Latest news with #AmericanExceptionalism
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump is using every weapon at his disposal for revenge
The authoritarian tide is rising very quickly in America. Donald Trump and his agents have unleashed a torrent and are now 'flooding the zone.' Five months into Trump's return to power, the American people and their democracy are like someone standing on their toes as the water rises. The water is over their mouth and a few inches below their nose. As exhaustion sets in, they will lose their balance, their heads will fall under the water and then they will gag. Do not believe those public voices and any others who say that these rising waters have stopped and that 'the worst danger is behind us' and that "everything will be okay in the end" because of 'the institutions' and 'American Exceptionalism.' These hope-peddlers are telling themselves and the American people self-soothing fictions. One of the most common scenarios for drowning is when an experienced swimmer overestimates their skill and does something foolish, such as swimming in a lake, ocean, or other body of water when there is an alert about riptides or other potential danger. They then find themselves in great trouble. A less skilled swimmer would have heeded the warnings and not risked their life. But a person can drown in as little as an inch of water if they are lying face down in it. When a person is drowning, they usually panic and lash out. They may become so disoriented and possessed by terror that they hit the person who is trying to save them. Sometimes the drowning person grabs onto their savior and pulls both of them down into the water and neither can escape. These are all metaphors for the American people and their failing democracy in the Age of Trump. The American people and their leaders overestimated the strength and vibrancy of their democracy and civil society. In addition, they made poor choices in response to the clear, present and obvious dangers of what would happen if Trump — a man who announced he would be a dictator on 'day one' — was put back in the White House. The American people and their leaders also had numerous opportunities to 'drown-proof' their democracy at the ballot box, through the rule of law and addressing the deep societal problems that birthed Trumpism, MAGA, authoritarian populism and the larger antidemocracy movement. Again, they chose not to. Many alarm-sounders were ignored, marginalized, mocked, attacked and told they were exaggerating and engaging in hyperbole by the gatekeepers in the news media and political class. The alarm-sounders have been proven to be repeatedly and overwhelmingly correct. The Republicans in Congress are deciding what version of Trump's 'big beautiful bill' they will inflict on the American people. This bill will further gut the social safety net and give trillions more dollars to the very richest corporations and individuals. Public health experts at Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania estimate that the budget cuts and other policy changes in Trump's 'big beautiful bill' will kill at least 50,000 Americans each year. This is a very conservative estimate. During a trip two weeks ago to Capitol Hill to whip up support for his 'big beautiful bill,' Trump told reporters the following: We're going to make a couple of tweaks….I mean, we don't want to benefit Democrat governors, although I would do that if it made it better, but they don't know what they're doing….We want to help all the states, but we have governors that are from the Democrat [sic] party, let's say New York, Illinois, big ones, and let's say Gavin 'Newscum,' who's done a horrible job in California. We want to benefit Republicans. They are the ones that are going to make America great again….The Democrats are destroying our country. Few, if any, American presidents have ever behaved this way. Donald Trump, as the country's first elected autocrat and aspiring dictator, rejects the responsibilities and the very concept of public service. He is instead driven by corrupt power. He is an apparent megalomaniac who views the office of the presidency primarily as a way of punishing his enemies and rewarding himself and his friends, allies, supplicants and sycophants. Per his own words, Trump wants to purge and cleanse 'the blood' of the United States of 'the vermin,' i.e., those who do not support his authoritarian political project and MAGA personality cult. Predictably, the American mainstream news media were largely (if not totally) silent on Trump's threat to use government power and (the public's money) to punish those Americans who disagree with him and that he therefore deems not to be 'real (MAGA) Americans.' For example, Donald Trump has said that he is not obligated to obey the Constitution. The Trump administration is also signaling that it will suspend the constitutional right of habeas corpus. The Trump administration is also ignoring the courts and has gone so far as to arrest a federal judge. In a recent series of posts on his Truth Social propaganda platform, Donald Trump shared conspiracy theories and menacing images of retaliation against judges and his other 'enemies.' In her newsletter, historian Heather Cox Richardson describes one of these posts: Tonight, after news broke that the judges had ruled his tariffs illegal and after he had reacted angrily to a reporter's question