Totally Brazen. Comically Corrupt. Painfully Dumb.
Trump’s mask-off economic doctrine is on full display: Riches for friends, pain for enemies. Is it any wonder business leaders are falling in line?
Twenty-six days into the government shutdown, we got an actual, meaningful development this morning. The American Federation of Government Employees—a union that has regularly fought Donald Trump’s assault on the federal workforce this year—is now urging Democrats to abandon their shutdown strategy and allow the government to reopen without any concessions from Republicans and the White House.
“Both political parties have made their point, and still there is no clear end in sight,” AFGE President Everett Kelley wrote in a statement first reported by NBC News. “It’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today.”
It’s no surprise government employees are under extra duress during a lengthy shutdown, particularly since the White House has used it as a pretext to do still-deeper cuts to the federal workforce. But whether this open pressure shakes any additional Democrats loose from their till-now firm opposition to a current-levels spending bill remains to be seen. Happy Monday.
The Biggest Carrots. The Most Beautiful Sticks.
by Andrew Egger
Two stories caught my attention over the weekend. One of them global, the other relatively provincial. But taken together, they provide a clear illustration of how grift and greed and personal pique have come to define the Trump economic doctrine.
On Saturday, Donald Trump announced that U.S. businesses that trade with Canada are in for billions of dollars of additional pain, slapping an additional 10 percent tariff on imports from the country. The reason? He was mad about a TV ad the government of Ontario was airing on American airwaves, quoting Ronald Reagan’s warnings about the perils of tariffs.
On Friday, the Financial Times reported that the Pentagon had awarded a significant contract to the drone company Unusual Machines—a company that retains Donald Trump Jr. as an adviser and in which he owns millions of dollars of stock. Shares in the company jumped 13 percent on the news. (As Judd Legum points out over at Popular Information, Trump Jr. has talked about how he helped screen candidates for top Pentagon jobs and explicitly discussed looking for candidates interested in moving more defense spending into drones. Nevertheless, Unusual Machines and Trump Jr. both deny he had anything to do with the deal.)
The punitive measures against Canada are clownish—an indefensible economic decision wedded to a bizarrely childish lie about what Reagan thought about tariffs. Preferential government treatment for businesses from which the Trump family stands to profit—of which Unusual Machines is just the latest example—is just as obviously indefensible, whatever lazy “nothing to see here” defenses they might offer.
But isn’t the brazenness of it all sort of the point? Every time Trump lashes out crazily against someone who he decides has wronged him, or heaps government spoils on loyal friends and allies, he’s making a specific argument: Right now, I run the world, and what’s right on “the merits” doesn’t matter. All that should matter is: Are you enjoying my favor, or suffering my displeasure?
In ordinary times—or times we used to optimistically consider “ordinary”—such an argument wouldn’t get a president very far. His destructive antics and open self-dealing would vaporize his popularity and his political capital; he would find himself quickly hemmed in by Congress and the courts.
But in our times, with a Congress of quislings on one side and a super-conservative Supreme Court giving him home field advantage on the other, Trump’s perpetual wrongness on the merits actually strengthens his pure-power appeal. It’s an industrial-scale version of his old line about how he could shoot a guy on Fifth Avenue without losing political support. He’s out here shooting a guy—a company, a country—each week at this point, and nobody seems to be doing anything about it. Is it any wonder business leaders are scrambling to get in line?
And make no mistake: That scramble continues. Last week, the White House announced a list of companies and private donors that had made large contributions to his newest pet project: the palatial White House ballroom. As the Center for American Progress’s Will Ragland pointed out on X, a majority of the megacorps that pitched in had something in common: They had cut off political contributions to Republicans who backed Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election after January 6th. Really sorry about all that, sir—you’ve got to understand, that was another time. We really love the gold trimmings in the ballroom rendering you’ve put together.
Money has always talked in American politics; people who have lots of it have deployed it to arrange government policy such that it’s easier to make even more. But the complete demolition of all guardrails around presidential action has made both the stick and the carrot far more powerful. Sure, you could speak out about the ways the president’s policies are crushing your business or your industry—but what would be the point when he’s likely to respond by crushing you more, with some Truth Social insults on the side? Sure, you could spend huge sums spreading money around on Capitol Hill in the hope of getting a sympathetic ear next time Congress considers a bill for your industry—but might it not be quicker, easier, and more effective just to back a truckload of cash up to the president’s family or to his latest vanity project?
