I have occasionally listened to radio discussions in which poets have let slip their partiality for a particular word, usually arising from some resonant quality, something mellifluous in the sound or sounds of which it is composed. I find myself unmoved by such talk. For me it is the way words come together that matters.  

Donald Trump’s favourite word, it seems, is “tariff.”  I can’t imagine the 47th President of the United States having much time for the aforementioned poets and I am guessing the appeal of the word for him is something more akin to, “big stick,” which is to say, something with which he can threaten and intimidate those who he wishes to bully. 

The consensus amongst economists is that the imposition of tariffs by the United States will be an act of self-harm and will have the immediate impact of driving up prices in a manner which seems destined to hurt most of all the very people whose votes returned Trump to the White House. 

It’s just possible that Donald Trump, purported author of The Art of the Deal — ghostwritten, it is generally accepted, by Tony Schwarz — may have some tricks up his sleeve. Certainly his tariffs have been accompanied by demands. I notice for example that he has accused the Mexican government of being in league with the drug cartels which are rife in that country and are flooding narcotics into the lucrative market of the US. The implication is that Trump will lift the tariffs once this “alliance” has been broken. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has responded robustly:  We categorically reject the White House’s slanderous claim that the Mexico government has alliances with criminal organisations, as well as any attempt to intervene in our territory … If there is anywhere that such an alliance in fact exists, it is in the United States gun factories that sell high-powered weapons to these criminal groups.  

The Canadian Government also seems particularly up for the fight, no doubt energised by Trump’s threat to swallow them up—along with Greenland and any other territory of strategic or commercial interest to the US. There is no doubt, however, that the US does have some real big sticks in its arsenal and so I will make no predictions regarding how this may all play out. 

Trump, though, may not be entirely wrong in believing that the problem which underlies his strategy — the trade deficit with China — is at the root of many American woes. Outsourcing the production of  goods to places where Labour costs are cheap has killed off  productive capacity across the US leaving many communities in a limbo of low wages and precarious employment. 

The imposition of tariffs on imported goods might, in time, regenerate US productive capacity. This strategy alone is unlikely to make America great again, but it might at least make it a little more resilient and self reliant. 

But Trumpian tariffs are fraught with risk, for even if industry does return in time to the rust belt it will be under new terms which exploit artificial intelligence to keep the labour component of production to the barest minimum. And in the hiatus, the US economy will flag, and even rich folk will feel the pain—not perhaps in their day-to-day consumption, but certainly in the all-important bottom line of their businesses.

The global economy operates on an obvious imbalance: sweatshops and cheap labour in one part of the world supply low-cost consumer goods to far wealthier nations elsewhere. Yet this has been the mechanism by which China has raised its economy.  Their endgame is obvious: that Chinese citizens ultimately should be as prosperous, if not more prosperous, than those in the free world of Europe, Australia and  North America. A trade war may stall their progress towards this objective but a command economy such as China has many more strategies to fend off economic turbulence than the one-trick pony of a deregulated free market. 

There is a vogue in the current era for politically themed musicals, for example, Clinton: The Musical is a satirical exploration of the life and presidency of Bill Clinton, and unsurprisingly contains “adult themes.”  It remains to be seen whether some latter-day Stephen Sondheim ever comes up with a script for “Trump: The Musical,” and, if so, whether it will be presented under the banner of tragedy or farce. My money, currently, is riding on the latter. Just as likely, though, is that, in the wake of his presidency, Trump will, in similar manner to Art of the Deal, “author” a script and, regardless of the wreckage he leaves behind him, add his own story to the great compendium of comic book superheroes. That, perhaps, is the only fitting place for his legacy to rest.

Endnotes

Fury in Mexico over Trump’s ‘slanderous’ claim of cartel links

With thanks to ChatGPT for providing the comic strip images, to which I have added a few comic strip words. My instruction to ChatGPT was to provide some comic strip panels showing Donald Trump as a superhero. This it declined to do owing to “restrictions on creating images of public figures in specific roles.” It has been pointed out to me that the superhero image it eventually generated looks a little more like Boris Johnson than Donald Trump, but I think the theme of the strip fits quite well in either case and the more generic image works fine.

The most beautiful word …The only single word that has ever become slightly obsessional for me is Stephen Sondheim’s “Maria” [from West Side Story, music by Bernstein] which, very occasionally and despite my better judgement, I find myself trying to sing. Maria, Say it loud and there’s music playing Say it soft and it’s almost like praying Maria, I just can’t stop saying, Maria. Sadly I just don’t have the operatic chops to do it justice.