about the 'TACO trade,' a weakened Trump reached out to his alt-right base as he appeared determined to demonstrate dominance. He posted a meme on his social media account showing an image of himself walking toward the viewer on what appears to be a wet, nighttime city street. Pepe the Frog, a symbol of the far right, stands in the background. Above Trump, in all capital letters, are the words: 'He's on a mission from God.' Below his feet, also in all caps, the message continues: '& nothing can stop what is coming.' This is a phrase from the right-wing QAnon conspiracy community and refers to the idea that members of the 'Deep State' and its collaborators will soon be arrested. The administration is also harassing and threatening Democratic members of Congress with arrest and imprisonment. At The Atlantic, David Graham writes: For the second time in less than a month, the Trump administration has used law enforcement to directly target Congress. And for the second time in less than a month, Congress is showing that it doesn't have the desire or ability to defend itself. Republicans are mostly unwilling to do anything to stand up to Donald Trump, and Democrats are incapable of exerting either formal or informal political power. The Constitution's checks and balances are premised on each branch wanting to protect its powers. What happens if that's not the case? In an incident last week that emerged publicly only late last Friday, police from the Department of Homeland Security handcuffed an aide to Representative Jerry Nadler, one of the most prominent Democrats and Trump critics in the U.S. House. The confrontation occurred at a federal building in Manhattan that contains both an immigration court and Nadler's office. Officers eventually released the aide without making an arrest. Last week, Donald Trump escalated his threats to take away federal funding from the state of California. Governor Gavin Newsom responded by suggesting that California could retaliate by cutting off tax payments from the state to the federal government. It is true that Trump and his agents' strategy and tactic of 'flooding the zone' overwhelms and distracts. However, the mainstream news media, the larger political class and other elites have had at least 10 years of experience with the Age of Trump. There is a large amount of public information available about how to effectively counter propaganda and psychological operations. In all, to be so perpetually overwhelmed and disoriented is a choice at this point in the long Age of Trump. In his June 4 newsletter, David Corn, who is Mother Jones' Washington DC Bureau Chief, shared the following experience, one that reveals much about why the American mainstream news media has been so weak and ineffective as an institution in responding to Trump's return to power and his authoritarian campaign: I'd like to tell you about a conversation I recently had at a Washington cocktail party with a prominent media figure who runs a well-regarded online publication featuring well-crafted reporting and analysis….I won't mention the name of this media poohbah because this was social chatter, not an interview. We were discussing challenges the media face in this current moment of Donald Trump-generated chaos, right-wing extremism and viciousness, and creeping authoritarianism, and I said something about the difficulties of covering what might be the end — or, at least, the weakening — of American democracy. My interlocuter pooh-poohed my premise, declaring that the American experiment was not at risk: 'We are strong and resilient. There's no need to worry.' I cited Trump's close-to-the-brink confrontations with the courts, his rampant corruption, his assault on the free press, his multiple abuses of power, the adoption of police-state tactics to implement his mass deportation crusade, the Elon Musk-led decimation of vital federal agencies and programs, and the GOP-controlled Congress' intent to blow up the federal budget to shower the 1 percent with tax cuts and eliminate health insurance for millions. Wasn't all this enough to prompt concern? 'We'll be fine,' this person said. For a moment, I assumed they were joking. Then I realized they weren't. Time for another drink, I told myself and offered a plausible excuse for moving along. As I headed toward the bar, I was disturbed. If this highly educated, well-informed media person of, no doubt, a somewhat liberal bent — no Trump supporter — doesn't see the threat, that's worrisome. I fear many in the media have adopted this attitude. Too often, they normalize Trump's outrageous conduct and the threat he poses to the nation. Trump's threat and promise to use his "big beautiful bill" as a weapon to punish the Democratic Party, those Americans who vote for the Democrats or live in 'blue' parts of the country, and his other 'enemies' is just the most recent escalation in a larger pattern of such behavior. (Of note: Democrat-led blue states contribute more money to the federal government in terms of tax dollars and other resources than Republican-led red parts of the country.) Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he will use the military and other federal forces to occupy (i.e. declare martial law) Democrat-led majority black and brown cities to crack down on crime and as part of his mass deportation plans. Last week, the Trump administration produced a list consisting of more than five hundred communities designated as 'sanctuary jurisdictions' that will be subjected to legal action if they do not fully cooperate with his mass deportation campaign — elements of which have been ruled illegal by the courts. Last Sunday, after complaints from red states, the list was deleted from the Department of Homeland Security website. The AP reports, 'A widely anticipated list of 'sanctuary jurisdictions' no longer appears on the Department of Homeland Security's website after receiving widespread criticism for including localities that have actively supported the Trump administration's hard-line immigration policies….' Donald Trump and his agents have also threatened to have Democratic mayors, governors and other officials arrested if they do not obey him and his MAGA policies. In a rapidly developing series of events, late Saturday evening, Trump announced that he was federalizing the California National Guard and deploying several thousand soldiers to support and protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and other law enforcement that are conducting raids as part of the president's mass deportation campaign. Those raids have been met with violence by protesters. Tom Homan, Trump's "Border Czar," threatened to arrest elected officials if they interference with the ICE mass deportation raids. Homan told NBC News on Saturday that "We're going to keep enforcing law every day in day in L.A., we're going to enforce immigration law. I don't care if they like it or not....I'll say it about anybody. You cross that line, it's a felony to knowingly harbor and conceal an illegal alien. It's a felony to impede law enforcement doing their job." The clashes between law enforcement, supplemented by federalized military forces, continued throughout the day and into the evening on Sunday. In a post on social media, Elizabeth Goiten, who is an expert on the Constitution and military-civil relations at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, warns that Trump's deployment of troops in California is a spiraling constitutional crisis: Trump has federalized at least 2,000 National Guard forces and reportedly plans to deploy troops to Los Angeles over Governor Newsom's objections. If that happens, it will be the first time since 1965 that a president has sent troops into a state without a state request. That's alarming enough. But Trump has also authorized deployment of troops anywhere in the country where protests against ICE are occurring or are likely to occur, even if they are entirely peaceful. That is unprecedented and almost certainly there's an even bigger problem with Trump's order. He isn't just deploying Guard forces to Los Angeles. In fact, his memorandum doesn't even mention LA. It authorizes deployment 'at locations where protests against [ICE] functions are occurring or are likely to occur.' ICE activity is happening across the country, and will likely draw protests in many places. Trump is authorizing military deployment nationwide, regardless of whether protests involve violence *or are even happening yet.* No president has ever federalized the National Guard for purposes of responding to potential future civil unrest anywhere in the country. 'Preemptive' deployment is literally the opposite of deployment as a last resort. It would be a shocking abuse of power and the law.... In short: don't let the absence of the words 'Insurrection Act' fool you. Trump has authorized the deployment of troops anywhere in the country where protests against ICE activity might occur. That is a huge red flag for democracy in the United States. In total, these threats by the Trump administration against Democrat-led cities and blue states are not new. Although this has been thrown down the memory hole by the eternal presentism of the American news media (and the America people), during Trump's first term in office his administration appears to have maliciously taken resources and other life-saving assistance during the COVID pandemic away from Democrat-led cities and other blue parts of the country and redirected it to Republican-controlled areas and red states. The Trump administration also delayed and denied billions of dollars in aid to Puerto Rico after it was devastated by Hurricane Maria in 2017. This negligence and cruelty were motivated by racism and also partisan animus (the vast majority of Puerto Ricans identify with the Democratic Party). In a democracy, the news media in its role as the Fourth Estate has the responsibility of being alarm-sounders who hold Power accountable and tell the public what is important, how to think about it, and then, especially in a time of dire crisis such as the Age of Trump, what to do about it. With Donald Trump's return to power and his MAGA campaign to end America's multiracial democracy, they have made the choice as an institution to mostly enable and normalize the country's collapse into 'competitive authoritarianism' — if not something even worse. As Masha Gessen warns in a recent op-ed essay in The New York Times, 'I'm interested in something else: that moment when the shock fades and the (figurative) show goes on. I think we are entering that moment in the United States….And so just when we most need to act — while there is indeed room for action and some momentum to the resistance — we tend to be lulled into complacency by the sense of relief on the one hand and boredom on the other.'
