By Jorge Elbaum on June 3, 2025
photo: Saul Loeb / AFP
Donald Trump was characterized by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong as the president who always ends up giving in after vociferously promoting impulsive, presumptuous, and confusing measures. Last Wednesday, the president of the United States was asked about the acronym TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out), coined by Armstrong.
The question angered the bombastic tycoon, who considered the question disrespectful. This scene is one of the most evocative metaphors of the erratic and crude drift that characterizes the Trump administration, desperate to regain its shattered hegemony through three objectives: reindustrialization, defending the role of the dollar as the global reserve currency, and curtailing the People’s Republic of China through a hybrid war.
Until two decades ago, the United States led the global economic, technological, and political scene in an almost omnipotent manner, while relocating its industrial companies and betting on financialization under the guise of the End of History and the supremacy of neoliberal theory.
In 2008, the mirage of perpetual equilibrium—stimulated by Wall Street gurus—disintegrated. That debacle destroyed jobs, accumulated wealth and, above all, the delusional belief that reducing the state, financial deregulation and privatization were enough to guarantee a promising future. The crisis exposed the fallacy of monetarism: its subsequent drift is the scenario in which the United States is attempting to recover what it has lost without innovation, productivity, or competitiveness, relying solely on tariffs and the progressive devaluation of the dollar, sprinkled with racism and xenophobia.
Trump’s tariff policy was challenged last week by the International Trade Court and then given legal approval two days later by a Federal Appeals Court ruling. The internal clashes reflect a contradiction between large corporations that see their sales to China threatened and others that need inputs, rare earths, critical minerals, or consumer goods produced in Southeast Asia.
The disorder and lack of coherence are causing confusion and weakening Washington’s position vis-à-vis the rest of the world. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick himself warned that the legal debates over Trump’s tariff executive orders (decrees) are ruining the agreements being renegotiated with Beijing. While Lutnik accuses the Deep State of being a tribunal, Trump is helping to weaken his country at the negotiating table. As negotiations unfold in Geneva, the president is making another of his TACO announcements, banning the sale to Beijing of design software (for semiconductors), machine tools, and jet engine equipment.
At the same time that negotiators in Washington and Beijing agreed in Geneva to reduce tariffs for 90 days, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent noted that “progress since then has been slow, but he said he expects more talks in the coming weeks.” Kicking the board, the ruddy-faced tycoon turned head of state took it upon himself to spoil everything by denouncing last Friday—on his antisocial network Truth—that China “has totally violated its agreement with us.” The US president is unreliable. While he negotiates, he betrays. This attitude continues to devalue the already devalued legitimacy of a nation that perceived itself as the bearer of manifest exceptionalism.
This fragility is also the result of domestic wrangling among large corporations that manage assets greater than the vast majority of countries in the world and have free access to the White House. It seems clear that Trump is eager to make exceptions, especially when it comes to mega-millionaires. Apple CEO Tim Cook managed to reduce tariffs on his products manufactured in China and Vietnam, and Nvidia, a manufacturer of chips for artificial intelligence, managed to overturn some export bans. Last Monday, the US president said at the White House: “I am a very flexible person (…) I recently helped Tim Cook.”
Elon Musk’s announced resignation is also an expression of a structural vulnerability linked to the US economy’s huge twin deficits. On the one hand, the fiscal deficit; on the other, the trade deficit. The South African businessman, considered the world’s wealthiest tycoon, questioned the budget presented to Congress a week ago. The United States is the most indebted country in the world. The largest item in its budget—above defense spending—is interest on that debt. The budget he is seeking to pass—which Musk questioned—involves a package of tax cuts and increased federal spending. The equation, however, results in greater indebtedness, which is sought to be paid off, temporarily, with more debt and tariffs, within the framework of Stephen Miran’s doctrine. This doctrine consists of strengthening the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, expanding global control of cryptocurrencies, reindustrializing the country, and dismantling China.
According to US academic publications, the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as the Star Wars Program, contributed to the Soviet cataclysm. Federal investments made during the Cold War were responsible for the establishment of Silicon Valley. In this context, semiconductors became a key input for the space and arms race. Demand for these silicon tablets from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Pentagon transformed fledgling computer companies into multimillion-dollar enterprises.
Chris Miller, author of The Chip Wars, considered that semiconductors rival oil as a critical geopolitical resource because they are essential for cell phones, cars, computers, and televisions. But also for airplanes, missiles, satellites, and military drones. The problem for Trump is that China controls much of the supply chain for the basic inputs for their manufacture (rare earths and critical minerals). In addition, their final production requires—in the smallest and most versatile models—the participation of approximately 40 companies from at least seven countries. These two elements (necessary inputs and value chain) provide officials in the Middle Kingdom with protection against Trump’s arrogance.
In academic circles at Shanghai University, a Confucian aphorism is often quoted to characterize Trump: “The most noble man is dignified, but not pedantic. The inferior man is vain, but not dignified.”
Source: Pagina 12, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English