Trump plans to reverse U.S. de-industrialization by targeting allies like Europe, South Korea, and Japan, forcing them to subsidize and move key industries to the USA, argues economist Michael Hudson.
Trump’s foreign policy is a goulash of contradictory action - EXCEPT for a fact that he is a Zionist dedicated to creation of ever-greater Israel — a MIGA fraud
"Trump’s dream of reversing U.S. de-industrialization involves de-industrializing its allies as rivals, turning them into subsidizers of a shrunken unipolar West, forcing them to move their key industries to the United States."
That is the plan in a nutshell, Michael and your stated it well.
No, of course it cannot work not just for economic reasons, but also because of cultural and social/psychological reasons.
Think the workers will allow it in France, or the fascists allow it in the UK?
But this is the plan. One Grand Empire for the World! with Trump sitting on the top yelling, "Top of the world, ma."
Readers might like this short clip from a famous movie of last century entitled, "White Heat", starring film star James Cagney.
Trump could have deployed his policy of refurbishing American manufacturing simply by dealing with the heads of American international corporations. He didn't have to attempt to destroy other nations' economies!
But Hudson's just calling for a different Grand Empire for the World. What this essay ultimately does, in spite of its rhetoric of liberation, sovereignty, anti-rentiership, and anti-colonial struggle, is preserve the same all-encompassing governmental, political, economic, scientific, and cultural central-planning regime that is controlled by a relatively miniscule number of networked people, its just proposing to geographically relocate some of its command nodes and swap out some of its beneficiaries. The critique of USA/Western-Europe based major firms financial colonialism is often accurate as description, but the proposed “solution” never leaves the logic of unitary control with a rigid hierarchical vertical command structure and top down coordination, top-down credit allocation, centralized control of capital flows, and state-managed industrial direction at continental or bloc scale. What disappears entirely is the possibility that the problem is not who controls the system, but that the system itself is architected as a single, extractive, hierarchical planning machine whose decision making processes are completely closed off to the almost the entirety of the human species. In other words, the essay rejects Western neoliberal planners only to endorse a rival planning elite, still centralized, still coercive, still operating through consolidated financial and administrative structures that suppress local communities, institutional plurality, and genuine democratic variance.
The deeper sleight of hand is that decentralization is treated as either impossible or reactionary, when historically it was the polycentric, federated, redundant systems that produced durable growth, innovation, and resilience. By framing the choice as “Western financial imperialism versus sovereign state-directed development”, the essay erases the third option, dismantling the command architecture itself by restoring semi-fragmented capital structures, regional policy variation, legal/regulatory variability, local control over credit and infrastructure, federated authority, and lower case "d" democratic access to economic decision-making. That absence is likely not accidental. A world of many semi-sovereign systems, experimenting in parallel and capable of opting out, would be far harder to dominate, whether by Wall Street, Beijing, BRICS technocrats, or any other aspiring control class. What the essay offers, therefore, is not an escape from deeply centralized and predatory control structures, but a rebranding of it, one that leaves the predatory logic intact while promising that if humanity just gives some other incredibly (>0.10%) share of the population absolute power, everything will be just great and lies that what we got or a this other crowd are the only two options
None of the Countries being blackmailed were the progenitors of the internationalizing of the World's trading economy. They simply accomodated American based international companies which wanted to save money by moving their production to other countries. They did what they were contracted to do, they produced first class goods for the US market at a discounted cost which was exactly what the American businesses wanted. I don't fault these countries for doing what they were asked to do, not at all!
If the USA is genuinely interested in attracting other countries to build factories in the USA for job creation and reindustrialisation, they are going about it in a peculiar way.
US ICE agents detained hundreds of South Korean Hyundai / LG workers in chains for deportation. Good luck replacing them with illiterate unskilled untrained Yankee knuckledraggers.
This is yet one more Trump atrocity that will blow up in his face. Quite apart from sabotaging mutually beneficial business interests of an ally of the USA, it has sparked outrage among Koreans.
One can only conclude that unhinged racist and xenophobic psychopathy of the Krony Kapitalist Kleptoctacy "trumps" sane economic policies.
