What a difference a couple of weeks can make…! The coronavirus, as much as it was belittled but the Trump administration for the longest time, has changed the system overnight. This week the president made the spectacular but inevitable u-turn, and on Wednesday Congress passed one of the largest emergency relief packages in history. It was instantly signed into law, helped by the incredible cooperation of both aisles plus an eyebrow-raising handshake between Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi.
Who would have thought? Instead of nasty campaign infighting in the run-up to the November election, we are witnessing bi-partisan kissing and hugging, obviously in a virtual and not literal sense. And the package has got everything, would you believe it? It’s not just measures to stabilise markets and stimulate the economy, but we are talking things like industry bail-outs, government equity stakes, free loans to small businesses, and immediate physical payments to individual Americans.
Payments to individuals, as in almost like helicopter money? It appears we are way beyond what seems to have worked in the financial crisis when there were no such particular actions but debtors of every sort were implicitly bailed out – think of the housing market and everybody who was negative equity. Trump has also indicated that government spending will be off the leash as much as needed to bring the economy back in line, over and above the trillion deficit per year he is already running.
There are obvious political considerations in all this, no doubt, plus the hope that Trump’s previous stance of nonchalance will be papered over, but isn’t it odd that the president’s outspoken paradigm of capitalism has literally been thrown under the bus overnight? Doesn’t he sound more like Bernie Sanders in past few days, hammering home those payments to individual Americans, considering equity stakes, deferring student loan and mortgage obligations, and guaranteeing payrolls for everyone?
Yes, Trump is embracing democratic socialism! Opportunist that he is, he has quickly changed the course of what ultimately didn’t work and captured Bernie’s zeitgeist of socialism, sensing that it has become anchored within a large part of America’s constituency. Of course, we live in unprecedented times, at least in modern history, and there is hardly any choice but to embrace all citizens. Don’t think for a moment the president is not smelling the political opportunity in this.
Trump is evidently not an ideologist. Whatever works, flies. And right now, it is his moment to steal Bernie’s ideas, sit on them, and exploit them for political advantage. And if it costs the taxpayer a few trillion, so be it. This does not, however, imply that he has moved his own priorities and goalposts. The top one is still to win the election, despite the stock market crash and the ailing economy, his two previous pillars of a campaign.
In the end, though, he will neither sacrifice the capitalist system and bring it back as soon as the health crisis subsides, nor will he compromise on America First. There has been a lot of flak the White House has been on the receiving end of, because an Obama-esque global coordination throughout a crisis isn’t Trump’s cup of tea. Never underestimate the teflon nature of this president. He’s got nine lives like the cat, and despite his recurring faux-pas there are quite a few of them left.
