Trump Doesn't Always Chicken Out - Democratic Left

Two crises inaugurated the anniversary of Donald Trump’s second term in office. One is a crisis in foreign affairs centering, implausibly, on the threatened annexation of Greenland and encompassing the panicked reaction of wealthy “middle powers” to the world of U.S. unilateralism they helped create. The other is domestic: the escalation of a brutal regime of immigration enforcement, including the point-blank executions, captured on video, of two people in Minneapolis.

As I write, Trump appears to have retreated from his confrontation with Europe over Greenland. The invasion of cities by thugs associated with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal police agencies, on the other hand, seems set to intensify and expand to new fronts.

Trump’s different behavior in these two situations cannot be explained by an appeal to public opinion: both ICE’s escalation and the campaign for Greenland poll badly. The depth of public disgust with ICE in Minneapolis can be seen in the remarkable mobilization of the city of Minneapolis against its roving goon squads, from the mass strike action on January 23 to the groups of activists — organized and spontaneous — that have complicated its efforts to disappear their neighbors. The administration’s barbarities in foreign policy have not provided similar occasions for mass mobilization.

The ugly acronym “TACO” — Trump Always Chickens Out — was coined to describe situations like Trump’s face-saving “framework” on Greenland. The term is used by two distinct groups. One group is anti-Trump partisans, fuzzily aware that irresolution is a vice and eager to ascribe any vice to Trump. This is a mistake, understandable for enthusiastic people making signs for a “No Kings” march, but not for political professionals. When Chuck Schumer deployed the slogan to describe Trump’s phantasmal negotiations with the Iranian government or when the Democratic National Committee parked a taco truck outside a meeting of their Republican counterparts, they signal that Trump doesn’t really mean it — that he is crude and impulsive but willing to reconsider in the sober light of day. It provides an excuse for people to stick with Trump.

Trump does not, in fact, always chicken out, as every person deported, tear-gassed, beaten, or shot since Renée Good was executed could testify. The world of Wall Street traders and financial journalists that also use the term — that, in fact, coined the term — are better equipped than anti-Trump partisans to explain why. Trump retreats when the markets turn against him: when the stock market dips and bond yields spike. This serves as the basis of the “TACO trade,” a bet against any temporary pain in the market based on Trump administration policies. On global trade and foreign policy issues with apparent implications for global trade, Trump will flinch when the market raps his knuckles. Unfortunately for Renée Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti, summary executions on the streets of Minneapolis are perfectly compatible with strong quarterly returns.

A dangerous question: if the market can stop Trump on a dime, why does it do so for the invasion of Greenland and not the invasion of Minneapolis? In a sense, the question is incoherent: nobody *decided *to do one and not the other. We give those decisions over to the price signal. The price signal values a shipload of Danish pharmaceuticals much higher than the distress of a detained pre-schooler (note that the feelings of Greenlanders are similarly discounted — their interests happen to temporarily be weighed with those of, say, Novo Nordisk). This amorality (immorality) is built into our economic system.

There are lessons in this.

First, the Trump moment must be taken extremely seriously. Trump often speaks irresponsibly in the sense that he does not care whether his words correspond to the truth, but when a policy initiative he floats finds a base of power willing to act within the administration and does not threaten the interests of capital, it is likely to be pursued with sloppy brutality. He will not be constrained by his better angels, the adults in the room, or the masters of the universe. He has to be constrained by us — by a combination of public-facing campaigns to threaten his political standing and street-level organizing to frustrate his goon squads. Happily, the situation in Minneapolis proves that mass opposition to the Trump administration can be mobilized.

Second, the potentially ineducable pundits promoting Trump’s potential as an economic populist should reflect on his apparent inability to break with the Davos crowd if it hurts the interests of the Davos class. These people have treated Trump’s rhetorical stance as evidence of a broader break with elite politics — ignoring the fact that these words translate into action only when they are acceptable to the rich. Trump can, and did, cut Medicaid and food stamps. He cannot, and will not, cap credit card interest rates (bank stocks rallied after Trump, in a less-reported part of his Jan. 21 Davos speech, sent his proposal to cap rates at 10 percent to Congress to die). We can further compare Trump’s pathetic irresolution on the tariffs that are supposed to revive the rust belt to his flinty determination when it comes to cutting social benefits.

Finally, a lesson for the future. The “TACO” frame treats Trump as an exception, but every president is subject to these constraints. The market’s veto has previously been used or threatened against even modest excursions to the left — inspiring, for instance, Bill Clinton advisor James Carville’s proverbial awe for market power: “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.” Nelson Lichtenstein’s Fabulous Failure describes how the Clinton administration was intimidated; by the time the Obama administration entered office, the threat could more or less go unsaid. Given recent events, it is difficult to deny that Trump represents an authoritarian break from recent U.S. political tradition, but he shares this fundamental taboo with his predecessors. A meaningful break with our economic system — to the left, rather than the crackpot right — will depend on new political forces ready to invite and win this confrontation rooted, history suggests, in the organized working class. Until then, the “right” of the wealthy to their profits remains the real non-negotiable in U.S. politics. No other right receives this guarantee, as we have been painfully reminded.