Telegraph
5 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
It will take more than Donald Trump to kill off US exceptionalism
Are we witnessing the end of American exceptionalism? Last week I asked whether the 60/40 portfolio had enjoyed its best days and suggested that investment success would now demand broader diversification than this simple equity/bond split. A related question facing asset allocators today is whether a bias towards US shares within the equity portion of such a balanced portfolio has also run out of road. The list of reasons to reduce your exposure to the world's biggest stock market is getting longer. The latest addition was well hidden in the 1,116 pages of Donald Trump's 'one big, beautiful' budget bill. Clause 899 enables the US treasury secretary to levy a surcharge on US investments held in countries that are considered to have imposed 'unfair' taxes on US companies. It is this clause that could turn a war on trade into one focused on capital. It's not hard to see why it should have been drafted. It is a lot easier to tax capital than trade in goods. Doing so is less susceptible to legal challenge once approved by Congress. America alone gets to decide, every three months, which countries are captured by its definition of 'discriminatory' taxes. And we're talking big numbers. Thirty years of US market outperformance, and a strong dollar, have resulted in overseas investors holding $26 trillion (£19 trillion) more in America than US investors hold overseas. That's a big pool of assets to tax. There are good reasons that the US would want to levy this kind of tax, especially if it is confident that the appetite of overseas investors for US assets will hold up. In addition to the cash that might be raised by a levy of up to 20pc, reducing global demand for American assets would, all other things being equal, reduce the value of the dollar – another aim of the administration. One downside is that the 'exorbitant privilege' given to America by the dollar's reserve status would diminish. When you owe $35 trillion, having to pay a few basis points more to finance your debts is not a trivial consideration. The other obvious negative is that it would reduce the value of US assets as investors stop seeing America as a safe haven and refocus their portfolios towards friendlier jurisdictions. Clause 899 builds on two other reasons to consider reducing our exposure to the US. The first is the $3 trillion or so that the rest of the bill is expected to add to America's national debt over the next 10 years. The price of funding those borrowings (adding to interest payments that already exceed the cost of the US military) is one of the reasons that investors are demanding ever more compensation for holding US government bonds out into a potentially inflationary future. When bond yields rise above 5pc, it is not just bad news for holders of those bonds but also for investors in shares, which offer an increasingly uncompetitive income. This leads to a third reason to be cautious on the relative outlook for US investments – valuation. History suggests that when bond yields rise above 5pc, investors baulk at paying more than 20 times expected earnings for shares. Why would they, when they can earn a relatively risk-free income without the ups and downs of the stock market? Were the price-earnings ratio to fall back to the 17 or 18 times multiple at which shares become more obviously attractive, that would imply a 15-20pc correction, back from the top to the bottom of the Trump 2.0 trading range for the S&P 500. This is the easy-to-digest narrative that investors are accepting at the moment. It is why the euphoric post-election flows into US equities abruptly stopped at the time of Trump's April 2 tariff announcements and why Germany, for example, has reversed in a couple of months all its cumulative outflows since 2023. Investors prefer a simple story – and today's is that US exceptionalism is dead and buried. That might be an overreaction. As investors, we have a tendency to extrapolate and overweight near-term negatives. While I can find plenty to worry about in the Trump policy platform, I wouldn't count on the president undermining the decades of advantages from which America continues to benefit. Here are four highlighted recently by Alliance Bernstein strategist Inigo Fraser Jenkins. First, demographics. Unlike most big economies in the world, the US has a growing workforce. It is no longer expanding at the annualised 1.3pc it registered between 1980 and 2010, but between now and 2050, the US labour market is still expected to grow at 0.2pc a year. That compares with a fall of 0.6pc a year in Europe and 1pc in China. The size of the workforce, alongside productivity, is a key driver of GDP. Second, corporate profitability. Higher profits flow from a number of sources. These include better use of technology, more favourable regulation and taxes, and a more dynamic risk culture. Profit margins have doubled in the US since the financial crisis. Third, energy security. America drilled over 13m barrels of oil a day in 2024, making it the world's largest producer. It was a net energy exporter by 2019 thanks to shale. Fourth, the size of America's homogenous domestic market. Although Europe is potentially a bigger and richer market, it suffers from a patchwork of national cultures, banking systems, rules and languages. The US financial markets are vast, too, providing unrivalled depth and liquidity. So while I worry about America's withdrawal from global institutions, its willingness to make enemies of its friends, the undermining of its world-class universities and the erosion of its soft, cultural power, I am not ready yet to call the end of America's dominant position in financial markets. US exceptionalism was built over decades; it will not crumble in a matter of months.