What’s to be done about incentive structures this perverse? All we can do is try to build out some incentives of our own. From time to time this year, we’ve seen people remind megacorporations that Trump still isn’t the only party they have to keep pleasing. The huge wave of Disney+ cancellations that followed the scalping of Jimmy Kimmel seemed to get him back on the air pretty quick. Donald Trump has the most power and the biggest pocketbook. But there’s still a lot more of us than there are of him.
O Canada!
by William Kristol
I come this morning to praise Canada, not mock it.
But I should begin with a confession: Yes, in the before times, like any red-blooded American conservative, I did indulge in some Canada-mocking. Provoked by the spectacle of Americans fleeing north across the border after George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection, The Weekly Standard in March 2005 published Matt Labash’s cover story,
“Welcome to Canada: The Great White Waste of Time.”
It’s a fun and lively piece. We thought so highly of it that we included it in the 10th anniversary anthology of our best writing, The Weekly Standard: A Reader, 1995-2005. Early on in the article, Labash quoted Henry David Thoreau, “I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada. . . . What I got by going to Canada was a cold.” But Labash nonetheless managed to write several thousand witty words about our neighbor to the north.
That was then. You could make fun of people in a (somewhat!) good-natured way. Indeed, in doing so, you also made fun of yourself.
But in Donald Trump’s America, cheerful mockery is no more. It’s grievance-mongering and chest-beating all the time.
Even when there’s no ground for it. In January 2020, President Trump signed a free trade agreement, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), that replaced the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The USMCA is, according to the current Trump administration website of The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, “a mutually beneficial win for North American workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses.”
But Trump now regrets doing something responsible during his first term. So he’s been picking fights with Canada, trying to pressure them by imposing tariffs and threatening new ones.
In response to Trump’s bullying, the province of Ontario decided to remind his countrymen of the dangers of tariffs with an ad featuring clips of President Ronald Reagan from 1987. As Andrew notes above, Trump was peeved. On Thursday night, he suspended the ongoing trade talks with Canada. When the ad aired during the World Series, Trump announced he would punish the country with an additional 10 percent tariff on its goods because of their “hostile act” of paying for an accurate television advertisement.
Trump’s hapless treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, defended his boss on Sunday, saying of Ontario’s anti-tariff Reagan ad, “This is a kind of propaganda against U.S. citizens. It’s PSYOPs.” In Trump’s America, airing accurate clips of Ronald Reagan counts as “PSYOPs.”
It’s all childish and ridiculous. But its childishness and ridiculousness is emblematic of Trump’s overall foreign policy—indeed, of his overall governance. So it’s worth noting for that reason. And it’s also worth noting because it’s actually harmful. Canada does matter.
For one thing, having a friendly and peaceable neighbor on the other side of the world’s longest land border is something we take for granted. But it’s a good thing.
It’s also been good for us that Canada is a prosperous and growing country. And it’s good for us that Canada is our second largest trading partner, accounting for 13 percent of our total trade.
Canada is an ally. But in Trump’s America, how far does that get you?
Bessent, defending the $20 billion bailout of Argentina on Sunday, claimed that “we are supporting a U.S. ally.”
Well, Argentina is one of twenty countries, including Egypt and Colombia and Kenya, that are designated “major non-NATO allies,” which permits certain kinds of cooperation between our militaries. That’s fine. But Canada is an actual NATO ally, one of the 12 founding members of the alliance. When Article 5 was invoked after 9/11, Canadians fought and died with us in Afghanistan.
They fought and died with us in World War II, where Canadian casualties were comparable, per capita, to ours. Canada was at war with Nazi Germany two years before us—and declared war on Imperial Japan the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor. On June 6, 1944, the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division landed on Juno Beach in conjunction with U.S. and British forces.
World War II, NATO, Afghanistan, the world’s longest undefended border—those things once mattered. They mattered back when the United States was a great democracy that valued its democratic allies, even if some smart-aleck American magazines poked fun at them. That seems like a long time ago.
AROUND THE BULWARK
The Mixed Messages of Sending USS Gerald Ford to the Caribbean… The move raises questions of power, prudence, and proportionality, argues GEN. MARK HERTLING.
Dems Hit a Major Obstacle in Redistricting Wars: Other Dems… The surprisingly messy politics of the push to counter GOP gerrymandering. LAUREN EGAN has this dispatch in The Opposition.
The End of The Republic? On The Bulwark on Sunday, BILL KRISTOL and MICHAEL WOOD take on the fears that we could be at the end of the republic as we know it.
Jackasses With Jackhammers… On Shield of the Republic, ERIC EDELMAN and ELIOT COHEN discuss appeasement and the echoes of Hitler’s Sudetenland demands in Putin’s recent actions, then turn to Trump’s demolition of the East Wing, the Pentagon’s new right-wing press corps, a Marine mishap that rained ordnance on I-5, Putin’s call with Trump, and turmoil in Ukraine and Venezuela.
