Donald Trump was characterized by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong as the president who always ends up backing down after blustering about impulsive, presumptuous, and confusing measures. The U.S. president was questioned last Wednesday about the acronym TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out), coined by Armstrong.
The question infuriated the pompous magnate, who considered the inquiry disrespectful. This scene is one of the most telling metaphors of the erratic and crude drift characterizing Trump’s administration, desperate to recover a fractured hegemony through three goals: reindustrialization, defending the dollar’s role as a global savings currency, and crippling the People’s Republic of China through hybrid warfare.
Until two decades ago, the United States led the global economic, technological, and political landscape almost unchallenged, while relocating its industrial companies and betting on financialization under the guise of the End of History and neoliberal theory supremacy.
In 2008, the mirage of perpetual equilibrium—promoted by Wall Street gurus—shattered. That debacle destroyed jobs, accumulated wealth, and above all, the absurd delusion that reducing the state, financial deregulation, and privatizations could guarantee a promising future. The crisis exposed the monetarist fallacy: its aftermath is the scenario where the U.S. tries to recover losses without innovation, productivity, or competitiveness—only through tariffs and progressive dollar devaluation, fueled by racism and xenophobia.
Trump’s tariff policy was challenged last week by the International Trade Court and reinstated with legal approval two days later via a Federal Appeals Court ruling. Internal clashes reflect contradictions between corporations fearing sales losses in China and others needing inputs, rare earths, critical minerals, or consumer goods produced in Southeast Asia.
The disorder and incoherence cause confusion and weaken Washington’s global standing. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick warned that legal debates over Trump’s tariff Executive Orders (decrees) ruin agreements being renegotiated with Beijing. While Lutnick blames the judicial Deep State, Trump undermines his country at the negotiating table. As talks unfold in Geneva, the president bellows another TACO announcement, banning Beijing’s access to design software (for semiconductors), machine tools, and jet engine equipment.
While Washington and Beijing negotiators agreed in Geneva to reduce tariffs for 90 days, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent noted that “progress since then has been slow but expects more talks in coming weeks.” Overturning the board, the ruddy magnate-turned-president ruined everything by denouncing last Friday—on his anti-social network Truth—that China “has totally violated its agreement with us.” Unreliable, the U.S. president. While negotiating, he betrays. This attitude further devalues the already diminished legitimacy of the nation that saw itself as exceptionally manifest.
This fragility also stems from domestic struggles among mega-corporations controlling assets exceeding most countries’ GDP, with unrestricted White House access. Trump readily grants exceptions, especially for billionaires. Apple CEO Tim Cook secured tariff reductions for products made in China and Vietnam, and Nvidia—an AI chipmaker—cancelled some export bans. Last Monday, the U.S. president stated at the White House: “I’m very flexible (…) recently helped Tim Cook.”
Elon Musk’s announced resignation also reflects structural vulnerability linked to America’s swollen twin deficits: fiscal and trade. The South African entrepreneur, considered the world’s wealthiest magnate, challenged the budget presented to Congress a week ago. The U.S. is the world’s most indebted nation. Its budget’s top expense—above defense—is debt interest. The budget he opposes combines tax cuts and increased federal spending. This equation increases debt, temporarily offset by more debt and tariffs under Stephen Miran’s doctrine: reinforcing the dollar as global reserve currency, expanding crypto control, reindustrializing the nation, and dismembering China.
According to U.S. academic publications, the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars Program) contributed to the Soviet collapse. Federal Cold War investments established Silicon Valley. Semiconductors became key inputs for space and arms races. Demand for silicon wafers from NASA and the Pentagon turned fledgling IT firms into billion-dollar corporations.
Chris Miller, author of Chip Wars, argued semiconductors rival oil as critical geopolitical resources—essential for phones, cars, computers, and TVs, but also planes, missiles, satellites, and combat drones. Trump’s problem? China controls much of the supply chain for basic inputs (rare earths, critical minerals). Moreover, final production—for smaller, versatile models—requires ~40 firms across ≥7 countries. These elements (inputs and value chain) shield Chinese officials from Trump’s arrogance.
At Shanghai University seminars, a Confucian aphorism often characterizes Trump: “The noblest man is dignified but not pompous. The inferior man is pompous but not dignified.”
(Taken from Página 12)