New York Times
25-05-2025
- General
- New York Times
It's Time for Outdoor Potatoes
Good morning. The sun was up in the bluest of skies, the air soft and atmospheric pressure high, and all I wanted to do was loll on the grass in picnic repose, eating fried chicken sandwiches and a lemony potato salad with mint (above). That salad's a new thrill for me, the antithesis of the mayo-lashed potatoes I generally make for outdoor eating, light and refreshing, excellent alongside the crisp chicken and pillowy biscuits. You could set up that very meal for yourself right now, and deliver it to a blanket in late afternoon, when the sea breeze kicks in to ruffle the treetops in the park or garden. You can sit beneath them (or above them on a fire escape or roof!) in quiet satisfaction, knowing you've made something delicious, that it will provide pleasure and sustenance in equal measure, and that — if you're lucky — there's no work in the morning, only another day of rest and reflection. Featured Recipe View Recipe → Would you like an Arnold Palmer with your meal? I would, and a rhubarb pound cake for dessert. This is American exceptionalism in flavor form. As for the rest of the week. … It's Memorial Day. Beneath the bunting I'll serve, among other things, Bert Greene's recipe for the green dip he sold at his store in Amagansett, on Long Island, in the early 1970s, with a ton of iced vegetables. In his cookbook, he wrote that someone once half-jokingly offered him a thousand dollars for the recipe. 'Nobly, I refused the stunning stipend,' he wrote, 'and now, with open heart, I pass it on to you — absolutely gratis!' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - Trump's tariffs seek to restore American exceptionalism
In response to duties imposed on foreign goods by the U.S. government, a leading international publication called out the U.S. policy, predicting that political and economic upheaval would follow. That dire prediction — made by The London Standard in 1896 (at that time known as The Standard) — did not quite pan out. Instead, the U.S. economy enjoyed a renaissance, ushering in an era of financial prosperity that has continued to this day. Although today's financial dynamics differ from those of that time, one core principle has remained the same — a fundamental reality that entwines President William McKinley's philosophy with that of President Trump. That is American exceptionalism — the idea that the American people are capable of so much more than what the naysayers believe of them. Since free trade began in earnest during the 1990s with NAFTA, this aspect of U.S. economics became a sort of holy grail for politicians. The allure of cheap goods was deemed too great to tamper with. It wasn't something to be questioned, from the left or the right — so much so, that many people didn't even know that American companies were competing at a steep disadvantage overseas. However, although they may not have known it, many Americans were feeling it. Millions of Americans in flyover regions were hurt by the rapid deindustrialization caused by these agreements. U.S. companies had their growth stunted by unfair trade practices that were being employed against them. And the fact that those practices were in place is indisputable. Economists can perhaps explain away trade deficits as normal economic activity (in some cases), but not trade barriers harming American companies. Charging a tariff ten times what the U.S. charged on cars (China), non-acceptance of U.S. safety standards for automobiles (Japan and South Korea), and the Value Added Tax, in which foreign products were able to retail at a significant discount over their American counterparts, were all part of a systematic squeeze on U.S. companies competing in foreign markets. It was the outcome of other nations taking advantage of American politicians looking the other way. The system may have been working, but it certainly wasn't thriving. As the sole superpower in a rapidly expanding global economy, the past decades represented a chance for the U.S. to corner the market, to solidify its dominance and grow its prosperity. Instead, it satisfied itself with mediocrity, settling for limited growth in exchange for cheap imports. Trump set out to change that — to throw off the shackles of American defeatism, and to recapture the magic of American exceptionalism. He recognized our enormous financial advantage of more than $10 trillion in nominal gross domestic product — and that is only over our closest competitor, China. His business instincts realized that we were squandering one of our greatest national assets, our economic leverage, instead being exploited by friend and foe alike. Free trade had become free for everyone except the U.S. Disrupting a system can come at a cost, and it is fair for there to be a discussion as to how best to do it. But it must be done. Because while we can get by without this, the economy can chug along without this drastic change, that isn't the American way. We didn't win World War II, send a man to the moon and emerge as the world's sole superpower simply by getting by, just by being good enough. We did it by being exceptional. And that should be the standard we continue to strive for. With the first trade deal of this tariff era now taking shape, American exceptionalism appears to be within reach once again. The agreement with the U.K. promises to open new markets to American goods, create a fair playing field for American companies competing in Great Britain, and increase British investment on American shores. This is more than a simple trade pact; it is the first step into a new age of American opportunity and prosperity. As President Trump puts it, 'our best days are yet to come.' Let's hope his words prove true as his trade policies usher in yet another great American century. Menachem Spiegel is an author and yeshiva student. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal's Future View, The Star-Ledger and The Jerusalem Post. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Japan Times