Trump’s Empty Promise on IVF… In The Breakdown, JONATHAN COHN also reports how Trump has come up short on prescription drug prices.
The Little State That Could Save Democracy… On How to Fix it with John Avlon, Harvard law professor and democracy reformer LARRY LESSIG explains how he is taking on the big money machine.
Quick Hits
THE LOUD PART OUT LOUD: Donald Trump keeps openly talking about his plans to steal the 2026 and 2028 elections. Here’s something he posted on Truth Social yesterday afternoon:
What’s worse, the NBA players cheating at cards, and probably much else, or the Democrats cheating on Elections. The 2020 Presidential Election, being Rigged and Stolen, is a far bigger SCANDAL. Look at what happened to our Country when a Crooked Moron became our “President!” We now know everything. I hope the DOJ pursues this with as much “gusto” as befitting the biggest SCANDAL in American history! If not, it will happen again, including the upcoming Midterms. No mail-in or “Early” Voting. Yes to Voter ID! Watch how totally dishonest the California Prop Vote is! Millions of Ballots being “shipped.” GET SMART REPUBLICANS, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!
Trump, as you may recall, tried very hard to steal the 2020 election from the American voters and from Joe Biden. But he came up short, in part because he hadn’t staffed his entire government with ride-or-die loyalists then. It seems notable now that he is directing his “no mail-in or early voting” complaints, not to Republicans in state legislatures, but to the Justice Department. The gist seems to be: Just wield some prosecutorial power and make sure I’m happy with the midterms.
Meanwhile, the president keeps playing footsie with the idea of running for an unconstitutional third term in three years.
“I would love to do it,” Trump said of a 2028 presidential bid. “I have my best numbers ever. It’s very terrible. I have my best numbers.”
“Am I not ruling it out? You’ll have to tell me,” Trump continued.
ONE WAR AFTER ANOTHER: Donald Trump may profess to love flyover country, but his policies are really doing a number on it. Nobody’s been hammered harder this year than the deep-red bread-basket states of Nebraska and Iowa, which are faltering under blow after blow. Trump’s trade war with China has decimated soybean farmers and caused the price of seeds and fertilizer to soar. His war on wind power worries many farmers for whom turbines bring in extra income. And his deportation policies have hit the meatpacking industry. For some Iowa farmers, the New York Times reports, Trump’s easy-money policy to Argentina—a significant agricultural competitor—has added insult to injury: “Who are you subsidizing,” one protested, “our competitors or us?”
It’s not just a hard season farmers are enduring. It’s an economic climate that’s becoming increasingly hostile to their business. And many are now wondering if their family farms are nearing the end of the line.
You know what I would find really reassuring, if I were a farmer going through all this? Hearing megamillionaire Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent say this weekend that “I’m actually a soybean farmer, so I have felt this pain, too.” True enough, after a fashion: CNBC reported that Bessent owns millions of dollars worth of South Dakota farmland, which generates him hundreds of thousands of dollars in rental income every year. Relatable!
RAND UNBOWED: The White House keeps blowing up boats it says are running drugs in international waters, and Sen. Rand Paul continues to be a lonely Republican voice sounding the alarm. In an interview yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Paul said that the White House has presented no evidence to Congress that the boats they have been attacking are indeed transporting drugs. But even if they had, Paul said, “a briefing’s not enough to overcome the Constitution.” He went on:
So far they have alleged that these people are drug dealers. No one’s said their name, no one’s said what evidence, no one’s said whether they’re armed. And we’ve had no evidence presented. So at this point, I would call them extrajudicial killings. And this is akin to what China does, to what Iran does with drug dealers—they summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public. So it’s wrong.
It’s a strange thing. Usually a high-octane personal attack from Trump is enough to clam a GOP lawmaker up about whatever topic sparked Trump’s ire. But Paul’s still out here ringing the bell about the boat strikes, and Trump hasn’t posted about him in more than a week. What are the rest of his colleagues so afraid of?
Cheap Shots
Ain’t nobody coming to save us. When fascism arrived in America, our business leaders sold out our country without a second thought, like addicts pawning off cherished family heirlooms for their next hit of meth.
I guess if there is one thing to be thankful for about Trump, it’s that he showed us who people really are.
And yet when I looked at Fox News website, they had a story about how George Soros and radical Imams empowered Mamdani (running for mayor).
Those who follow the mainstream press get real news, the rest gets a lie.