I'm Jealous. Trump Discredits Capitalism More Than I Ever Could.

The consequences of a brittle, fractured economy.

I’ve spent a good deal of my life writing critiques of capitalism. On this Substack alone, I’ve explained why extracting workers’ labor value is theft, why major industries should be nationalized, and how the profit motive is killing the planet. This site gets close to 50,000 readers a month, and people seem to appreciate my work, so I think I make compelling arguments. But even if I locked myself in a room and only wrote anti-capitalist essays for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t scratch the surface of what Donald Trump has done to disprove the prevailing socio-economic system.

In less than four months in office, Trump has personally diminished the American and global economies in a way never before seen. His tariff chaos (I won’t call it a policy because that implies thought) has been rightfully condemned by the political right, left, and center. Even members of his administration think it’s a disaster.¹ The random country-specific rates, ranging between 10% and 145%, have sent shockwaves through global supply chains. While American consumers won’t feel the full damage for a while, it’s coming. As sure as sunrise. Ocean freight bookings from China to the United States have dropped by 60%.² Despite the bogus claims of a New Cold War, the U.S and Chinese economies are codependent. China is the top supplier of American goods,³ so Walmart shelves will be bone dry before we know it. The Tax Foundation estimates the tariffs will reduce imports by 23%⁴ and the Wharton School of Business, Trump’s alma mater, predicts a 6% decrease in GDP and a 5% decrease in real wages.⁵ That translates to an average price increase of 2.3%, costing the typical household $3,800 annually.⁶ Speaking to the Trump-friendly The Wall Street Journal, one logistics supply expert likened the coming economic disaster to the dinosaur-killing asteroid.

“If they don’t change the tariffs, it will be an extinction-level, asteroid-wiping-out-the-dinosaurs kind of event. Only these aren’t dinosaurs. These are dynamic, healthy businesses.” - Ryan Petersen, CEO of the supply-chain logistics firm Flexport

If you want to learn how tariffs can create a good, worker-friendly trade policy, check out my article, “Labor Deserves Better than Trump’s Disastrous Tariffs,” for the Center for International Policy think tank.

While I’ve never seen the stock market as the ultimate economic indicator, capitalists surely do. Following the tariff announcement on “Liberation Day,” the S&P 500 fell 12%.⁷ For context, it fell 14% following the September 11th terrorist attacks.⁸ (Vote Republican! We’re Slightly Better Than 9/11!) I’m not one to fret about capital’s misfortunes, but as over 52% of private-industry workers have 401(k)s, this turmoil has thrown many soon-to-be-retirees into financial crisis.⁹ (The volatility of the personal investments is one of many reasons we must protect Social Security.)

While tariffs, falling investments, and frightening GDP forecasts have dominated the headlines, we shouldn’t forget the numerous ways Trump has deliberately impoverished America’s workers. The media usually cover anything related to unions or the working class as ‘politics,’ but in the truest sense of the word, union-busting is an economic policy. In a healthy economy, people can easily access goods. In a poor economy, they can’t. Decreasing pay, mass firings, and ending collective bargaining rights are not simply nefarious acts, but economic self-sabotage. In this regard, the Republican president is failing. So far, his executive orders have:

• Ended the Biden-era regulation of a $17.75 hourly minimum wage for federal contractors, cutting hundreds of thousands of workers’ salaries by 25%.¹⁰

• Ended the preference for “high road” government contractors that give workers higher wages and better benefits.¹¹

• Removed collective bargaining rights for over a million civil servants,¹² on top of the 23,000 federal jobs cut by Elon Musk.¹³

Even anti-wokeness has economic consequences. Trump is currently threatening to cut public funding and tax exemptions for universities that, among other things, don’t hire conservative professors. A recent American University study found that cutting these grants by even 25% would result in a 3.8% GDP reduction. I don’t want to know what will happen if he ends public financing entirely.¹⁴