If I were Korean I would demand immediate deportation of all 29,000 US troops occupying South Korea (preferably in chains) and closure of all 73 US military bases in Korea. I would then demand unification with North Korea to forge a future of unimaginable wealth by trading with China and Russia and by getting rid of the US parasite.
Note: TSMC tried to build chip factories in Arizona but utterly failed to produce them in significant quality and quantity at affordable prices. They were forced to import entire families from Taiwan to do the work required of literate, educated, skilled employees.
Korean responses to ICE deportation of South Korean workers from USA:
The immigration lawyer says they were working there legally. If you choose to distort the spirit of the law to criminalize people of a different ethnic group who are in the US TEMPORARILY to CREATE jobs in the USA, then you are both a racist bigot and a fool.
Note: Trump in fact asked the workers to stay on to finish setting set up the factory but the workers sensibly declined and went home.
Conclusion : the USA is faaaaaarked as a result of their own self faarking faarkery and , you, LIE seeking missile, are one of the faaarkers.
the Korean workers were being paid by LG Korea, not by the USA and were doing work that Americans had no experience or skills or training or qualifications to do, hence were NOT taking away jobs from any US faaarkers like yourself. But if you insist on being a pedantic shithead and choose to faaark yourself in the process, go ahead moron.
Further update to drive the nail in the coffin of the Turd Seeking Miscreant's shitforbrain arguments.
H-1B visa was meant to allow foreigners in
1. with special skills/knowledge (not possessed by US residents)
2.Temporarily
3.who are not being paid by US entities for task
4. to do business consultation, specialist tasks or training of US workers
That all makes sense to ensure jobs are not taken away from qualified US workers and such temporary tasks are not funded by the US coffers.
By those criteria the Hyundai workers were there LEGALLY. Specifics under ESTA may be different but they were there even shorter term eg for business consultation for a few days, to help set up the factory to create jobs for US citizens.
Now Trump is "reforming" the H-1B visa to force foreigners to pay the US parasites $100k per year for the privilege of serving the USA temporarily.
This will certainly deter such high skilled foreigners / corporations from setting up businesses and factories in the USA, but Dunning-Krugerites like Nutlick and Trump spin it as though it is a great idea, just as their "genius" stable (=unstable) coin idea is actually a moronic GRIFT.
Meanwhile Trump spends millions on crass bread and circus displays on the White House lawn.
(".... U.S. diplomacy can arm-twist Europe, Japan, South Korea, and other dependencies (such as the ruling DPP party in Taiwan) to relocate their industry to the United States. These governments are still suffering from Stockholm syndrome after wars that ended in 1945 and 1953...." )
Actually, in the likes of Starmer, Merz, Von der Leyen and many others, they HAVE in fact installed leaders who put the US demands above the national interests of these countries. It@s not even a matter of dipølomacy - just vassalhood.
Furthermore its not a "Stockholm syndrome" - these countries share a common trait of being heavily militarily occupied by the US. And the Snowden revelations uncovered that their intelligence services spied on their own citizens and even their own governments at US command.
("....Turkey is a wild card still up for grabs....")
No - if you have been observing closely, since the US attempted coup on Erdogan many years ago, he dropped any real non-alignment, and he does what the US and Israel tell him to, with a few small deviations for plausible deniablity towards his own population, who would also rebel. His country also hosts US bases,
(".....Likewise for the entire Middle East......")
Again, no. After the US and Israel firing missles as they wish in Doha a week, ago, we should all understand that these countries, (again also hosting US military bases "protecting" them from independence) have no alternative routes. All they can do is count down the days until ISIS is boomeranged at them, in the ultimate humiliation by the neocon zionists.
What this essay ultimately does, in spite of its rhetoric of liberation, sovereignty, anti-rentiership, and anti-colonial struggle, is preserve the same all-encompassing governmental, political, economic, scientific, and cultural central-planning regime that is controlled by a relatively miniscule number of networked people, its just proposing to geographically relocate some of its command nodes and swap out some of its beneficiaries. The critique of USA/Western-Europe based major firms financial colonialism is often accurate as description, but the proposed “solution” never leaves the logic of unitary control with a rigid hierarchical vertical command structure and top down coordination, top-down credit allocation, centralized control of capital flows, and state-managed industrial direction at continental or bloc scale. What disappears entirely is the possibility that the problem is not who controls the system, but that the system itself is architected as a single, extractive, hierarchical planning machine whose decision making processes are completely closed off to the almost the entirety of the human species. In other words, the essay rejects Western neoliberal planners only to endorse a rival planning elite, still centralized, still coercive, still operating through consolidated financial and administrative structures that suppress local communities, institutional plurality, and genuine democratic variance.
