How to destroy a superpower in a few easy steps

You may say Trump's a dreamer, but he's not the only one

Today marks three months since Trump was sworn in. He’s certainly accomplished a lot in that short time, the same way taking a wrecking ball to a house accomplishes a lot. On the economic front, he’s well on his way towards making the mansion he inherited into a porta-potty. Abroad, he’s managed to make the US a pariah and make China look like a voice of reason and stability in comparison.

To think we still have three years and nine months of this show left. One upside for me personally is I have plenty to work with. There have been times where I’ve struggled to settle on something to write about, but I figured that wouldn’t be a problem with him in charge again. He hasn’t let me down.

I have been writing plenty about what Trump has done on the domestic and foreign fronts, but I’m going to try to put it all together here. Really, I could spend every post for the next three years and nine months writing about an individual outrage or awful thing he’s done. I won’t do that, but I’m sure I will write plenty of posts like that between now and January 20, 2029, assuming that’s still allowed.

Looking back at everything that has happened over the last three months and trying to put it all together requires taking a step back and seeing the big picture. I don’t think Trump is consciously or deliberately trying to make the US into a third world country, but if he was it’s hard to tell what he would do differently. He has undermined if not gutted just about every institution that has made this country great over the last 80 years.

In doing that, he has no plan. There is no alternative vision of his that will replace the things he’s burning down. At his core, he is a gangster and a bully with a zero sum worldview. In his eyes, every single institution, foreign and domestic, is bad and must be ripped apart. Domestically, he wants a government that is run by him and for him. Abroad, he admires dictators and believes the strong do what they want and the weak do what they must.

Almost every action he has taken since January 20 is consistent with that mindset. You can see it in who he has appointed to his cabinet and who is working in his administration. You can see it in his imposing tariffs on allies and screwing over Ukraine while treating Russia as a friend.¹ You can see it in his going after universities, law firms and foreign students. You can see it in his belief that he can deport whoever he wants for whatever reason he chooses.

If you’re still skeptical about him having no plan, we got more evidence of it yesterday. As it turns out, the reason he paused some of his tariffs is because Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick begged him to. They found out Peter Navarro, Trump’s biggest protectionist adviser, would be in a meeting with someone and during that time rushed into the Oval Office, told Trump how dire things were, and convinced him to write on Truth Social that some of the tariffs would be paused.

Nobody should be relieved by that story. The whole tariff charade is being done on the fly. There is no long-term plan or strategy. The same level of care Trump took with calculating tariff rates is how he’s approaching everything.

I’m always hesitant to predict the future, but it’s hard to see how we don’t have a major constitutional crisis. By that I mean, the Supreme Court rules against him, maybe in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and he refuses to comply. It may happen on some other issue or in the case of another individual, but it seems almost inevitable at this point. How that would play out, I don’t know. What I can be sure of is the traditional remedy, impeachment and removal, is not going to be used.

Trump is pushing his power as far as he can. He’s testing everyone to see who will resist. I’m glad to see some law firms and Harvard saying no and I really hope to see other institutions fight back. It was foolish of Columbia and some law firms to bend the knee. As the latter is discovering, bullies who get what they want always come back for more.

Leaving aside the authoritarianism of his moves against universities, from a strategic standpoint it’s unbelievably stupid. The US has the best universities in the world by far. Places like Harvard attract students, professors and researchers from all over the world. The work they do in areas like scientific and medical research is second to none. By yanking federal funding from universities, Trump is not defunding wokeness, he’s defunding critical research that no other institutions will conduct or finance.²

By revoking the visas of foreign students for basically any reason he wants, Trump is creating a chilling effect. It’s too early to know how much of an impact it will have, but it almost certainly will discourage foreign students, professors and researchers from wanting to come here. That will be a huge loss for the US, especially in its efforts to counter China.

It’s not just foreign students, professors and researchers who will be discouraged from coming here. The number of travelers here from other countries is way down this year compared to prior years. That is especially true for Canada and Europe. Some of that is out of anger, but some of it is out of fear. If Trump has the power to detain and/or deport anyone for any reason, he could do it to anyone traveling here from abroad. That’s not just authoritarian, it’s economically disastrous as tourism is a big industry in many parts of the country.

