Just one small comment - Noah talks about "business" as if it were mostly large companies - and yet this will hit small companies and local companies as hard or harder. They just don't have the public forum that big company CEOs have....
And by the way, the Warren/Sanders wing of the Democrats was anti-oligopoly, not anti-business - antitrust actions - which is very different from being anti-business.
All that said, the general gist of the blog makes sense - and it does amaze me a little bit that so many large business heads were so convinced that Trump didn't mean what he said. Sort what I saw with all my right wing or even many conservative acquaintances - very selective about what parts of Trump's statements they believed (ex. just the ones that the agreed with and that the rest was bombast).
I think because you talk about Trump speaking to auto industry leaders and about companies that use political consultants and lobbyists. That implies larger companies or publicly held companies. That's a large group, but it's different from all of the truly small, single owner businesses. The second group probably spans a much wider range of the political spectrum.
Aren’t small business owners traditionally one of the most conservative constituencies in all countries, and one of the most republican in the United States?
The owner of the local car dealership is the archetype of a MAGA/Trump supporter, but the owner of the indie coffee shop may well be to the left of Bernie. The median independent business owner is probably right of center, but across the millions of small business, I imagine most of the political spectrum is covered.
I own a small business in the Midwest and work with small business owners. Most of them are center right on financial issues and center left to far left on social issues. But these are all college educated entrepreneurs, and both categories seem to shift rightward for founders without a college degree.
Yes and no. Most are essentially Blue-dog Dems: fiscally conservative, but socially moderate.
Small companies and start-ups still produce a massively outsized portion of economic growth--it used to be something like 80%. And my understanding of why they tend GOP is mainly due to extreme dislike of any/all forms of regulation.
And at least in my opinion, it will matter more when the small business / farmers / contractors start turning on Trump's insanity. As others noted, those groups tend to be conservative while a lot of big companies will just go with whatever politics makes them more money (or whatever side is winning - ex. the previous lip service to DEI and climate from big companies).
Just pointing out that the small business world may make a big difference in how all this turns (if it turns).
It isn't really a complaint on the intent of the piece - but what gets mentioned in the blog is all couched in major industry large players. In many ways, the tariffs will hurt smaller business as much or more and they have less slack to deal with it.
"Business" *is* now mostly large, too-big-to-fail companies. In almost every sector of the economy. Four banks, four meat-packing companies, three airlines, five defense contractors, etc., etc.
Whether you explicitly refer to current levels of market concentration or not.
The Warrenites are anti big business and anything they could do to stick it to big tech business they did, whether it had any basis in anti-trust reality or not.
Did they really think Microsoft buying Activison was going to corner the video game market? Still sued them.
It’s an anti-trust offense if Amazon makes their own brand of items and features them prominently on their website? Guess you shouldn’t walk into a Target, Wal-Mart Costco or pretty much any supermarket of decent size.
I just want to say that, looking at things in retrospect, every single critic of the tech industry now looks vindicated. That industry turned around and deployed its vast resources to support a lunatic who is now destroying our economy, with the tech industry being one of its own victims.
Noah was surprised when China took a hammer to its tech/finance industry a few years back. In retrospect their moves make a lot more sense. We in the United States made a terrible error by not taking similar steps, and we should be learning from that -- playing chess instead of Go Fish.
And what would be the theory of the law in taking the hammer to the tech industry? We don’t like what they do with all their money? We need to censor the information they put out because they’re affecting elections? How would this be different from government oversight of news?
Let's be clear that a world with direct government oversight of news is a very real possibility here in the US -- as it has been in most countries with authoritarian governments. Authoritarian "democracies" differ, but they generally do not protect free media organizations, and they do not allow their political opponents to speak freely and maintain concentrations of wealth. This is the path we are starting down with Trump, and it will only become more extreme if it isn't stopped.
So the actual question you're asking is: *in the version of the future where we claw back our government and have a shot at maintaining a stable rule-of-law liberal democracy*: what steps can we take to make sure it isn't immediately destabilized by oligarchy and returned to authoritarianism?
The answer to that question is probably not going to be "shrug and just say 'what could we possibly do to prevent massive concentrations of wealth and media ownership'." Because we tried the do-nothing approach and it led us here. Anyone who believes laissez-faire will lead to the survival of liberal democracy is like a dinosaur still chewing leaves after the comet strike.
This does not mean we need to have a kind of "liberal fascism" that controls the news. I am hopeful the solution is *not* going to be Chinese-style government oversight. Instead I'm optimistic that a future stable liberal democracy will include (1) a taxation regime that dissuades the over-concentration of wealth, to avoid "richest man in the world controls the President" situations. (2) strong limits on political spending, and a reversal of Citizens United and similar cases, and (3) an aggressive set of anti-monopoly laws that encourage widespread ownership of news media.
