Trump's 'Economic Agenda': A Rehearsal of Imperial Patronage
The headline tells you one story. The data tells another: Donald Trump is campaigning on an economic agenda he claims will tackle rising costs, while consistently overlooking the systemic issues his policies exacerbated. The narrative of 'America First' economics often translates into a global strategy of patronage, where US corporate interests dictate terms. For instance, the 2017 tax cuts, a
cornerstone of his economic policy, drastically reduced corporate tax rates, funneling wealth upwards. This pattern is hardly new. Consider the Washington Consensus, which began formalizing in the late 1980s, pushing privatization and deregulation across the Global South. This neoliberal framework, embraced by administrations across the political spectrum, consistently imposed conditions that
served American economic might under the guise of 'development.' Trump's tariffs, for example, imposed an estimated $12 billion in new taxes on American consumers and businesses by 2019, according to data from the National Bureau of Economic Research. These actions destabilized global markets, punishing developing nations that rely on stable trade relations. The rhetoric of economic nationalism
often masks a deeper agenda that prioritizes the profits of multinational corporations over the well-being of the working class, both domestically and abroad. Historically, US economic policies, from Cold War-era interventions to modern trade agreements, have engineered global dependencies. Just as in 1961, when President Kennedy launched the Alliance for Progress, ostensibly to promote economic