Trump, Corporate America and the Upper Class
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.