We've even implemented points (1) and (2) in the recent past. Point (1) is more or less a description of the New Deal, and it gave us societal stability for decades following the collapse that resulted in the Depression. The second point was just how we lived up until the very recent right-wing turn of the Supreme Court. Clearly we're going to have to work on figuring out (3) in a manner that is content-neutral but avoids one or two rich men having total algorithmic control over every American's news feed.
What's clear to anyone paying any attention is that "just do things the ordinary way and act aggrieved that anyone is asking for a different approach" is no longer viable. That leads to global authoritarianism.
Yeah, the Warren crew was focused on all big business (since their view is downstream of Matt Stoller). They misunderstood that small business is traditionally extremely not just conservative but Republican, and unlike nonprofit workers and academics who all seem to loathe their bosses, most big company workers don’t hate the companies they work at.
Like so much of Warrenism, it was an effort to restore a past political economy from 90-110 years ago despite changed society, economy, and politics. Really sad, it could’ve been a great ideology for change if it wasn’t so rooted in a past form of Republicanism.
Not buying it - first, I don't think most workers at any companies "hate the company" with the possible exception of some forms of labor that are fully exploitative (ex Amazon warehouse workers). Sort of a meaningless dig at nonprofits and academics - irrelevant to the discussion.
AND the whole point of being anti-oligopoly - WHICH is quite different than anti big business (although big business in the US has moved much more to oligopoly in the last 40 years) - is to actually improve the situation for smaller businesses.....
IF you are a supplier to a big business and it is an oligopoly, you are at their mercy on pricing, etc. And you also don't have a chance to get into a market - not free,fair competition.
If you are a small business selling through Amazon - yes, you have a wider market place. But you also are forced to pay a hefty amount to Amazon on each sale, your prices can't be lower somewhere else (even your own website or store), and Amazon will put its own products ahead of yours if they want.
NOW, did the progressives do enough in the Narrative to make it clear how anti-oligopoly will help small business rather than just help the consumer - probably not.
Go read Cory Doctorow - rather than me going through all the anti-trust issues with Big Tech (and yes, I worked in Tech and yes, most of what he says is accurate).
The problem is that historically the business community generally goes with prevailing power in politics
They will go to trump,ask humbly for tariff relief in return for politically loyalty and or contributions or both And they will do so. Like the universities and law firms He’s consolidating power for himself and his family and he has no intention of stepping down after his term. I got this analysis from another Substack post but it plays into project 2025
Mad King Trump. While eminently descriptive, I can just hear the words of the executive order forbidding Noah Smith from entering any federal building. I assume you have no government contracts.
I don't know how bad inflation is going to get but Chau's clarion call for 'total regime change except for the bits I want to keep' is already priceless. That's what happens when you cuddle up to chaos.
Trump has certainly managed to give the impression that what he says when he runs his mouth is mostly meaningless because he just says whatever he thinks will get applause with no particular intention of following through. Unfortunately, this comes with a downside risk, because if Trump has made up his mind to do something stupid, listening to his rhetoric won't reliably warn you about it.
Though remember people are quite used to politicians making "campaign promises". It really was reasonable for businesses to expect that Trump II would be a lot like Trump I. It really is rather surprising that Trump II became quite effective at implementing an insanely destructive policy agenda.
I'm in a weird niche, but most of my friends who run small to mid-sized businesses have slowed or paused hiring, cut costs as much as possible, and are waiting to see what happens. It is really hard to plan and know what to do when there is such chaos going on. And most are doing similar with personal spending as there is zero faith this administration knows what they are doing economically.
Small data point, but it has been interesting to chat with them. I think stocks crashing for no great reason when economic data was so solid is also hitting people personally and the "vibe."
I’m not sure I understand placing all of our hope in the business community - especially considering how aligned many on the tech right are. Additionally - it’s increasingly becoming clear that it’s no longer crazy to consider that either there won’t be any midterms or that they’ll be heavily “influenced” (just like how Elon is throwing money at elections as we speak). Pam Bondi and team are letting literal criminals out and/or terminating investigations left and right. I am waiting to see SBF and Elizabeth Theranos walk free…
They just aren’t doing things or pursuing policies with outcomes that would favor them during the next election and that’s a theme that’s highly concerning to me. Trump is literally saying he doesn’t care now…
Which leads me to my next point (and the beginning): BofA now projecting a soupçon of stagflation…I don’t think Trump will bow to pressure from the business community. The business community would have to do battle with the executive and so far law firms are folding to their demands.
Most of the tech right were liberals for years and only defected after constant abuse from the left. They were condemned as racist and sexist "techbros" by the woke left and as monopolists by the Warrenite anti-business faction. Both charges were grossly exaggerated.
That gives me some hope that it will be possible to get a large part of the tech right to defect. They are naturally liberal and will probably return if liberals stop treating them so illiberally.