Make America Poor Again

Trump is obsessed with manufacturing. He loves to talk about the good old days of the 1970s and before when it was the dominant employer. Bringing back manufacturing jobs was something he talked about when he first ran in 2016. I have been harping on this point for a while and will do it again here: the US economy is service-based as all developed economies are.

That is not random or coincidental. Demand for physical goods is finite. People are not going to buy thousands of shoes, cars and washing machines. Demand for services is much less limited. The wealthier people become, the more services they demand once their material wants and needs are met.

Broadly speaking, countries follow a particular development pattern. In their least developed state, they rely on agriculture as the main source of employment and economic activity. When they develop more, they rely on manufacturing as it is more technologically advanced. When they finally become developed, i.e., first world, services take over as the main economic driver and employer.

That pattern has persisted without fail. There is no country that has gone from a service-based economy back to manufacturing. The only way that would happen would be by lowering living standards. There are plenty of countries today where manufacturing is a big employer and I guarantee you all of them would happily switch places with the US if they could.

The imposition of tariffs by Trump is frequently justified by invoking manufacturing jobs. The idea is that if foreign manufactured goods are more expensive, there will be higher demand for US made goods. Higher demand for US made goods will mean more of it will be produced and so more manufacturing will happen in the US. The end result for workers will be more manufacturing jobs.

If that idea was true you would think manufacturers here would be ecstatic about the tariffs, but they’re not, just the opposite. The Philadelphia Fed branch does a monthly survey of manufacturers in the region it covers and its report for April was dire. Current activity, shipments and new orders all declined significantly. The New York Fed branch found similar results and this is before the tariffs really start to bite.

As I mentioned last week, domestic manufacturers tend to rely on foreign suppliers. It’s rare to find a manufacturer whose sources come entirely from the US. Even those that do will have suppliers who rely on foreign sources for their items.

In general, I don’t think trying to bring back manufacturing jobs is something that should be pursued. Developed economies don’t make toys and textiles. Don’t take my word for it, listen to Dave Chappelle. If you want iPhones to cost an arm and a leg, then let’s make them here. Otherwise, let other countries do that.

Even if manufacturing jobs were brought back here en masse, leaving aside the price increases that would result from it, there is another big problem. We don’t have the labor force required to do it. If the new manufacturing jobs were to be filled, immigration would need to be drastically increased, but Trump and MAGA hate that.

Absent a large increase in immigration, workers in the service sector would need to switch over to manufacturing. The problem with that is the demand for the services they’re currently providing would still be there. With significantly fewer workers available and demand staying the same, you get higher prices. I can assure you that would not make people happy.

The most realistic outcome if manufacturing became much more prevalent here is that it would be heavily automated. That would defeat Trump’s goal of making manufacturing a dominant employer. Then again, there might just be some hope.

Scott Bessent said the fired federal workers could be the new source of manufacturing labor. Laying off people in charge of making sure our food and medicine are safe, securing our nuclear stockpile and preventing pandemics so they can make toasters? What a brilliant idea! Why didn’t I think of that?

To be sure, there are a few areas where making things here should be pursued. For example, I think it would be good to make semiconductors, clean energy items and some pharmaceuticals here. In pursuing that, two things need to be kept in mind. First, that is the exception, not the rule. Second, the reason to make those things here is about national security, not because it’s economically beneficial.

Tradeoffs are no fun, but they exist. It’s generally much cheaper and more economically efficient to manufacture things in China than it is here. The obvious problem with that is China is a hostile foreign power. I don’t want to be dependent on it for crucial items like semiconductors and medicine and I don’t want it to have the advantage with cutting edge technologies like AI and EVs. That would give it huge leverage in any confrontation with the US and I don’t want that to happen.

That said, we need to be clear eyed about some things. One is that making semiconductors and other vital products here, while necessary, is usually going to make them cost more. Another is that manufacturing things like semiconductors and pharmaceuticals is very different from the manufacturing jobs Trump and others like to reminisce about. They are heavily automated and don’t create nearly as many jobs as the factories from decades ago did.

Selling the need to manufacture some things here as a matter of national security is something I’m all for. The problem is that’s not how those efforts are framed. They are talked about as if they’re going to create all kinds of jobs. I understand why that framing is used (nobody wants to discuss tradeoffs), but it’s false and eventually the truth is going to come out, which will undermine support for those efforts.