The deeper sleight of hand is that decentralization is treated as either impossible or reactionary, when historically it was the polycentric, federated, redundant systems that produced durable growth, innovation, and resilience. By framing the choice as “Western financial imperialism versus sovereign state-directed development”, the essay erases the third option, dismantling the command architecture itself by restoring semi-fragmented capital structures, regional policy variation, legal/regulatory variability, local control over credit and infrastructure, federated authority, and lower case "d" democratic access to economic decision-making. That absence is likely not accidental. A world of many semi-sovereign systems, experimenting in parallel and capable of opting out, would be far harder to dominate, whether by Wall Street, Beijing, BRICS technocrats, or any other aspiring control class. What the essay offers, therefore, is not an escape from deeply centralized and predatory control structures, but a rebranding of it, one that leaves the predatory logic intact while promising that if humanity just gives some other incredibly (>0.10%) share of the population absolute power, everything will be just great and lies that what we got or a this other crowd are the only two options
What this essay ultimately does, in spite of its rhetoric of liberation, sovereignty, anti-rentiership, and anti-colonial struggle, is preserve the same all-encompassing governmental, political, economic, scientific, and cultural central-planning regime that is controlled by a relatively miniscule number of networked people, its just proposing to geographically relocate some of its command nodes and swap out some of its beneficiaries. The critique of USA/Western-Europe based major firms financial colonialism is often accurate as description, but the proposed “solution” never leaves the logic of unitary control with a rigid hierarchical vertical command structure and top down coordination, top-down credit allocation, centralized control of capital flows, and state-managed industrial direction at continental or bloc scale. What disappears entirely is the possibility that the problem is not who controls the system, but that the system itself is architected as a single, extractive, hierarchical planning machine whose decision making processes are completely closed off to the almost the entirety of the human species. In other words, the essay rejects Western neoliberal planners only to endorse a rival planning elite, still centralized, still coercive, still operating through consolidated financial and administrative structures that suppress local communities, institutional plurality, and genuine democratic variance.
The deeper sleight of hand is that decentralization is treated as either impossible or reactionary, when historically it was the polycentric, federated, redundant systems that produced durable growth, innovation, and resilience. By framing the choice as “Western financial imperialism versus sovereign state-directed development”, the essay erases the third option, dismantling the command architecture itself by restoring semi-fragmented capital structures, regional policy variation, legal/regulatory variability, local control over credit and infrastructure, federated authority, and lower case "d" democratic access to economic decision-making. That absence is likely not accidental. A world of many semi-sovereign systems, experimenting in parallel and capable of opting out, would be far harder to dominate, whether by Wall Street, Beijing, BRICS technocrats, or any other aspiring control class. What the essay offers, therefore, is not an escape from deeply centralized and predatory control structures, but a rebranding of it, one that leaves the predatory logic intact while promising that if humanity just gives some other incredibly (>0.10%) share of the population absolute power, everything will be just great and lies that what we got or a this other crowd are the only two options
Coz that hasn't already been tried and met with ICE in full force right? Coz Asian governments haven't had to send planes to retrieve their citizens right?
The only thing shorter than his pen-is his memory.
Trump’s foreign policy is a goulash of contradictory action - EXCEPT for a fact that he is a Zionist dedicated to creation of ever-greater Israel — a MIGA fraud
He’s our own Agamemnon, a pidasterdastic winner despite himself.
"Trump’s dream of reversing U.S. de-industrialization involves de-industrializing its allies as rivals, turning them into subsidizers of a shrunken unipolar West, forcing them to move their key industries to the United States."
That is the plan in a nutshell, Michael and your stated it well.
No, of course it cannot work not just for economic reasons, but also because of cultural and social/psychological reasons.
Think the workers will allow it in France, or the fascists allow it in the UK?
But this is the plan. One Grand Empire for the World! with Trump sitting on the top yelling, "Top of the world, ma."