The whole “the woke left made us” line about Silicon Valley doesn’t impress me much. Seems like they didn’t really have any liberal principles and just went with whichever status game seemed the most conducive to their ambition. No one is forcing them to support this Mafioso clown carnival.
Okay but seems like a different thread to tech leaders having no liberal principles and just looking for a regime that constrains their ambitions the least.
I've spent the entirety of my 30 year engineering career in Silicon Valley. The tech industry was never particularly "left wing." Most tech workers are socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Most are committed capitalists as well, but would be in favor of seeing some of the sharper edges smoothed down. The rightward turn by some (and by no means all) in Silicon Valley was due to two things: the over-reach on DEI, which was germinated in an "activist employee" culture that started in the mid 2010's, and the Biden admin's hostility to tech M&A and crypto. For those who follow Silicon Valley closely, the former resulted in activities like the protests on Google campuses when the cloud-computing division (GCP), inked a deal with the DoD. Company leadership blinked and the small but vocal number of activist employees felt emboldened and this led to the embrace of DEI as a way of virtue-signaling to employees. The latter comes down to one thing: money. Investors in Silicon Valley want liquidity, and M&A activity has been one of the most common ways of getting that.
I suspect that the loyalty to Trump and MAGA once the euphoria of DEI being eviscerated and the new regime in the FTC wears off will significantly weaken. In fact, I expect that this current enthusiasm for "regime change" will be replaced with a deep sense of buyer's remorse as it becomes clear that people like Peter Navarro are loons that know zero about running a business. I think the tech industry will also begin to find the spineless sycophancy of republicans in congress and their media enablers to be deeply embarrassing after a while. Remember: this is an industry that has long prided itself on embracing conflict, and challenging dogma. The cult of personality that is MAGA is basically the opposite of this. Some Silicon Valley luminaries, like Musk and Andreeson have bit so hard into MAGA that they may cling to it for longer - but even with those two, I would not be surprised if we slowly but surely see that when they are speaking to the public, its mostly about their businesses and investments and less about politics.
Just imagine being called bad names by random people online, and then letting that be the reason why you vote for someone with illiberal values like Trump. Totally reasonable response....
Peak abuse happened 2010-2014 and everyone I saw didn't turn right-wing, they just kind of took it.
This is why I never moved to SF, all the engineers there I knew suddenly decided they had to "respect women" because of GamerGate and started publicly doing this in a way that made it obvious they literally did not know any women, so they all got scammed by women who showed up and got them to join online cults and stuff.
The federal government doesn't run elections and there is no one election for them to interfere in, but rather 50 of them. They don't have the people to do this.
Sen James Lankford is one of the most sober Senators in the Senate. This morning, he was asked about the 25% tariffs on foreign autos and parts. He said Americans do not want higher-priced cars and then pivoted to this a negotiation tactic.
Noah, you didn’t say it but 25% tariffs will bankrupt the Big Three Automakers. Most of it is due to legacy costs. There is a reason the avg price of new car is $50,000. There is a reason Detriot cannot make a $25,000 EV at a profit.
You will start to see layoffs as certain lines shut down. Detriot will not and cannot lose money to satisfy a theory. A theory that is frankly loony. Mercedes, Porsche may be able to increase prices. VW can’t, Volvo, likely cannot as well. Dealerships will close and unemployment will rise.
Having worked in the auto industry for 35 years I know a little. This going to be bad.
No CEO is going to step out of line, risk a federal investigation and plummeting share price, when all they have to do is stay quiet and weather the storm.
The fact that it will be the entire economy and not just one company makes it easier to stay silent. It’s a lot easier to explain to your board that “hey, everything’s down right now”, then it is to explain “sorry I said something and now we’re under a retaliatory federal indictment/regulatory investigation”.
I will bet everything in my pocket against everything in your pocket that Tesla will be exempted from these Tarriffs, even the Teslas that are fully manufactured in China
Tesla doesn’t import cars from Shanghai, those go to Asia and Europe. Teslas sold in the US are built in Austin or Fremont, and have the highest percentage of US parts of all American made cars. This means they aren’t hurt by automobile tariffs, and don’t need an exemption, but they are hurt by tariffs on steel, aluminum and semiconductors. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump pulls some excuse out of his ass to exempt them from those.
If Trump's incompetence does lead to stagflation and his attack on federal employees leads to much pain for many people it will be a tragedy but it also leads to Trump being massively unpopular. Democrats run as the party of normies, on a positive, abundance platform. The far left has a seat at the table but so does business and independents. A stake is driven through the heart of MAGA, Democrats win Congress in two years and the White House in four. A majority consensus develops and big problems start to be solved. Decency reigns, prosperity returns, America working with other democracies turns the tables on the forces of darkness and tyranny... Wow, need to wake up what a dream, watched to much Lord of the Rings, but you never know, things are starting to look bad now but the country has gone through worse and we again will get through this and will hopefully become a stronger and better nation.