If you accept that we should manufacture things like semiconductors here, the way to go about doing it is not by imposing tariffs. It’s through targeted subsidies like what is provided in the CHIPS Act.³ You would think Trump would support that legislation, but he doesn’t. He has railed against it, tried to undermine its implementation and called for it to be repealed. It’s the worst of both worlds. He’s wrecking the manufacturing we currently have and is trying to get rid of the one thing that could help with reviving part of it.

The Chinese century?

What Trump has been doing for the last three months is not the work of someone who wants the US to succeed against China. Trump isn’t The Manchurian Candidate, but you could be forgiven for thinking he is. As Derek Thompson put it on X, “Imagine China defeated the US in war and forced us to sign a treaty that would ensure a century of Chinese dominion in science and tech. I wonder what they would they put in that treaty. Clearly, they'd want to gut our manufacturing base. Maybe they'd force US manufacturers to pay higher prices for all inputs to ensure that we'd always work with an arm tied behind our back. They'd be smart to force the U.S. to slash scientific funding, which is the wellspring of our medical and life science patents. Maybe they'd threaten to decimate our research universities and find subtle ways to keep America from continuing to accept the world's smartest young people as students, which has been an easy and cost-free advantage of the US brand for decades. Oh wait.”

While I have strong opinions about how bad the CCP is and how important it is to counter China, I will be the first to tell you that the latter is way beyond my expertise. There has long been a debate about whether China will dominate this century the way the US did in the latter half of the 20th century. Some writers I read believe China will be more dominant while others are skeptical. I’m not remotely qualified to argue either side, but I really hope the former are wrong and so do they.

What I do know is China does have some advantages that the USSR lacked. By virtue of having four times as many people as the US, it has a big customer base and is more likely to attain self-sufficiency with respect to critical items. It is a technologically advanced country and is highly integrated with the global economy. More countries today have China as their biggest trading partner than the US.

I’m not going to lie, in my gut, I’m not feeling optimistic. I’m no authority on the matter so take that with a grain of salt, but I feel like at the rate things are going our only hope is China screws up even more than we do. That’s certainly a possibility. Dictatorships often run into fatal problems that they can’t address until it’s too late. There is also the potential for China to get bogged down in other countries and to overreach and provoke a backlash.

That possibility notwithstanding, I’m not sure many people in the US have processed how much damage Trump has already done. The US is now seen by Europe and Canada as a threat. NATO, as it has been known since 1949, is dead. The US is now at best indifferent to what happens with Ukraine. Otherwise, we’re on the side of Putin. We can no longer be trusted to push back against Russian aggression.

I’m glad to see Europe step up, but not like this. Getting Europe to contribute more militarily doesn’t require flipping it off and screwing Ukraine. It definitely doesn’t require a trade war and aligning with Putin.

What those who insist Trump is tough on China don’t get is we can’t do it alone. We need allies like Europe in our corner and that requires doing things for it. Having told Europe to drop dead on Ukraine, it’s not eager to join our fight against China.

Japan and South Korea are critical allies in Asia and we’ll need them, too. What are they doing now? Looking to sign trade deals with China. Trump hates trade, but the rest of the world doesn’t and they’re moving on without us.

During the last two years of his presidency, Obama worked on the Trans Pacific Partnership. It was not really a trade deal like NAFTA. Its emphasis was more on intellectual property. The goal was to form an economic alliance to counter a rising China. It was opposed by people in both parties, including Clinton, Biden and Trump. Trump officially killed it in 2017. Now it looks like China is trying to do something like the TPP as a way to counter the US.

As I have been writing about, we need to reduce trade barriers with allied countries if not eliminate them altogether. Countering China is going to be an all-hands-on-deck effort. While the US should try to manufacture some vital things, we can’t do everything nor should we. The good news is allied countries can help. For example, the US’ ship building capacity is terrible now, but Japan and South Korea are very good at it.

In moving supply chains out of China, we’ll need to have them in allied countries. Countries like Vietnam and Cambodia can do some of that, but so can India. India has been growing quite a bit, has the world’s largest population, is a democracy and is not friendly with China. That’s exactly the kind of country we should be doing everything we can to help develop and build goodwill.

