Byung Chul Han called it “excessive positivity” in Burnout Society. We are too smart to be obedient these days so instead we are oppressed by our own drive for achievement, praise, clout. Each individual is their own brand in competition with other individuals. Eventually it leads to exhaustion, depression and burnout.

The only question i have is whether they are really so dumb that they believe giving tax breaks to oligarchs and applying some tariffs is sufficient to bring industry back

Investment goes where money is so it has some attraction. Probably industry will come back but to a limited degree because the supply chains have not been built AND you have to train workers up. These typically take years to establish especially for stuff like cars and chips.

In the meantime the pain of inflation is going to bite even harder for regular people.

This is probably the only opportunity for regular Americans to organise and get those jobs/wages and make sure to rip off some capitalists who are high on Trump juice. The domestic market is protected by tariffs. Get the bag. Take as much share of profits from the capitalists as possible. Get the employee healthcare and max it out etc.

When those industries go belly up in a few years, those opportunities will be gone.

Reindustrialization takes rebuilding the human capital base, it takes investing into education, infrastructure, healthcare, housing…none of which are getting any better, in fact they’re only getting worse.

That’s not the style of investing Trump is probably thinking about. He’s all business so it will be business investments in terms of subsidies, tax incentives and government contracts.

“Human capital” == “handouts” in Trumpland.

I think Trump is similar to other austerity conservative economists hence the cutting of the “fat” : Radio Free Something, VOA, USAID etc etc (even military spending). The idea is to cut a lot of services which will reduce government spending, then juice the industrialists with tax breaks and subsidies. The supposed resulting growth will then help pay the debt off.

Rich people pay for their own stuff. They don’t use government education and healthcare. And they don’t consume VOA. Hence someone like Trump can basically ditch it easily when looking to cut costs. Even if he was told it’s for propaganda, he wouldn’t give a fuck about cutting it. It’s not important to him. Same with President Musk.

Rubs me the wrong way as well.

One issue is that every time US does QE, institutional investors try convert their dollars into US assets. They cannot resist. They buy property and its value rises way more than inflation figures. This serves the property sector but little else in the economy.

Setting up an infrastructure bank will supposedly prevent this but US is not set up to effectively spend money on infrastructure. They are set up to WASTE money because they have a very short term outlook on infrastructure investment.

From the article

Rather than trying to kneecap our competitors with sanctions and tariffs, we can grow our way to prosperity by turning on the engines of production.

Why do that through QE ?

If the US wants money for infrastructure, take property assets from the rich and sell it to the poor 🤑. If regular people are broke, the economy is broke. Housing is one of their biggest bills. Once regular people have cheap housing, they can spend more of their income in the local economy.

That demand will stimulate growing the local production which you do protect to a limited degree but keep them competitive with the rest of the world.

Isn’t that a China strategy as well? The article kinda ignores that.

Honestly the EU could do a lot of stuff if they had their own interests in mind.

They could sell EUV lithography machines to China while there’s still a market for it.

They could invest in building their renewables even quicker so their energy costs can come down and they can afford to manufacture stuff in the future.

I think they won’t do that though. Warms my heart to see Europe go down the drain due to their own subjugation to America. Screw them for their geopolitical shenanigans.

Imagine if the EU spent a fraction of the money burned on Ukraine doing this stuff for the past three years.

It’s a good idea but I think the EU would still be faced with Trump tariffs reducing their competitive edge in their big export market. They already are struggling with rapid deindustrialization due to high energy costs. It all spells long recession.

I don’t see Twitter, Google etc pulling out of the EU any time but I guess it’s possible.

The EU are just going to fold. Their retaliation is not meaningful. They are economically weak.

The trade surplus they had with America is eventually going to be invested back into the US to restore their manufacturing. They’re going to just pray it all turns a profit. It kills their own manufacturing jobs but they don’t give a shit really. The capitalists survive and that’s all they care about.