IFF we can project a positive, pro-growth agenda. The Warren/Sanders/AOC (?) wing can throw enough sand in that to prevent it and give us Republicans forever.
An old saying is that the GOP is a three legged stool. One is business, the other is evangelical Christianity, the third is racism. Of the three, it seems like only the business leg can budge.
Trump won the popular vote only because late deciders from the working class hoped that they he would provide a good economy. This group can definitely move, especially veterans who see the VA being gutted. When the Social Security system collapses, half of Trump's support will go with it.
And Trump won't be on the ballot again. Or if he is, it'll be illegal and we'll be so far beyond the Rubicon that the recent movie Civil War will start to look prescient.
Frankly, i think there's a number of millennial who stopped going to church because it got too republican. Are they enough to make a movement? Not on their own. But are they enough to build a new Christian community that is either less politically aligned or more welcoming to liberal politics? I think so.
Basically, I think only the racist leg won't be budged.
I don't see anyone or any business being helped by this administration and it's "policies". Even Elon Musk fortunes are falling. Trump has no relevant economic experience useful to lead a country, neither do any of his appointees and advisors. For their and our survival anyone with any clout should push back and take the wheel. He's burning down the house with nothing left to replace it.
Agreed. Democrats shot themselves in the foot with identity politics and couldn't run away from the mess they created. Now Republicans are doing the same thing although the manner in which they are accomplishing their "goals" is far more destructive. Perhaps the destruction will so vast that it becomes permanent. "If you elect me, you will never have to vote again". A Trump command and control society seems to be his goal. The economy be damned.
-redefined immigrants as no longer having freedom of speech or due process
-reoriented foreign policy away from democracy towards tyranny in Europe
-Ended academic freedom
-rewrote history to erase black veterans like the tuskegee airmen and jackie robinson
-turned ICE into a secret police force to terrorize immigrants and also brown citizens in cities and states he doesnt like
-used DOGE to make it hard to do basic things like get Special Education and visit national parks and forests (last part isn't a big deal but really pisses me off)
And that's before we talk about things like trying to make NYC. a traffic jam and threatening Medicare and social security and purging the military for loyalist hacks who accidentally text war plans to the media and God knows who else - things that are horrible but will get excused by partisans.
The above is just the inexcusable and indefensible. It's a mix of tyranny, poor economic management, unnecessary hardship, and an erasure of black veterans, because "wokeness."
MAGgots will go to great lengths to say something about how the signal chat or social security is overdone. But there's no denying "your kid can no longer get therapy and your school loses funding if it teaches about Jackie Robinson."
It's a shame we've got to wait two years for any check on this mad king. In the mean time, at a local and state level, we can push our politicians to build a viable, unified and moderate alternative to Trump. Make things work. Get bullet trains built absent a functioning federal bureaucracy, open up housing, make it less expensive to operate a small business, make it more convenient to run a large business.
The idea of a massive American renaissance of factory-based manufacturing assumes there’s a cohort of otherwise under-employed American workers with the desire, skills, and physical capacity to form its labour force. Are the demographics there to support this, in age, health status, and education?
I visited an automotive frame factory where almost all the work was done by robots. The staff were mostly robotic technicians or engineers; machine minders. There was a small group who did custom assembly work.
Having grown up in Iowa, I remember that the US produces more food than it ever has, with something like 1% of the population doing the production. (There are another 2% or so that make some money from farming, but they are essentially hobbyists or highly artisanal farms selling expensive, very specialized products.) Manufacturing is going the same route ...
Factory based manufacturing, as you note, is now largely automated, with relatively small, but skilled, labor needs.
I expect quite a few under employed workers would like the relatively lucrative jobs those types of factories require. Training for the technicians could be done by community college systems. It might leave us with a shortage of gig economy workers, I suppose.
Just one small comment - Noah talks about "business" as if it were mostly large companies - and yet this will hit small companies and local companies as hard or harder. They just don't have the public forum that big company CEOs have....
And by the way, the Warren/Sanders wing of the Democrats was anti-oligopoly, not anti-business - antitrust actions - which is very different from being anti-business.
All that said, the general gist of the blog makes sense - and it does amaze me a little bit that so many large business heads were so convinced that Trump didn't mean what he said. Sort what I saw with all my right wing or even many conservative acquaintances - very selective about what parts of Trump's statements they believed (ex. just the ones that the agreed with and that the rest was bombast).
"Noah talks about "business" as if it were mostly large companies" <-- How so???
I think because you talk about Trump speaking to auto industry leaders and about companies that use political consultants and lobbyists. That implies larger companies or publicly held companies. That's a large group, but it's different from all of the truly small, single owner businesses. The second group probably spans a much wider range of the political spectrum.
Aren’t small business owners traditionally one of the most conservative constituencies in all countries, and one of the most republican in the United States?
