workers while reducing taxes for the wealthy and forcing employees to pay their bosses’ bills. To accomplish this, Trump gave Elon Musk the reins to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). DOGE's purported goal is to eliminate “waste, bloat, and insularity” in the federal bureaucracy. DOGE’s idea of “efficiency” is reducing money spent on “frivolous” things and rerouting it to defense spending and government contracts that will enrich the capitalist class. One of the main ways they do this is by firing workers at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of Education (DOE), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Internal Revenue Services (IRS), Veterans Affairs (VA), and Environmental Protection Agency and Forest Service (EPA). This decision barely reduces government spending but greatly impacts the lives of citizens. This is not a fluke; as capitalism develops new technology and saturates markets, it becomes harder for capitalists to maintain profits. The only solution for these capitalists to secure more profits and avoid an economic crisis is to increase the rate of exploitation of labor and squeeze, by hook or by crook, as much value as they can from the workers. This is where the neoliberal economic policies of Trump — and Reagan and Thatcher — spring out of. As the state assists corporations in this squeezing, the working class gets left behind in the aftermath.

While Trump's 2017 tax cut extensions are a reduction in many workers’ overall tax burden, estimates suggest that the bottom 50% of Americans received a tax cut of a mere $500 or less. In stark contrast, the tax cuts disproportionately benefit billionaires, with estimates showing upwards of $252,000 in taxes cut from the wealthiest Americans. These tax cuts resulted in reduced spending on vital and essential programs like food stamps, health care, green energy, and student aid. The capitalist ruling class will continue to utilize the state to do away with economic reforms and social safety nets — that laborers struggled so hard and died for — to render the working class more desperate and ripe for exploitation. They also make use of media outlets and publishers to blast the masses with capitalist propaganda which not only favorably promote the machinations of capitalism, but give people a list of individual acts to do (such as calling your representatives or voting for the lesser evil). This tactic takes the energy and rage workers have, and funnels it into avenues that can’t possibly make any substantial change. The job of every US politician, no matter how progressive they may seem (even “left” leaning Bernie Sanders whose vote in the Senate constantly goes against the interests of workers), is to uphold capitalism and, by extension, imperialism. Reforms conceded by the bourgeoisie can and will be taken away at a later time — we’re currently witnessing the destruction of what was left of The New Deal... Reagan destroyed unions, Clinton rolled back social security, and Bush established a surveillance state.

From the Teapot Dome scandal to Dick Cheney’s genocidal Middle Eastern policies that lined his own pockets, corruption and scams are not new concepts to the US government. Trump followed in line during his first term and has been loud and clear about his position on corruption in his second, endorsing famous fraudsters and pardoning anyone who donated to his campaign. He is privatizing as many government programs as possible, so the capitalist ruling class can pocket medicare funds, profit from public education, gut Social Security, and pollute our air and water just to save a buck. Taking away essential services from American workers opens up new markets to exploit.

Trump has also created an American sovereign wealth fund, an undisguised attempt of transferring massive amounts of wealth from the poor to the rich. Historically, countries rich in natural resources that have a budget surplus establish sovereign wealth funds (pools of money that are used to buy financial assets) to diversify their economy by investing in different industries. Trump establishing a sovereign wealth fund while continuing to have a budget deficit means borrowing money from American citizens and foreign countries to invest in and/or buy corporations. The investments would have to outperform the interest paid to the person borrowing the money to provide any profit, meaning there’s an incentive — or conflict of interest — for the government to treat the corporations it has a stock in with special treatment, more than it does already. There will be huge returns for large investors, i.e. the bourgeoisie, who will hoard and invest the wealth of their citizens to the benefit of themselves and the state to the detriment to the entire working class. An American sovereign wealth fund would essentially be the US government using the working class’ tax dollars to play with stocks. 

Trump promised to bring prosperity to America by imposing absurd tariffs on foreign nations across the globe. A 10-50% tariff on goods coming into the country would equate to raising the price on those imported products by 10-50%. Tariffs were previously used as an essential tool to protect domestic manufacturing. Domestic products, in theory, would be able to avoid tariffs, but American capitalists have spent the last century moving manufacturing jobs outside of US borders to places with lax safety protocols and slave wages. Under the Clinton administration, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) led to a mass exodus of domestic jobs in manufacturing as the capitalist ruling class saw an opportunity to exploit cheaper labor outside of the US where labor laws were underdeveloped.

Even non-manufacturing jobs can't escape the off-shoring of jobs in the US. The tech industry egregiously utilizes cheap labourers in the global south for technical services. When local manufacturing does exist, it relies on components fabricated outside of the US to complete  products and get around regulations. Tariffs destroy the profit margins for all imported goods to prevent bankruptcy, so capitalists hike their prices to maintain profit and pass the tariff onto the worker, burning the stick at both ends. 

Tariffs that are meant to disrupt other nations feed well into how America destabilizes other nations, receives their immigrants and refugees, then exploits them for slave wages. Immigrants, who are the backbone of this country’s agriculture, construction, and service industries, come from countries that the US government, along with the CIA, destabilizes and pillages. The US funds and executes coups, and continuously creates conditions of economic instability all over the world, from the Global South, to the Middle East, to Europe. When those immigrants arrive here after having their living conditions destroyed and their lives put in peril, they are immediately placed in cages at the border and separated from their families. Capitalists are able to dangle the threat of deportation above “illegal” immigrant workers so they can pay slave wages (reducing the value of labor and driving down wages) and allow hazardous working conditions that workers have no recourse against. Immigrant workers deserve the same pay and protections afforded to other workers, not mass deportations! Trump sicking rabid ICE agents onto immigrant communities adds another layer of fear that allows them to further exploit workers and make an example of anyone, immigrant or not, who steps out of line.

Every day, the bourgeoisie — of which Trump is merely a representative — works to undermine all the safety and security workers have fought for. The working and oppressed classes must organize to overthrow capitalism, the socioeconomic system that continues to isolate and divide them. The necessity for increased exploitation is inevitable as capitalism reaches its last stage, imperialism, and the most important feature of that stage, the domination of finance capital over the whole of the bourgeois apparatus of state. The fascism we see taking form now is its natural result. Reform is not enough; capitalism must be abolished and replaced with a socialist system where workers own the means of production and natural resources, and make real democratic decisions based on the will of the people that are executed through central planning. Only by building a mass workers’ movement and inciting a socialist revolution can we break free from our oppressors, the capitalist ruling class in the US and across the globe. We must get organized in revolutionary formations. Individual actions will not free us from capitalism. Our united strength is far greater than the bourgeois state apparatus that works to keep us chained.