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Just a few short weeks ago the prospects for American democracy looked bleak. Donald Trump was elected despite the events of January 6th and his clear threats of retribution against those who had tried to hold him in check. The powerful and extremely wealthy lined up behind him on the inauguration dais and contributed vast sums to his inauguration party. Democrats were stunned, despondent and disorganized. The stock market was climbing. And many of us expected Trump, the ultimate nepo baby, to claim that the solid economy he inherited from Biden was his own handiwork.
Suddenly the march to authoritarian rule is looking much less unstoppable. Trump’s vindictive over-reach has quickly sparked widespread outrage within many institutions, including universities and the courts, and among regular Americans. Polls suggest that the public is making a hard turn against Trump’s tactics.
Moreover, the economy, which was arguably the decisive issue in November, has rapidly turned into a huge Trump liability. It’s actually incredible how fast public views of the economy have soured:
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Source: San Francisco Fed
Just to be clear, I am very much not in the camp that urges Democrats to focus on kitchen-table issues and ignore the Trump regime’s other outrages. Polls tell us that Americans aren’t as ignorant and self-centered as some political consultants would have their clients believe. Many ordinary people are outraged at the news of renditions of legal residents to gulags in El Salvador. The public overwhelmingly opposes Trumpist defunding of medical research and attacks on universities, as well as the DOGEing of Social Security.
Democrats shouldn’t give Trump a pass on any of his destructive actions. They should, instead, tell voters that stripping people of their civil rights, annihilating education and science, destroying U.S. trade and poisoning our international relationships has one unifying goal: to destroy civil society in the name of MAGA.
That said, I believe that the administration’s metastasizing economic catasrophe is a critical development.
As I read the history of successful autogolpes, politicians who win an election and then effectively destroy the democracy that elevated them, it is almost always the case that their consolidation of power rests upon the perception of economic achievement.
Take the case of Hitler. And spare me the fake outrage: We’re well past the point where you can say that MAGA/Nazi comparisons are illegitimate.
Many people are probably aware that the Nazi takeover of Germany was made possible by the collapse of the German economy between 1929 and 1933 — a slide into deep depression that was partly due to the Brüning government’s refusal to depart from gold-standard orthodoxy. But I’m not sure how many realize that Hitler was able to consolidate power in part because his heterodox economic policies led to a strong recovery and a rapid fall in unemployment, shown at the top of this post.
Somewhat similarly, Viktor Orban took power in Hungary during the euro crisis, which led to high unemployment and painful austerity imposed by the International Monetary Fund. He was able to consolidate one-party rule in Hungary in part because he ended up presiding over a long period of economic recovery:
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Orban doesn’t deserve much credit for that recovery. Large-scale aid from the European Union, which shamefully continued long after Hungary had effectively become a dictatorship, was surely a bigger factor than Orban’s policies. So was foreign investment, especially by German car companies. In any case, however, the improving economy surely helped reconcile Hungarians to his rule.
Trump is in a very different position. He inherited an economy that, whatever Trumpists claim, was in quite good shape. Inflation and unemployment were both low, while real wages — especially for less well-paid workers — were up substantially.
U.S. voters elected Trump anyway. But as of January 20 the U.S. economy had far more room to get worse than it did to get better.
And it is indeed getting worse, with remarkable speed. The insane tariff plan Trump announced on April 2 — which appears to have been devised by Peter Navarro, his trade czar — was a huge shock to the system. The different but equally insane plan he announced a week later was no better. The 145 percent tariff on China seems set to create supply-chain disruptions comparable to those caused by Covid:
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We will almost surely see dramatic price increases and empty shelves within weeks, along with the failure of many small businesses that depend on imports, trucking companies and more. A recession later this year looks more likely than not. And there are more shoes to drop: Wait until Social Security starts failing thanks to inadequate staffing and the public becomes aware of the savage Medicaid cuts that are central to G.O.P. budget plans.
Trump and his minions will try to blame other people for their woes, claiming falsely that the Biden economy was terrible and/or that it’s all Jerome Powell’s fault. But I don’t think their whining will play with most Americans. It’s a good bet that Trump’s approval numbers, which have already plunged, will go even lower.
Does any of this matter in the face of an authoritarian movement that already controls most of the levers of power? Yes, it does. Trump can’t, unfortunately, be removed from office no matter how badly he performs. But people who might have stood aside as he dismantled democracy if he were delivering prosperity will be more inclined to take a stand because he’s failing as an economic manager.
It's much too soon to predict that U.S. democracy will survive. But Trump and his economic advisers, by screwing up so completely, have given us a chance. Thank you, Peter Navarro.
MUSICAL CODA