The owner of the local car dealership is the archetype of a MAGA/Trump supporter, but the owner of the indie coffee shop may well be to the left of Bernie. The median independent business owner is probably right of center, but across the millions of small business, I imagine most of the political spectrum is covered.
I own a small business in the Midwest and work with small business owners. Most of them are center right on financial issues and center left to far left on social issues. But these are all college educated entrepreneurs, and both categories seem to shift rightward for founders without a college degree.
Yes and no. Most are essentially Blue-dog Dems: fiscally conservative, but socially moderate.
Small companies and start-ups still produce a massively outsized portion of economic growth--it used to be something like 80%. And my understanding of why they tend GOP is mainly due to extreme dislike of any/all forms of regulation.
And at least in my opinion, it will matter more when the small business / farmers / contractors start turning on Trump's insanity. As others noted, those groups tend to be conservative while a lot of big companies will just go with whatever politics makes them more money (or whatever side is winning - ex. the previous lip service to DEI and climate from big companies).
Just pointing out that the small business world may make a big difference in how all this turns (if it turns).
It isn't really a complaint on the intent of the piece - but what gets mentioned in the blog is all couched in major industry large players. In many ways, the tariffs will hurt smaller business as much or more and they have less slack to deal with it.
"Business" *is* now mostly large, too-big-to-fail companies. In almost every sector of the economy. Four banks, four meat-packing companies, three airlines, five defense contractors, etc., etc.
Whether you explicitly refer to current levels of market concentration or not.
“Anti-oligopoly”
The Warrenites are anti big business and anything they could do to stick it to big tech business they did, whether it had any basis in anti-trust reality or not.
Did they really think Microsoft buying Activison was going to corner the video game market? Still sued them.
It’s an anti-trust offense if Amazon makes their own brand of items and features them prominently on their website? Guess you shouldn’t walk into a Target, Wal-Mart Costco or pretty much any supermarket of decent size.
I just want to say that, looking at things in retrospect, every single critic of the tech industry now looks vindicated. That industry turned around and deployed its vast resources to support a lunatic who is now destroying our economy, with the tech industry being one of its own victims.
Noah was surprised when China took a hammer to its tech/finance industry a few years back. In retrospect their moves make a lot more sense. We in the United States made a terrible error by not taking similar steps, and we should be learning from that -- playing chess instead of Go Fish.
And what would be the theory of the law in taking the hammer to the tech industry? We don’t like what they do with all their money? We need to censor the information they put out because they’re affecting elections? How would this be different from government oversight of news?
Let's be clear that a world with direct government oversight of news is a very real possibility here in the US -- as it has been in most countries with authoritarian governments. Authoritarian "democracies" differ, but they generally do not protect free media organizations, and they do not allow their political opponents to speak freely and maintain concentrations of wealth. This is the path we are starting down with Trump, and it will only become more extreme if it isn't stopped.
So the actual question you're asking is: *in the version of the future where we claw back our government and have a shot at maintaining a stable rule-of-law liberal democracy*: what steps can we take to make sure it isn't immediately destabilized by oligarchy and returned to authoritarianism?
The answer to that question is probably not going to be "shrug and just say 'what could we possibly do to prevent massive concentrations of wealth and media ownership'." Because we tried the do-nothing approach and it led us here. Anyone who believes laissez-faire will lead to the survival of liberal democracy is like a dinosaur still chewing leaves after the comet strike.
This does not mean we need to have a kind of "liberal fascism" that controls the news. I am hopeful the solution is *not* going to be Chinese-style government oversight. Instead I'm optimistic that a future stable liberal democracy will include (1) a taxation regime that dissuades the over-concentration of wealth, to avoid "richest man in the world controls the President" situations. (2) strong limits on political spending, and a reversal of Citizens United and similar cases, and (3) an aggressive set of anti-monopoly laws that encourage widespread ownership of news media.
We've even implemented points (1) and (2) in the recent past. Point (1) is more or less a description of the New Deal, and it gave us societal stability for decades following the collapse that resulted in the Depression. The second point was just how we lived up until the very recent right-wing turn of the Supreme Court. Clearly we're going to have to work on figuring out (3) in a manner that is content-neutral but avoids one or two rich men having total algorithmic control over every American's news feed.
What's clear to anyone paying any attention is that "just do things the ordinary way and act aggrieved that anyone is asking for a different approach" is no longer viable. That leads to global authoritarianism.
Yeah, the Warren crew was focused on all big business (since their view is downstream of Matt Stoller). They misunderstood that small business is traditionally extremely not just conservative but Republican, and unlike nonprofit workers and academics who all seem to loathe their bosses, most big company workers don’t hate the companies they work at.
Like so much of Warrenism, it was an effort to restore a past political economy from 90-110 years ago despite changed society, economy, and politics. Really sad, it could’ve been a great ideology for change if it wasn’t so rooted in a past form of Republicanism.
