Call It By Its Name: Extortion

By Moe White –

Despite the title of his ghost-written book The Art of the Deal, Donald J. Trump has never been a deal-maker.

Instead, like any other mid-level mafia don, he’s an extortionist.

Remember the origins of Don Corleone in The Godfather, Part II? Having emigrated to NY after his father, brother, and mother had all been assassinated in Sicily by the local mafia chieftain Don Ciccio, young Vito Corleone went into partnership with his friend Peter Clemenza. They were thieves, gun-runners, and low-level “goodfellas.” But not long after joining with Clemenza, Vito Corleone killed the local extortionist Don Fanucci—and took over his territory.

As he gained money, power, prestige, influence, and notoriety, nothing about his business was ever committed to paper. Everything was spoken, often in code, including orders to assassinate his henchmen and rivals he no longer trusted.

Deals, Shmeals

In reading the headlines and stories about Trump’s “deals” with other nations and blocs like the European Union, notice that there’s never an actual agreement on paper, signed and accepted by both parties. Instead, Trump touts “a deal” with Japan or the EU in which—from his point of view—the other nation has wholly, totally, capitulated to Trump’s terms.

But in fact, the process is very different. First, he simply pulls numbers out of his head (or another part of his anatomy), asserts that a certain random percentage will be the tariff levied on Nation X, and then waits for “negotiations” to take place. What happens instead is that one of his numerous “trade advisors” (most of whom know nothing about international trade, economics, finance, or anything else pertinent to commerce) visits Nation X’s leader or negotiator for a few hours or a few days, and convinces the leader to “commit” to investing in the United States and import more from US companies—sometime in the future.

Then Trump announces that they’ve reached “a deal”—a perfect deal, the most perfect deal in the history of humankind—under which the tariff level has dropped by 50% in exchange for a vague promise by X to invest Y dollars in the US. At some point. Some day. In the future.

And so the US customs office starts collecting the new tariff from businesses there, and the businesses there start raising their prices on goods and services they sell to the United States, and Americans pay more, while residents of Nation X stop buying anything made in America (because they’re so disgusted by Trump), and Trump claims a victory.

Domestic Consequences

Meanwhile, America’s Gross Domestic Product increases (as a share of US commerce) because Americans are no longer buying goods made overseas. US businesses put expansion, including hiring more employees, on hold for the visible future. Unemployment levels grow steadily as American workers lose jobs instead of gaining them. Inflation raises the price of most goods, while wages fall as more people compete for fewer jobs.

Tourists have stopped coming from overseas to visit the United States, some because they fear they’ll have their visas revoked on arrival because they once wrote a letter to the editor of the London Times, their nonrefundable tickets will be wasted, and they’ll either be repatriated to their home country or—as has already happened to a number of people—imprisoned here in “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Others refuse to visit because they would no more spend their money in a fascist state like Trump’s America than their grandparents would have vacationed in Hitler’s Germany.

Meanwhile, no American citizens are taking the low-paying jobs that have opened up in the hot fields of megafarms in Texas and California, or in the resorts and hotels that pay poverty wages in tourist meccas, now that the former farmworkers and housekeepers and busboys are being arrested and deported by ICE (to say nothing of the construction industry).

But Donald Trump claims victory, because he’s managed to extort money from overseas corporations as our nation slips directly and ever more rapidly toward a major recession.

Welcome to our mafia government. Call it by its name. Trumponomics is extortion, nothing more.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed here, as well as assertions of facts, are those of the author. They do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of The Urban News.