Deep fissures lie at the heart of Trump’s America

There is the view held by some that the America we see today in all its ugliness is one passing phase, a rough patch the world has landed in because the country chose a wrong leader with poor thinking, bad morals and doubtful business acumen. The temptation to attribute the tectonic shifts in US policy to the tantrums of an individual, or indeed to stretch this to see at work a Nixonian “Madman Theory” (broadly, irrationality as strategy), misses the deep fissures in American society, interlocked with rising tensions from globalisation that have been plastered over far too long.

Globalisation seen from the lens of the last four decades or thereabouts evokes notions of a “flat world” to use the imagery of Thomas Friedman’s book with that title, in which he speaks of a conversation in Bangalore where he is told what while a steak can’t be served and haircuts can’t be remote, India can book the window seat at the restaurant and the appointment with a barber of choice, right from a call centre! That is presented as the promise of a globalised world, in which the US-based accountant who loses his job to Indians running the numbers from a remote centre at a fractional cost, will have to just live with it.  Interestingly, in 2016, US Vice President J D Vance put the same question to the CEO of a multibillion-dollar tech company, to be told that the jobless would turn to “digital, fully immersive gaming!”. Quoting that incident recently, Vance said his wife remarked then, “We have to get the hell out of here. These people are …….. crazy.”

The tariffs war that Trump unleashed on April 03 is America getting out of a global arrangement that it now sees as “crazy”, even if it is the system that America built and ran as it pushed the narrative of globalisation as the then new growth mantra. Now, holding aloft a ludicrous menu card, Trump put out a new set of barriers that will surely escalate tensions, kill global trade and signal the end of the WTO.  The pain will be global, but its roots lie in the changing socio-economic landscape of America.

The disappearing factories, the recurring cycle of layoffs, the rising consumerist culture fed by an aggressive, even intrusive marketing machine, the erosion of trade unions and voice of workers in general, and the overwhelming power of corporate America have together contributed to a situation that is now being imputed to the ills of globalisation and its companion, the outsourcing boom. Yet, Trumpism won’t or can’t see that globalisation is not disconnected from and indeed is nothing more than an extension of capitalism at work.

This is, after all, a system that goes for the lowest wages and drives the maximisation of profit, even if it be at the cost of the lives of workers; several for example have committed suicide while working at I-Phone assembly plants run for Apple in China at wages and in conditions that would make the work illegal in America. The abuse reported is the tip of the iceberg. Many excesses unknown to the world have thrived. This is in the true spirit of Milton Friedman, who famously wrote on Sep.13,1970: “The social responsibility of a business is to increase its profits”, sparking a shareholder value chase that in the end debased the very idea of capitalism by legitimising a free run of profits for business often at the cost of responsible behaviour.

Consider the tormenting nature of the churn today: a) corporate America in 2019 formally rejected the Friedman doctrine (as many as 181 top global CEOs at the 2019 Business Roundtable signed a new purpose of the business corporation, rejecting shareholder primacy) b) has been loud (though not effective) in its embrace of DEI principles (Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity) and c) sought to stand up for the planet and people (the “Planet-People-Profits” pretentiousness) but d) equally would stand in favour of driving down labour costs with extractive contracts in distant parts of the globe, which is globalisation and effectively Friedman’s maximisation of profits at work. Friedman was killed, it seemed, but Friedman is thriving!

Now, the mash up is complete when Trump asks businesses to a) reject DEI, b) dump sustainability and c) celebrate profits while he prepares to sharply lower taxes but d) work to make America great, not great products and services. This is a kind of caricaturised-Friedman, neither here nor there. Its ideas get truncated at the border, State power is centralised and coercive even as the State is being effectively disbanded, and discordant voices are silenced.

Those silenced include businesses who have readily (and probably happily) succumbed to throwing out DEI, as indeed student voices and other political forces in the US today who find it difficult to stand up. Some of these tears point to structural inconsistencies in a system ripe for a collapse, waiting for the right conditions.  This is what is playing out in some ways in the world’s largest economy today. An argument can be made that capitalism has lost its way and is under severe strain in the land that champions it the most, and Trump’s wild moves are the big battle to save it from collapse, whatever be the cost.

All talk of values gets struck off the chart and in effect America stands naked, the Emperor without clothes who can do no more than mouth a line or two from one of its Hollywood Westerns: “You’d be surprised the things you can solve with a gun!”, signifying violence, power, the brutality of every fight for personal gain. This is not the new world order that was envisaged when the WTO was formed. Ashwani Mahajan of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, the RSS’s economic wing, is right in pointing out that India now should be free of TRIPS, or Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement, which is a child of the WTO – which is virtually dead now.

TRIPS had cost India heavily in terms of royalty payments to the tune of USD 17 billion dollars. The overriding of WTO by the US lends credence to the view of many in the developing world that these complex arrangements couched in principles were always meant to protect the interests of the US and its profiteering businesses. However, it will not be easy to walk out, given that India has too much at stake in maintaining and building a relationship with the US. The country can do that without being enamoured of the US or being intimidated by it.

(The writer is a journalist and faculty member at SPJIMR. Views are personal) (Through The Billion Press)