Not buying it - first, I don't think most workers at any companies "hate the company" with the possible exception of some forms of labor that are fully exploitative (ex Amazon warehouse workers). Sort of a meaningless dig at nonprofits and academics - irrelevant to the discussion.
AND the whole point of being anti-oligopoly - WHICH is quite different than anti big business (although big business in the US has moved much more to oligopoly in the last 40 years) - is to actually improve the situation for smaller businesses.....
IF you are a supplier to a big business and it is an oligopoly, you are at their mercy on pricing, etc. And you also don't have a chance to get into a market - not free,fair competition.
If you are a small business selling through Amazon - yes, you have a wider market place. But you also are forced to pay a hefty amount to Amazon on each sale, your prices can't be lower somewhere else (even your own website or store), and Amazon will put its own products ahead of yours if they want.
NOW, did the progressives do enough in the Narrative to make it clear how anti-oligopoly will help small business rather than just help the consumer - probably not.
Again, see Doctorow for long discussions on enshittification and oligopoly.
Go read Cory Doctorow - rather than me going through all the anti-trust issues with Big Tech (and yes, I worked in Tech and yes, most of what he says is accurate).
I tried Red Team Blues. Not impressed with the book.
The _policy_ may have been anti-oligopoly, but the rhetoric was anti-business.
And Noah lists several instances where policy was more than just anti-oligopoly.
The problem is that historically the business community generally goes with prevailing power in politics
They will go to trump,ask humbly for tariff relief in return for politically loyalty and or contributions or both And they will do so. Like the universities and law firms He’s consolidating power for himself and his family and he has no intention of stepping down after his term. I got this analysis from another Substack post but it plays into project 2025
Mad King Trump. While eminently descriptive, I can just hear the words of the executive order forbidding Noah Smith from entering any federal building. I assume you have no government contracts.
I don't know how bad inflation is going to get but Chau's clarion call for 'total regime change except for the bits I want to keep' is already priceless. That's what happens when you cuddle up to chaos.
"When we in the businness community supported Trump, we didn't think Trump would actually implement those destructive tariffs."
"He said he was gonna."
"Yeah, but he's so unpredictable-"
"He said he was gonna!"
"Yeah, but-"
"HE SAID HE WAS GONNA!"
“I never thought the leopards would eat MY face, sobs person who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.”
An oldie but a goodie!
Well, leopards don't eat faces... until they get hungry.
Trump has certainly managed to give the impression that what he says when he runs his mouth is mostly meaningless because he just says whatever he thinks will get applause with no particular intention of following through. Unfortunately, this comes with a downside risk, because if Trump has made up his mind to do something stupid, listening to his rhetoric won't reliably warn you about it.
Though remember people are quite used to politicians making "campaign promises". It really was reasonable for businesses to expect that Trump II would be a lot like Trump I. It really is rather surprising that Trump II became quite effective at implementing an insanely destructive policy agenda.
I'm in a weird niche, but most of my friends who run small to mid-sized businesses have slowed or paused hiring, cut costs as much as possible, and are waiting to see what happens. It is really hard to plan and know what to do when there is such chaos going on. And most are doing similar with personal spending as there is zero faith this administration knows what they are doing economically.
Small data point, but it has been interesting to chat with them. I think stocks crashing for no great reason when economic data was so solid is also hitting people personally and the "vibe."
"stocks crashing for no great reason"
US Auto stocks facing 25% tariffs from Canada, Mexico, etc., and equal counter-tariffs doesn't qualify as "no great reason"?
"no great reason" = no real economic problem until chaos king entered the room
I’m not sure I understand placing all of our hope in the business community - especially considering how aligned many on the tech right are. Additionally - it’s increasingly becoming clear that it’s no longer crazy to consider that either there won’t be any midterms or that they’ll be heavily “influenced” (just like how Elon is throwing money at elections as we speak). Pam Bondi and team are letting literal criminals out and/or terminating investigations left and right. I am waiting to see SBF and Elizabeth Theranos walk free…
They just aren’t doing things or pursuing policies with outcomes that would favor them during the next election and that’s a theme that’s highly concerning to me. Trump is literally saying he doesn’t care now…
Which leads me to my next point (and the beginning): BofA now projecting a soupçon of stagflation…I don’t think Trump will bow to pressure from the business community. The business community would have to do battle with the executive and so far law firms are folding to their demands.
https://x.com/byheatherlong/status/1905603186720645266?s=46
Most of the tech right were liberals for years and only defected after constant abuse from the left. They were condemned as racist and sexist "techbros" by the woke left and as monopolists by the Warrenite anti-business faction. Both charges were grossly exaggerated.
That gives me some hope that it will be possible to get a large part of the tech right to defect. They are naturally liberal and will probably return if liberals stop treating them so illiberally.
The whole “the woke left made us” line about Silicon Valley doesn’t impress me much. Seems like they didn’t really have any liberal principles and just went with whichever status game seemed the most conducive to their ambition. No one is forcing them to support this Mafioso clown carnival.