Readers might like this short clip from a famous movie of last century entitled, "White Heat", starring film star James Cagney.
https://youtu.be/OjzKiEs_pHI
The question at issue is will it work?
A 'reverse' China syndrome?
Bringing the corporations back 'home' is simply impossible in a world of Transnational corporate capitalism.
But the attempt is compelling in face of one of Marx's quotes:
"The workers have no homeland."
Indeed.
Trump could have deployed his policy of refurbishing American manufacturing simply by dealing with the heads of American international corporations. He didn't have to attempt to destroy other nations' economies!
They are his bosses
But Hudson's just calling for a different Grand Empire for the World. What this essay ultimately does, in spite of its rhetoric of liberation, sovereignty, anti-rentiership, and anti-colonial struggle, is preserve the same all-encompassing governmental, political, economic, scientific, and cultural central-planning regime that is controlled by a relatively miniscule number of networked people, its just proposing to geographically relocate some of its command nodes and swap out some of its beneficiaries. The critique of USA/Western-Europe based major firms financial colonialism is often accurate as description, but the proposed “solution” never leaves the logic of unitary control with a rigid hierarchical vertical command structure and top down coordination, top-down credit allocation, centralized control of capital flows, and state-managed industrial direction at continental or bloc scale. What disappears entirely is the possibility that the problem is not who controls the system, but that the system itself is architected as a single, extractive, hierarchical planning machine whose decision making processes are completely closed off to the almost the entirety of the human species. In other words, the essay rejects Western neoliberal planners only to endorse a rival planning elite, still centralized, still coercive, still operating through consolidated financial and administrative structures that suppress local communities, institutional plurality, and genuine democratic variance.
The deeper sleight of hand is that decentralization is treated as either impossible or reactionary, when historically it was the polycentric, federated, redundant systems that produced durable growth, innovation, and resilience. By framing the choice as “Western financial imperialism versus sovereign state-directed development”, the essay erases the third option, dismantling the command architecture itself by restoring semi-fragmented capital structures, regional policy variation, legal/regulatory variability, local control over credit and infrastructure, federated authority, and lower case "d" democratic access to economic decision-making. That absence is likely not accidental. A world of many semi-sovereign systems, experimenting in parallel and capable of opting out, would be far harder to dominate, whether by Wall Street, Beijing, BRICS technocrats, or any other aspiring control class. What the essay offers, therefore, is not an escape from deeply centralized and predatory control structures, but a rebranding of it, one that leaves the predatory logic intact while promising that if humanity just gives some other incredibly (>0.10%) share of the population absolute power, everything will be just great and lies that what we got or a this other crowd are the only two options
None of the Countries being blackmailed were the progenitors of the internationalizing of the World's trading economy. They simply accomodated American based international companies which wanted to save money by moving their production to other countries. They did what they were contracted to do, they produced first class goods for the US market at a discounted cost which was exactly what the American businesses wanted. I don't fault these countries for doing what they were asked to do, not at all!
If the USA is genuinely interested in attracting other countries to build factories in the USA for job creation and reindustrialisation, they are going about it in a peculiar way.
US ICE agents detained hundreds of South Korean Hyundai / LG workers in chains for deportation. Good luck replacing them with illiterate unskilled untrained Yankee knuckledraggers.
This is yet one more Trump atrocity that will blow up in his face. Quite apart from sabotaging mutually beneficial business interests of an ally of the USA, it has sparked outrage among Koreans.
One can only conclude that unhinged racist and xenophobic psychopathy of the Krony Kapitalist Kleptoctacy "trumps" sane economic policies.
If I were Korean I would demand immediate deportation of all 29,000 US troops occupying South Korea (preferably in chains) and closure of all 73 US military bases in Korea. I would then demand unification with North Korea to forge a future of unimaginable wealth by trading with China and Russia and by getting rid of the US parasite.
Note: TSMC tried to build chip factories in Arizona but utterly failed to produce them in significant quality and quantity at affordable prices. They were forced to import entire families from Taiwan to do the work required of literate, educated, skilled employees.
