this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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I just encountered this last night with hardcore Trumper family members. They believe his tariffs are because the tariffed countries have their military subsidized by the American government and they need to pay their fair share. They think xwe're going to have to "feel a little pain" for a year or two, then "it" will be better. What is "it"? Who the hell knows. They certainly don't.
Yanis Varoufakis explains the reasoning
I like Yanis but I really don't think that's what Trump is doing.
I'm sorry, but Trump's "America has been treated very unfairly" is more likely just an extension of his own persecution complex, which in turn is just fascist rhetoric, always with the grievance, eternally playing the victim card ("they humiliated us but we will get our revenge"), so I feel like Yanis is trying to interpret the well-known fascist humiliation fetish into a coherent economic vision... But it just isn't. Trump's woefully incompetent, so the only way what Yanis is saying would make sense is if his Heritage goons or oligarch buddies whispered stuff in his ear... although I would be highly doubtful even then that this is the plan, because their priority here seems to be to loot and plunder the state and turn it into a kind of Russian oligarchy with Christofascist characteristics. They're way too high on power, as can be seen by how much they say and do right in the open, thinking they're untouchable.
And I didn't even mention the whole Curtis Yarvin network states tehnofeudalism, which Yanis should know about since he has a whole book called Tehnofeudalism, and I hope he mentions Yarvin and Peter Thiel in there and isn't just saying how WEF style neoliberalism will eventually usher in tehnofeudalism, right? Right?!
PS: UnHerd is a pretty sus publication with a very TERF-ish bent. While they do sometimes get prominent lefties to write for it, it's always for articles like this that are useful to them as they don't really challenge the MAGA worldview (source: a MAGA acquaintance recommended me a recent Yanis interview rehashing this very article, and his takeaway was how smart Trump is). Tread carefully, there's always an angle with this site.
That's a great read and makes a ton of sense. Thank you!
I wrote another reply to the person who posted but I don't like repeating myself, so I'll just give the cliff notes:
Trump's "America has been treated very unfairly" rhetoric is more likely just an extension of his own persecution complex, which in turn is just standard fascist rhetoric about how "we were once great, but we've allowed ourselves to be humiliated by our adversaries... but now we'll be great again and take our revenge on all of them". It's nothing new. And while I have a high opinion of Yanis, I think he's just wrong here, and I think that's exactly why UnHerd (a sussy "alt-left" pro-TERF publication) was happy to publish his article.