Nothing forcing Democrats not to present a sensible, high-growth alternative to the Mafioso clown carnival.
Okay but seems like a different thread to tech leaders having no liberal principles and just looking for a regime that constrains their ambitions the least.
I've spent the entirety of my 30 year engineering career in Silicon Valley. The tech industry was never particularly "left wing." Most tech workers are socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Most are committed capitalists as well, but would be in favor of seeing some of the sharper edges smoothed down. The rightward turn by some (and by no means all) in Silicon Valley was due to two things: the over-reach on DEI, which was germinated in an "activist employee" culture that started in the mid 2010's, and the Biden admin's hostility to tech M&A and crypto. For those who follow Silicon Valley closely, the former resulted in activities like the protests on Google campuses when the cloud-computing division (GCP), inked a deal with the DoD. Company leadership blinked and the small but vocal number of activist employees felt emboldened and this led to the embrace of DEI as a way of virtue-signaling to employees. The latter comes down to one thing: money. Investors in Silicon Valley want liquidity, and M&A activity has been one of the most common ways of getting that.
I suspect that the loyalty to Trump and MAGA once the euphoria of DEI being eviscerated and the new regime in the FTC wears off will significantly weaken. In fact, I expect that this current enthusiasm for "regime change" will be replaced with a deep sense of buyer's remorse as it becomes clear that people like Peter Navarro are loons that know zero about running a business. I think the tech industry will also begin to find the spineless sycophancy of republicans in congress and their media enablers to be deeply embarrassing after a while. Remember: this is an industry that has long prided itself on embracing conflict, and challenging dogma. The cult of personality that is MAGA is basically the opposite of this. Some Silicon Valley luminaries, like Musk and Andreeson have bit so hard into MAGA that they may cling to it for longer - but even with those two, I would not be surprised if we slowly but surely see that when they are speaking to the public, its mostly about their businesses and investments and less about politics.
Just imagine being called bad names by random people online, and then letting that be the reason why you vote for someone with illiberal values like Trump. Totally reasonable response....
Peak abuse happened 2010-2014 and everyone I saw didn't turn right-wing, they just kind of took it.
This is why I never moved to SF, all the engineers there I knew suddenly decided they had to "respect women" because of GamerGate and started publicly doing this in a way that made it obvious they literally did not know any women, so they all got scammed by women who showed up and got them to join online cults and stuff.
The federal government doesn't run elections and there is no one election for them to interfere in, but rather 50 of them. They don't have the people to do this.
They have allies in enough states to control the Electoral College and Congress.
Great analysis, as usual.
You open with the comment, “Trump’s actions are often indistinguishable from what he might do if he were a foreign agent bent on destruction. “
Occam’s Razor suggests the simplest explanation is frequently the correct one.
Sen James Lankford is one of the most sober Senators in the Senate. This morning, he was asked about the 25% tariffs on foreign autos and parts. He said Americans do not want higher-priced cars and then pivoted to this a negotiation tactic.
Noah, you didn’t say it but 25% tariffs will bankrupt the Big Three Automakers. Most of it is due to legacy costs. There is a reason the avg price of new car is $50,000. There is a reason Detriot cannot make a $25,000 EV at a profit.
You will start to see layoffs as certain lines shut down. Detriot will not and cannot lose money to satisfy a theory. A theory that is frankly loony. Mercedes, Porsche may be able to increase prices. VW can’t, Volvo, likely cannot as well. Dealerships will close and unemployment will rise.
Having worked in the auto industry for 35 years I know a little. This going to be bad.
To quote another famous authoritarian mind:
“Fear will keep them in line”.
No CEO is going to step out of line, risk a federal investigation and plummeting share price, when all they have to do is stay quiet and weather the storm.
They can'w weather the storm. It rains upon the just and on the unjust fella.
It will be th economy, not so stupid, and not the company.
The fact that it will be the entire economy and not just one company makes it easier to stay silent. It’s a lot easier to explain to your board that “hey, everything’s down right now”, then it is to explain “sorry I said something and now we’re under a retaliatory federal indictment/regulatory investigation”.
It's one helluva storm
I will bet everything in my pocket against everything in your pocket that Tesla will be exempted from these Tarriffs, even the Teslas that are fully manufactured in China
Tesla doesn’t import cars from Shanghai, those go to Asia and Europe. Teslas sold in the US are built in Austin or Fremont, and have the highest percentage of US parts of all American made cars. This means they aren’t hurt by automobile tariffs, and don’t need an exemption, but they are hurt by tariffs on steel, aluminum and semiconductors. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump pulls some excuse out of his ass to exempt them from those.