Korean responses to ICE deportation of South Korean workers from USA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64r6qd3VxBc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-R1o6DY0Z4
How important was the Hyundai/LG plant for the US economy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8gHnJO98pM
The Korean workers were in the USA LEGALLY
and the ICE raid was simply aggressive racist thuggery driven by INCOMPETENCE and GANGSTERISM.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8NO33ta0Zw
Message to the world:
Boycott, Divest from and Sanction ALL business dealings with the USA if you have any sense whatsoever.
Totally agree!
The immigration lawyer says they were working there legally. If you choose to distort the spirit of the law to criminalize people of a different ethnic group who are in the US TEMPORARILY to CREATE jobs in the USA, then you are both a racist bigot and a fool.
Note: Trump in fact asked the workers to stay on to finish setting set up the factory but the workers sensibly declined and went home.
Conclusion : the USA is faaaaaarked as a result of their own self faarking faarkery and , you, LIE seeking missile, are one of the faaarkers.
One more thing, LIE seeking miscreant::
the Korean workers were being paid by LG Korea, not by the USA and were doing work that Americans had no experience or skills or training or qualifications to do, hence were NOT taking away jobs from any US faaarkers like yourself. But if you insist on being a pedantic shithead and choose to faaark yourself in the process, go ahead moron.
Further update to drive the nail in the coffin of the Turd Seeking Miscreant's shitforbrain arguments.
H-1B visa was meant to allow foreigners in
1. with special skills/knowledge (not possessed by US residents)
2.Temporarily
3.who are not being paid by US entities for task
4. to do business consultation, specialist tasks or training of US workers
That all makes sense to ensure jobs are not taken away from qualified US workers and such temporary tasks are not funded by the US coffers.
By those criteria the Hyundai workers were there LEGALLY. Specifics under ESTA may be different but they were there even shorter term eg for business consultation for a few days, to help set up the factory to create jobs for US citizens.
Now Trump is "reforming" the H-1B visa to force foreigners to pay the US parasites $100k per year for the privilege of serving the USA temporarily.
This will certainly deter such high skilled foreigners / corporations from setting up businesses and factories in the USA, but Dunning-Krugerites like Nutlick and Trump spin it as though it is a great idea, just as their "genius" stable (=unstable) coin idea is actually a moronic GRIFT.
Meanwhile Trump spends millions on crass bread and circus displays on the White House lawn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTjYoBDBio0
Absolute confirmation that the USA is now a SHITHOLE CUNTRY run and cheer-led on by shithole cunts like Turd Seeking Miscreant
Sewing the seeds of bitterness, resentment, war and avarice will ultimately backfire.
Yes, but when it does backfire, too many innocents get caught in it!
If you want to see the World's most foolish and weakest leaders, just look at the picture at the top of this article.
(".... U.S. diplomacy can arm-twist Europe, Japan, South Korea, and other dependencies (such as the ruling DPP party in Taiwan) to relocate their industry to the United States. These governments are still suffering from Stockholm syndrome after wars that ended in 1945 and 1953...." )
Actually, in the likes of Starmer, Merz, Von der Leyen and many others, they HAVE in fact installed leaders who put the US demands above the national interests of these countries. It@s not even a matter of dipølomacy - just vassalhood.
Furthermore its not a "Stockholm syndrome" - these countries share a common trait of being heavily militarily occupied by the US. And the Snowden revelations uncovered that their intelligence services spied on their own citizens and even their own governments at US command.
("....Turkey is a wild card still up for grabs....")
No - if you have been observing closely, since the US attempted coup on Erdogan many years ago, he dropped any real non-alignment, and he does what the US and Israel tell him to, with a few small deviations for plausible deniablity towards his own population, who would also rebel. His country also hosts US bases,
(".....Likewise for the entire Middle East......")
Again, no. After the US and Israel firing missles as they wish in Doha a week, ago, we should all understand that these countries, (again also hosting US military bases "protecting" them from independence) have no alternative routes. All they can do is count down the days until ISIS is boomeranged at them, in the ultimate humiliation by the neocon zionists.
This is excellent.
