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Trump, Corporate America and the Upper Class

 Trump, Corporate America and the Upper Class - with a post election addendum below(See below)

In his first crusade to be president Donald Trump campaigned with a list of Democratic proposals the Republican establishment hates and blocked during the Obama years. He attacked American business moving jobs overseas during the campaign along with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and trade agreements in general. Neither the Republican nor Democratic parties, nor any of its presidents care to challenge the demand of corporate America to shut down plants and operations in the United States and move them to Mexico or China or anywhere they want to go, but Trump’s threat attracted support from angry and alienated voters. He added to this appeal by insisting he would build a border wall to cut immigration in direct opposition to corporate America that can’t get enough of that cheap foreign labor.

Trump called NAFTA a “disaster” and the “worst agreement ever negotiated,” He threatened to have the United States withdraw without the changes he demanded. On May 18, 2017 he gave the legally required 90-day notification to begin re-negotiation. Trump claimed he could benefit American labor by eliminating NAFTA trade deficits with new policy in a new NAFTA agreement. Keeping corporate America’s production and investible capital in the United States creating American jobs appealed to an angry working class.

When real negotiations got underway all parties proposed moderate changes with revised language without changing NAFTA’s free trade philosophy. Corporate America was there watching to make sure changes would be acceptable while giving public relations deference to their brush off to Trump’s populist appeal.

Trump’s attacks on immigration and American corporations moving jobs overseas during the campaign came as a complement to his attacks on the NAFTA trade agreement. His campaign promises to the working class that voted for him required that he fight corporate America and the Republican Party establishment and be aggressive in his efforts to restrict the flow of immigrants, especially Hispanic immigrants coming from and through Mexico.

Once in office corporate America continued hiring undocumented aliens with impunity while remaining silent and letting Trump and Republicans demonize and debase Mexicans and Mexican families to suit his political purposes. He decided separating families and holding young children in detention would be a good threat and public relations strategy for his purposes while corporate America looked the other way knowing his threats were tall talk of no benefit to the working class.

These Trump failures help demonstrate Republican presidents do not, and cannot, serve populist appeals. It also left corporate officials to continue doing as they please to invest abroad or to pressure cities and states to compete against each other to get socialist subsidies for roads, water, sewers, property tax cuts and other benefits as a condition of investing capital in one place over another. They make these demands expecting to leave at any time and wreck lives, housing and property markets in the process. Maybe Trump had a point: unregulated free trade equals cheap labor at the expense of the working class. Too bad he did nothing about it.

 

During the 2016 presidential campaign corporate America supported Trump despite his populist talk. Once in office Trump's conduct resembled his campaign with regular appearances directing personal abuse at objectors and preening himself as a genius. He continued as well to hold true believer rallies filled with lies and fabrications while making no secret of his refusal to read security or policy documents prepared for him or to study anything. With no previous experience in government and so much of his time spent talking or tweeting he did remarkably little governing.

As his 2017-2021 term passed Trump accepted what all presidents accept as president; they are expected to carry out the corporate agenda without objections or questions. Corporate America remained happy and content with him since they controlled economic policy and Congress and got everything they wanted from government while Trump otherwise played the role of corporate helpmate, or errand boy depending on point of view. Except for having a president offering a daily dose of useless vulgarity and personal abuse to minorities and objectors, the country continued as usual and the macro economy did well, mostly thanks to Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell. As the 2024 election approaches, we might suppose all could remain the same for another term of Trump as president. However, the events of January 6, 2021 intervened, bringing doubt to any thesis that a second term could only be as bad as the first.

The events of January 6 and his repeated demands to violate and terminate the U.S. Constitution since then prevent him from being a legitimate candidate for president. Recall the oath of office written into Title II of the Constitution: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Whether he would recite the oath of office on January 20, which he may refuse to do, remains irrelevant after a violent attack on the Congress. Even though Trump lost the popular vote, or what is really the democratic vote, in both the 2016 and 2020 elections and will lose the democratic vote in 2024, corporate America made him a candidate hoping to exploit the Electoral College and get him back in office. In spite of these constitutional questions corporate America and their media want Trump. If they wanted him out he would be gone, but corporate America got what they wanted in his first term and they expect to have the same control in a second term.

Before January 6 Trump praised others in their racist views and promoted violence by others, but January 6, 2021 was distinctly different. He organized his followers to attack the capital and extensive video coverage establishes they acted with confidence and impunity while expecting to be protected by Trump as part of their devotion to his authoritarian ways. They offered no agenda beyond over throwing a national election in Trump’s behalf, nor a word or a thought of policy. The evidence of his active involvement from the January 6 attacks, and since then, guarantees a significantly more threatening and violent second term compared to the first.