14-05-2025
- Business
- Japan Times
American exceptionalism meets its maker
American exceptionalism has had a long, successful run. Gauged by the growth of gross domestic product per capita and other statistical measures, the U.S. economy has outpaced its advanced-economy rivals since the turn of the century. The United States is home to the world's leading high-tech firms. It is at the forefront of artificial intelligence. And investors have cashed in on that outperformance: As of late 2024, U.S. large-cap markets had yielded an average annual return of 13% over the preceding 10 years, compared to just 6% for European markets. The question is whether U.S. President Donald Trump's destructive policies have now brought this economic exceptionalism to an end. That prospect was reflected in the stock market in April, when the S&P 500 fell more than 17% from its record high after Trump's inauguration. While market has since recovered most of those losses, volatility remains high. Important voices, not only in the administration, insist that this is just one of those market disturbances that happen from time to time. The wellsprings of American economic excellence — high-tech dominance, a business-friendly environment, deep and liquid financial markets and a culture of entrepreneurship — remain intact. Just give it time, say the optimists and Trump's aberrant policies will be reined in by the bond market, the midterm elections and the courts. This Panglossian take underestimates how recent events tear at the fabric of U.S. economic exceptionalism and how difficult that fabric will be to mend. America's dominance of high tech derives not just from a vibrant business sector but also from basic research done in universities, by government and from close public-private sector collaboration. It is not a coincidence that the garage in which Hewlett-Packard originated was in Palo Alto, California, close to Stanford University. Nor is the fact that the internet emanated from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, with an assist from the National Science Foundation. The Trump administration's attack on university and government research funding pulls the rug out from under this collaboration. U.S. researchers who have seen their funding cut and their academic and intellectual freedom curtailed are being actively recruited by other countries. The same is true of the administration's hostility to immigration. The excellence of America's universities and innovation hubs, such as Silicon Valley, depends on scientists and entrepreneurs who come to the U.S. to study and decide to stay. Given what has been revealed about the way Trump's America treats immigrants, they will now think twice about both the studying and the staying. Much has been written about how Trump's tariffs will disrupt U.S. companies' supply chains and raise production costs. To be sure, companies will adapt, for example by reshoring some production. But adapting to Trump's arbitrary trade regime will also mean offering under-the-table favors in exchange for concessions. A transactional president has revealed the U.S. to be a transactional society, where the highest returns accrue to rent seeking and cronyism, not to initiative and innovation. A business environment in which access to the Oval Office is the key to success is likely to lead to a further increase in market concentration, since it is the Elon Musks of the world who have access. The U.S. has already seen how rising market concentration is accompanied by an increase in markups of prices over costs, declining firm entry rates, falling job reallocation and a growing gap between leading and lagging firms. Sooner or later, productivity growth will become a casualty. Ultimately, economic growth depends on the rule of law, as proponents of the now ironically named Washington Consensus have instructed developing countries for decades. That, in turn, depends on a separation of powers and on a system of checks and balances that prevent the arbitrary and capricious exercise of executive authority. All of this was well understood by the framers of the U.S. Constitution. But recent political events in the U.S. have shown that constitutional and statutory safeguards are weaker than previously supposed. A president who seeks to amass power can use executive orders to override the spending decisions of Congress and the regulatory decisions of supposedly independent government agencies. He can fire independent government administrators at will. He can cow spineless members of Congress by threatening to 'primary' them. Such a president can also disregard the rulings of the courts. If the bond market threatens to misbehave, he can lean on the Fed. As for the disciplining influence of the ballot box, he can dismiss the results of free and fair elections. In this environment, neither property rights nor contracts are secure. And as generations of political scientists have taught us, secure property rights are a fundamental determinant of investment, while reliable contract enforcement is the foundation of commerce and trade. Some say that the next U.S. president will turn the clock back to pre-Trump days, making secure property rights, reliable contract enforcement and equality under the law facts of American life again. But some lessons, once learned, are not easily unlearned. Many investors, like house cats, will not jump onto a hot stove twice. Barry Eichengreen, professor of economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author, most recently, of "In Defense of Public Debt" (Oxford University Press, 2021).© Project Syndicate, 2025