What this essay ultimately does, in spite of its rhetoric of liberation, sovereignty, anti-rentiership, and anti-colonial struggle, is preserve the same all-encompassing governmental, political, economic, scientific, and cultural central-planning regime that is controlled by a relatively miniscule number of networked people, its just proposing to geographically relocate some of its command nodes and swap out some of its beneficiaries. The critique of USA/Western-Europe based major firms financial colonialism is often accurate as description, but the proposed “solution” never leaves the logic of unitary control with a rigid hierarchical vertical command structure and top down coordination, top-down credit allocation, centralized control of capital flows, and state-managed industrial direction at continental or bloc scale. What disappears entirely is the possibility that the problem is not who controls the system, but that the system itself is architected as a single, extractive, hierarchical planning machine whose decision making processes are completely closed off to the almost the entirety of the human species. In other words, the essay rejects Western neoliberal planners only to endorse a rival planning elite, still centralized, still coercive, still operating through consolidated financial and administrative structures that suppress local communities, institutional plurality, and genuine democratic variance.
The deeper sleight of hand is that decentralization is treated as either impossible or reactionary, when historically it was the polycentric, federated, redundant systems that produced durable growth, innovation, and resilience. By framing the choice as “Western financial imperialism versus sovereign state-directed development”, the essay erases the third option, dismantling the command architecture itself by restoring semi-fragmented capital structures, regional policy variation, legal/regulatory variability, local control over credit and infrastructure, federated authority, and lower case "d" democratic access to economic decision-making. That absence is likely not accidental. A world of many semi-sovereign systems, experimenting in parallel and capable of opting out, would be far harder to dominate, whether by Wall Street, Beijing, BRICS technocrats, or any other aspiring control class. What the essay offers, therefore, is not an escape from deeply centralized and predatory control structures, but a rebranding of it, one that leaves the predatory logic intact while promising that if humanity just gives some other incredibly (>0.10%) share of the population absolute power, everything will be just great and lies that what we got or a this other crowd are the only two options
What this essay ultimately does, in spite of its rhetoric of liberation, sovereignty, anti-rentiership, and anti-colonial struggle, is preserve the same all-encompassing governmental, political, economic, scientific, and cultural central-planning regime that is controlled by a relatively miniscule number of networked people, its just proposing to geographically relocate some of its command nodes and swap out some of its beneficiaries. The critique of USA/Western-Europe based major firms financial colonialism is often accurate as description, but the proposed “solution” never leaves the logic of unitary control with a rigid hierarchical vertical command structure and top down coordination, top-down credit allocation, centralized control of capital flows, and state-managed industrial direction at continental or bloc scale. What disappears entirely is the possibility that the problem is not who controls the system, but that the system itself is architected as a single, extractive, hierarchical planning machine whose decision making processes are completely closed off to the almost the entirety of the human species. In other words, the essay rejects Western neoliberal planners only to endorse a rival planning elite, still centralized, still coercive, still operating through consolidated financial and administrative structures that suppress local communities, institutional plurality, and genuine democratic variance.
The deeper sleight of hand is that decentralization is treated as either impossible or reactionary, when historically it was the polycentric, federated, redundant systems that produced durable growth, innovation, and resilience. By framing the choice as “Western financial imperialism versus sovereign state-directed development”, the essay erases the third option, dismantling the command architecture itself by restoring semi-fragmented capital structures, regional policy variation, legal/regulatory variability, local control over credit and infrastructure, federated authority, and lower case "d" democratic access to economic decision-making. That absence is likely not accidental. A world of many semi-sovereign systems, experimenting in parallel and capable of opting out, would be far harder to dominate, whether by Wall Street, Beijing, BRICS technocrats, or any other aspiring control class. What the essay offers, therefore, is not an escape from deeply centralized and predatory control structures, but a rebranding of it, one that leaves the predatory logic intact while promising that if humanity just gives some other incredibly (>0.10%) share of the population absolute power, everything will be just great and lies that what we got or a this other crowd are the only two options
Pile of shit.
The whole rot…
Errrr….sorry Professor Hudson. My hats off to you for your usual perspicacity
Ben, great analysis. From a birds’ eye view to engaging the who, what, where and why.
Talk about nonsense. No one is being forced to do anything.
It is not a joke or a figure of speech that we have a toddler for president
Coz that hasn't already been tried and met with ICE in full force right? Coz Asian governments haven't had to send planes to retrieve their citizens right?
The only thing shorter than his pen-is his memory.