To build an Electoral College win Trump and the Republicans know they have the white racist vote. Some of America’s racist whites call themselves white supremacists, but many others merely whine and complain black people get unfair advantage from policies intended to create equal opportunity regardless of race, creed or color. Make America Great Again means Make America a white male dictatorship again. Republicans have also attracted those who demand unrestricted access to guns and assault rifles and those who want to ban access to prenatal care and abortion. At least some of these voters overlap with white racists and cannot be expected to enlarge the racist vote totals enough to elect Trump. Trump needs more than the racist-gun-antiabortion vote to get back in office, even with the advantages of the Electoral College.

To win Trump needs the additional votes of upper class white Republicans, many of whom do not care for his foul mouth or overtly racist talk. These are the wealthy and the professional well-to-do living in suburban enclaves with all the education and experience necessary to understand what Trump stands for and his threat to the domestic and international order. Some of these lifelong Republicans will vote for Harris as a result, but significant numbers will not. The upper class Republicans that vote for Trump do so expecting him and his corporate allies to protect their privileges. They show no reservation how much of their privilege result from three tax cuts: the 1986 Reagan tax cuts, 2003 Bush tax cuts and 2017 Trump tax cuts. Instead they worry a Democrat might raise their taxes or support programs to relieve income and wealth inequality and disrupt their class structure. The combined benefit to the well-to-do amounts to billions and billions reaped from the lower tax rates on capital gains and dividends over these decades; benefits to their compounding growth in consumption that depend on political influence without contributions to the economy and Gross Domestic Product.

If Trump returns to office in 2024 the upper class and well-to-do voters from suburbia will supply the votes that put him there. The racist-gun-antiabortion vote consistently voted for him in 2016 and 2020 and will do so again, but Trump needs the well-to-do suburban voters in key states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. Many of these wealthy are not shy contributing campaign funds or planting Trump signs in front of their mansions, which can be translated into Trump will protect us; the Constitution and democracy mean nothing to us. They brush off Trump’s erratic and violent threats as something that will not affect them and will be controlled by corporate power anyway. That Trump remains a candidate after the January 6 attacks stand for corruption and decay in United States politics and an end of corporate and upper class leadership. Never has the United States sunk this low.

Post Election Addendum

In the original pre-election post I predicted candidate Kamala Harris would win the popular vote but was at risk of losing the Electoral College vote. I was wrong about that, she lost the popular vote as well. The popular vote in 2024 was 75.6 million for Trump and 72.4 million of Harris; two splinter candidates had 1.5 million votes. The 2024 vote total came to 149.4 million down from the 2020 vote total of 158.4 million, the highest vote total in a U.S. presidential election ever. The vote total in 2024 dropped just slightly less than 9 million from 2020.

The Trump vote in 2020 was 74.2 million compared to 75.6 million in 2024. Before the election I expected the same people that voted for him in 2020 would return and vote for him again, which the close vote count suggests they did. If we take President Biden got 81.3 million votes in 2020 compared to candidate Harris with 72.4 million in 2024 then her vote total almost exactly equals the decline in the 2024 vote, 8.9 million. The people who put Biden in office in 2020 stayed home and did not vote. I am supposing they stayed home out of despair or disgust.

In both elections the Trump vote totals came from whites holding varied degrees of racist views, from white supremacist on down to whites whining about minorities getting government advantages while they are left out. He got additional votes from gun people and the anti abortion, evangelicals of the religious right. Add to those the wealthy whites that control corporate assets and wealth and their beneficiaries out in white suburbia voting to protect their stock portfolios, tax subsidies and class privileges. These groups always vote for Republicans. 

The same voters that failed to elect Trump in 2020 elected him in 2024. The 8.9 million that helped put Biden in office in 2020 did so hoping the Democrats would be able to do something for them; they did not. Those 8.9 million voters that stayed home in 2024 come from the working class that go to work all the livelong day and still do not have funds to buy basic necessities, things like groceries. They were never for Trump or he would have been reelected in 2020. True, the Republicans block everything that could help the working class while corporate America funds Republicans and controls their votes in Congress, but Democrats appear too cowardly to even talk about a living wage or take a political risk as advocates for the working class. While Obama and Biden appear as men of good will, they did nothing to relieve the inequality that threatens the country with Trump generated violence. No political party represents the working class. Corporate America has always expected to run the country. Will they capitulate to Trump now?