Almost everything Trump is doing abroad is antithetical to countering China. He’s not only alienating allies with tariffs, he’s destroying American soft power. He’s all but eliminated programs like Voice of America, which has been a significant source of information about the US and outside world to those living under authoritarian governments. He has also obliterated USAID, which was a lifeline to millions in Africa and is now at risk of being replaced by China. To top it off, the State Department is planning on closing down consulates and embassies around the world, which will reduce our diplomatic footprint and leave a void. I wonder who will fill it.

Nice democracy you have there, shame if anything happened to it

It isn’t just international and private domestic institutions Trump has attacked. He’s all but trying to tear down our form of government. So far, he has gotten pushback from courts, including SCOTUS, but he’s not giving up or backing down. He said over the week that he would like to start sending US citizens to El Salvador. If you thought his desire to deport people would end with non-citizens, you poor thing, you were so naïve.

It’s hard to keep up with all the abuses, but one that should get a lot of attention is who he has appointed as the acting US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin. Prior to that, he was a well-known election denier and helped raise money for January 6 defendants. He has not been confirmed to be the official US Attorney and probably won’t be, but he still has power. In his role, he has demoted prosecutors who had worked on January 6 cases.

Other things he has done include writing a letter to the Georgetown Law School dean saying his office wouldn’t hire its graduates unless it did some things he wanted. Georgetown, to its credit, responded by telling him to go pound sand. Last week, he sent a letter to a scientific journal for chest doctors threatening it over what he said was a lack of viewpoint diversity. Seriously, he really did that.

The threats from both letters are flatly unconstitutional (see the first amendment), but are consistent with how Martin sees his job. Here he is declaring all the attorneys working in his office to be Trump’s lawyers. FYI, the job of US Attorneys is to prosecute those who violate federal laws. It is not to serve the president and do whatever he wants them to. That’s not a controversial claim and would have been stating the obvious not too long ago.

As I wrote about right before the election, a second Trump term would be nothing like the first. He has far fewer constraints than he did the last time. There is now a network of MAGA true believers to hire from and surround himself with. People with a conscience and integrity are no longer needed.

What he has done with the DOGE reflects his belief that the federal government is there to serve him. No law has been passed authorizing the firing of federal employees, but he has done it anyway because he thinks he can get away with it. The federal government is his fiefdom and is there to carry out what he wants it to, namely to go after those he thinks are his enemies.

Trump lies about plenty of things, but that was not one of them. He told everyone exactly what he was going to do. He made it very clear what kind of person he is. Anyone who watched what happened on January 6 should have known that putting him back in charge was beyond reckless.

It should come as no surprise that he has assembled an administration full of sycophants, goons, grifters, sociopaths, lunatics, clowns, morons, bottom feeders, cranks and lowlifes. Who else would serve him? People like Jim Mattis, Mark Esper and Gary Cohn sure as hell aren’t welcome. Why would he keep Chris Wray in charge of the FBI when he doesn’t shill for him?

Esper told Trump in the summer of 2020 that he couldn’t have US troops open fire on protesters. Do you think Pete Hegseth would do that? Do you think Kash Patel would ever deny him anything? Do you think Pam Bondi would ever tell him no? Do you think she would ever allow an investigation of him or anyone under him to happen? That was the one honest thing Jeff Sessions ever did and it made him persona non grata with Trump.

Yes, we will still have elections. Whether they go smoothly and the results are accepted is to be determined. I expect things to be alright before the presidential election in 2028, but whether that goes well, nobody knows. I have a hard time seeing Vance certify the results of an election where a Democrat won, especially if he lost. We just have to hope election denial is something only Trump can get away with, but this is not something we should ever have to think about and yet here we are.

1. Just look at the contrast between how Zelensky was treated in the Oval Office with the treatment Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s de facto dictator, got.

2. Harvard has an endowment of $53 billion, by far the biggest of any university. You might think that would be enough to offset the loss of federal money, but you would be wrong. A vast majority of that money can only be used for specific purposes. It could find other ways to make up for the lost federal money, but not likely on a sustainable basis.

3. You will also need to keep red tape to a minimum and not try to have everything bagels.