If Trump's incompetence does lead to stagflation and his attack on federal employees leads to much pain for many people it will be a tragedy but it also leads to Trump being massively unpopular. Democrats run as the party of normies, on a positive, abundance platform. The far left has a seat at the table but so does business and independents. A stake is driven through the heart of MAGA, Democrats win Congress in two years and the White House in four. A majority consensus develops and big problems start to be solved. Decency reigns, prosperity returns, America working with other democracies turns the tables on the forces of darkness and tyranny... Wow, need to wake up what a dream, watched to much Lord of the Rings, but you never know, things are starting to look bad now but the country has gone through worse and we again will get through this and will hopefully become a stronger and better nation.
None of that will happen if the far left has a seat at the table.
Go outside and touch grass. Seriously. The Internet isn't reality.
IFF we can project a positive, pro-growth agenda. The Warren/Sanders/AOC (?) wing can throw enough sand in that to prevent it and give us Republicans forever.
An old saying is that the GOP is a three legged stool. One is business, the other is evangelical Christianity, the third is racism. Of the three, it seems like only the business leg can budge.
Trump won the popular vote only because late deciders from the working class hoped that they he would provide a good economy. This group can definitely move, especially veterans who see the VA being gutted. When the Social Security system collapses, half of Trump's support will go with it.
And Trump won't be on the ballot again. Or if he is, it'll be illegal and we'll be so far beyond the Rubicon that the recent movie Civil War will start to look prescient.
Frankly, i think there's a number of millennial who stopped going to church because it got too republican. Are they enough to make a movement? Not on their own. But are they enough to build a new Christian community that is either less politically aligned or more welcoming to liberal politics? I think so.
Basically, I think only the racist leg won't be budged.
I don't see anyone or any business being helped by this administration and it's "policies". Even Elon Musk fortunes are falling. Trump has no relevant economic experience useful to lead a country, neither do any of his appointees and advisors. For their and our survival anyone with any clout should push back and take the wheel. He's burning down the house with nothing left to replace it.
Agreed. Democrats shot themselves in the foot with identity politics and couldn't run away from the mess they created. Now Republicans are doing the same thing although the manner in which they are accomplishing their "goals" is far more destructive. Perhaps the destruction will so vast that it becomes permanent. "If you elect me, you will never have to vote again". A Trump command and control society seems to be his goal. The economy be damned.
In 70 days Trump has
-ruined the economy
-redefined immigrants as no longer having freedom of speech or due process
-reoriented foreign policy away from democracy towards tyranny in Europe
-Ended academic freedom
-rewrote history to erase black veterans like the tuskegee airmen and jackie robinson
-turned ICE into a secret police force to terrorize immigrants and also brown citizens in cities and states he doesnt like
-used DOGE to make it hard to do basic things like get Special Education and visit national parks and forests (last part isn't a big deal but really pisses me off)
And that's before we talk about things like trying to make NYC. a traffic jam and threatening Medicare and social security and purging the military for loyalist hacks who accidentally text war plans to the media and God knows who else - things that are horrible but will get excused by partisans.
The above is just the inexcusable and indefensible. It's a mix of tyranny, poor economic management, unnecessary hardship, and an erasure of black veterans, because "wokeness."
MAGgots will go to great lengths to say something about how the signal chat or social security is overdone. But there's no denying "your kid can no longer get therapy and your school loses funding if it teaches about Jackie Robinson."
It's a shame we've got to wait two years for any check on this mad king. In the mean time, at a local and state level, we can push our politicians to build a viable, unified and moderate alternative to Trump. Make things work. Get bullet trains built absent a functioning federal bureaucracy, open up housing, make it less expensive to operate a small business, make it more convenient to run a large business.
What about the rule of law? It's a lock that he was on the phone saying "send em out anyway" when Boasberg made his ruling.
Fair point, this list is obnoxiously long so I missed one. What a time to be alive
The idea of a massive American renaissance of factory-based manufacturing assumes there’s a cohort of otherwise under-employed American workers with the desire, skills, and physical capacity to form its labour force. Are the demographics there to support this, in age, health status, and education?
I visited an automotive frame factory where almost all the work was done by robots. The staff were mostly robotic technicians or engineers; machine minders. There was a small group who did custom assembly work.
Having grown up in Iowa, I remember that the US produces more food than it ever has, with something like 1% of the population doing the production. (There are another 2% or so that make some money from farming, but they are essentially hobbyists or highly artisanal farms selling expensive, very specialized products.) Manufacturing is going the same route ...
Manufacturing employment is currently at about 7.7% of the population.
We are currently a net importer of food, and a LOT of solar is going up on idle farmland.
Factory based manufacturing, as you note, is now largely automated, with relatively small, but skilled, labor needs.
I expect quite a few under employed workers would like the relatively lucrative jobs those types of factories require. Training for the technicians could be done by community college systems. It might leave us with a shortage of gig economy workers, I suppose.
With AI gains we will soon have a lot of available workers.
I don’t expect AGI any time soon, but I do think current AI tools and agents are already impacting new hiring of white collar workers.