By Loukis Skaliotis

During the four years that President Donald Trump was out of the White House, he spent them not only in planning his return, and the retribution he would extract from the people that bruised his ego, but also in meticulously forming the exact policies he would put in place once back in power.

Two months since his inauguration, he has hit the ground running, unleashing a series of actions that has kept the world transfixed and wondering what will come next. Never tired of the limelight, he has been constantly in the news by sticking to the policies he has been saying all along. In that respect even his critics cannot fault him for doing things he had never advocated.

Whether the outcome of his actions will deliver on his promises, however, is another story. On the economy his actions have not reduced inflation but rather are expected to have the opposite effect. The stock market, an indicator that Trump has always been looking at going up, has taken a dive. Yet that doesn’t seem to worry the president, at least not in public. Being a master of deflection, he sidetracks the problems as part of a period of transition. It will be all worth it in the end, he says.

Many people thought that once he got into office, he would water down his rhetoric, smooth out the edges to ensure that any adverse impact of his controversial policies did not affect the Republican party’s chances at the next congressional elections or indeed for whoever Trump would tap for the next presidential election in 2028. But that would ignore the fact that Trump does not intend to stand down in 2028. He said as much during his campaign. Steve Bannon, his chief strategist for part of his first term, and the architect of many of his policies has been quoted in an interview with Chris Cuomo that they “are working on” identifying ways to ensure Trump stays in power beyond 2028.

The fact that the president seems not to be worried how his policies would affect his possible re-election reveals one of two things. One, the ways to maintain power beyond 2028 are not dependent on his popularity with the people. More likely, however, is that Trump simply does not accept that any of his thinking can be wrong and by extension that it can be bad policy. The fact that his approach to almost all problems is a superficial, simplistic analysis, ignoring a deeper investigation into the underlying causes of things, is not of concern. On the contrary it requires simple, quick fixes.

In economics, the US has a trade deficit with the world. In Trump’s world, this is bad. Solution? Impose tariffs everywhere and make America great again. The notion that having a trade deficit is intrinsically bad has been debunked by economists since time immemorial, not least by Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, an economist not famous for his woke tendencies. In the US the trade deficit is, rather, a result of the key exorbitant privilege that the US has enjoyed (and its trading partners often complained about) of using the dollar as a reserve currency. (For a more detailed analysis on the importance of the dollar’s use as an international currency and its implications, as well as the dangers Trump’s policies have on this, read the essay by Barry Eichengreen in the Financial Times titled “Can the dollar remain king of currencies?”).

Imposing tariffs to address the trade deficit, leading to supposed increased prosperity, has also been debunked by economists since at least the times of the British political economist David Ricardo. I will not elaborate here on the theory of comparative advantage among trading nations, Ricardo’s famous contribution to economic thought. What I will say is that the decline in US manufacturing which Trump never stops moaning about, and his desire to reinstate through tariffs, has been the reason and/or consequence of the immense rise in technological advancement in America and its almost total dominance in this field on the world stage. But Trump wants to both have his cake and eat it. No cake for anybody else. The idea that we all share in a bigger pie so we all benefit is alien to him.

In international relations, similarly, the idea of shared coexistence does not seem to be favoured in the Trump world. He appears instead to have a liking for redrawing maps that have been in place for centuries. Who can forget, during his first term in office, his redrawing with his sharpie (permanent marker) the path of Hurricane Dorian to go through Alabama just because it would better fit his narrative. By the same token, the North American continent has no need of artificial lines. Canada has no reason to exist separately, just as a US state. Greenland doesn’t even get state status. Simple annexation will do. As for the Gulf of Mexico, we change that to Gulf of America on the stroke of the sharpie. The only reason Mexico itself is not similarly rearranged is because, according to Trump, it is full of rapists and murderers. Until he finds where to ship them, Mexico will have to wait its turn.

The above analysis may appear simplistic, but it does not make it inaccurate. It is based on the understanding of a man who is supremely confident in himself, with few guardrails and a total conviction in the rightness of his opinions. The renowned economist John Maynard Keynes famously said that “when the facts change, I change my mind”. Trump instead embodies the idea “when the facts are not in line with my mind, I change the facts”.

Not only does Trump have supreme confidence, but he also has a unique ability to convert people (either through carrot or stick) into following his view of the world. The list of people that once considered him persona non-grata and have subsequently become bosom buddies is considerable. From politicians like Vice-President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the business titans of Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) to corporate entities like top law firm Paul Weiss and Columbia University which capitulated to his demands in exchange of the $400 million federal funding that Trump had withheld.

This ability to will people to his view of the world is perhaps best visualised by his signature dance to the YMCA song that follows him in almost all public speaking events. The 1970s’ song by the Village People was once considered a gay anthem. This did not fit well with the Trump image. Rather than adopting a different song, the lead singer Victor Willis, was entrusted to put the record straight indicating that the song was never about gay rights.

Gay or not, Trump’s swaying of his fists to the song is perhaps the most ridiculous attempt at dancing ever attempted. It requires somebody with immense self-confidence to pull off. What is worse and extremely frightening, however, is to see people mimicking him on stage and looking equally ridiculous. It is reminiscent of the fairytale of the “Emperor has no clothes” where everybody is clapping in approval instead of calling him out.

This, it seems, is the Trump world we live in now. A world with no rhythm. Perhaps a more appropriate tune to accompany his rallies would have been the Leonard Cohen song “First we take Manhattan”. For the benefit of readers who may not be familiar with it, the haunting refrain goes: “First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin”. It may not have the catchy tune of YMCA, but at least it would have been more honest.