have seen the US as a form of corporatism* – as a country run in the
interests of the corporations and those who lead them. There is
considerable evidence that in many senses they are correct. However
to see Trump as the epitome
of this ‘rule by corporations’ I think misses something
important. Trump is different from what went before in important
respects.
The way business
influenced politicians in the past was straightforward. Campaigns
cost a lot of money (unlike the UK there are no tight limits on how
much can be spent), and business can provide that money, but of
course corporate political donations are not pure altruism. The
strings attached helped influence both Republican and Democratic
politicians. It was influence that followed the money, and that meant
to an extent it was representative of the corporate sector as a
whole. The same point can be made about political lobbying.
Donald Trump is different. It is a selective
plutocracy, and with one important exception that
plutocracy is selected by Trump. In that way it can also be seen as a
democratic
dictatorship, where the complexity of government
requires some delegation of power to other individuals. Like many
dictatorships, some of those individuals are the dictator’s family
members.
A dictatorship of
this form would not be possible if Congress had strongly opposed it.
That it has not is partly because the Republican party chooses not to
oppose, but also because Trump wields a power over Congress that can
override the influence of corporate money. That power comes from an
alliance between Trump and the media that has a big influence on how
Republican voters view the world: Fox News in particular but others
as well. The irony is that under these conditions democracy in the
form of primaries gives Trump and the media considerable power over
Congress.
between traditional corporate power ‘from below’ and the current
Trumpian plutocracy can be seen most clearly in Trump’s trade
policy. It would be a mistake to see past
US trade policy as an uninterrupted promotion of liberalisation, but
I think it is fair to say that trade restrictions have never been
imposed in such a haphazard way, based on such an obviously false
pretext (US surpluses good, deficits bad). Trump’s policy is a
threat to the international trading system that has in the past been
lead by the US, and therefore it is a threat to most
of corporate USA. Yet up till now Congress has done
very little to stop Trump’s ruinous policy.
taken
from an extraordinary recent event (watch here)
where Trump walks down a line of senior executives, who in turn stand
up and say what they are doing for the US and pledge to do more. Each statement is applauded with a positive statement
by Trump, as his daughter trails behind. These are top companies:
IBM, Microsoft, General Motors etc. It is all a show, of course, but
of a kind the US has never seen before. It seems indicative that this
is not just a continuation of past corporatism but something quite
different. These are corporate executives doing the President’s
bidding for fear or favour.
because it creates a tension that could at some stage drive events.
So far the Republican party has been prepared to allow Trump to do
what he wishes as long as didn’t require their explicit approval
(i.e their votes in Congress), but it has not as yet bent its
collective
agenda to his. (Arguments that it already has tend to look at past
Republican rhetoric rather than actions.) This uneasy peace may no
longer become tenable because of developments on trade, or Russia, or
the mid-term election results. If enough Republicans think their
future is safer by opposing Trump rather than indulging him, they
still have the power to bring Trump to heel. But the longer the peace
lasts, Trump’s influence on the Republican party will only grow.