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But it doesn’t stop there. The tourism industry accounts for 3% of America’s GDP. Given tourism is the lifeblood for many single-industry communities, Trump’s record-breaking shittyness could kill them. Due to the random incarceration and torture of foreigner nationals,¹⁵ the unabashed xenophobia, or the fact the United States is more likely to be the set of a Mad Max film than have a democratic election, tourists are going elsewhere. 2025’s first quarter saw an 8% decrease in the real value of travel services, causing America’s first tourism trade deficit this century.¹⁶ Even if foreigners wanted to visit us, I’m not sure they could. Last week, 20% of Newark airport air traffic controllers walked off the job in protest of safety and staffing issues exacerbated by Trump’s cuts. United Airlines announced flight reductions so significant it amounts to a near universal cancellation.¹⁷ It will take years to understand the economic impact of one airport’s reduced operations. And given the state of things, more airports are sure to follow.

At the risk of driving you insane, Donald Trump still has 1,359 days left in his term. Everything mentioned above is only a scratch on the surface of the economic destruction the Republican Party will bring.

I’m not an air travel expert. Is this good??

While Donald Trump is commonly seen as an indictment of America’s racist, jingoist culture, his multiple elections and disastrous governance is equally damning of capitalism as it is the country. Thousands of journalists have brought on carpal tunnel syndrome writing about how Trump is a product of the Great Recession and the War on Terror. That’s true, but the Trump-related consequences of America’s capitalist economy aren’t just past tense. They’re happening now, all around us, everywhere you look.

After decades or privatization, attacking organized labor, and Washington group-think that the government should be run like a business, the United States has a free-for-all economy. Nothing is planned with purpose. Everything is a commodity, bought and sold with no concern for the impacts of underproduction or misallocation. Our government places the same importance on the people who keep planes from crashing as it does to people who write blogs: zero. That’s fine for the latter. But as Newark passengers on a three-day delay can tell you, the former is crucial. Without air traffic controllers, travel, and the country, grinds to a standstill. Neoliberalism and offshoring has shattered our manufacturing base to dust and scattered the it across the globe. The profit motive drove America away from production and towards excessive consumption. We’re over-reliant on distant plants, all because greedy, parasitical capitalists wanted to avoid paying Americans fair wages. Now we’re being excessively taxed by a capitalist government for participating in the economy capitalists designed. Social Security, one of the few social democratic programs we have, is facing unrelenting attacks from the party currently wiping out workers’ private investments and savings. When the program was designed following the capitalist failure known as the Great Depression, it was supposed to be one leg in the three-leg stool retirement strategy. Social Security, private investments, and employer pensions were supposed to keep retirees healthy and secure. Employers have erased fixed-benefit pensions in favor of fixed-contribution 401(k)s, wobbling the promise of golden years prosperity. Now Americans who worked their whole life are wondering if Social Security will even exist or if their savings will be a goose egg when its time to retire. Get used to seeing a lot more gray-haired homeless people.

Picture from 1933, and also probably 2033.

Into this rickety china shop economy comes the bull, Donald Trump. Led into the storefront by the very people who loosened the shelf screws and removed the porcelain tea cups from their cases, the bull does what a bull does. It kicks, shakes, screams, and destroys everything it doesn’t understand. And the bulls’ pretty old and stupid, so there’s only a few piece left intact. But they’re catching his eye…

This is where we are now. Donald Trump and the Republican party are four months into a forty-eight month kicking spree — stock market plunges, depleted retirement savings, empty store shelves, ends to cancer research, high prices, and a slew of other horrible outcomes we haven’t begun to fathom. The capitalist economy is frail, brittle, and run by a small group of people. Collapse might not have been inevitable, but it was probable. But it didn’t have to be this way. There’s nothing inherent or natural about the profit motive, the private ownership of production, or markets. Over-using these was a deliberate choice by the ruling class that will never have enough. And now we’re suffering the consequences of that selfish choice.

Capitalism is not unique to the United States. And neither are the problems outlined above. Many nations face economic calamity, caused by Trump or otherwise. I imagine many pro-capitalist readers will say, “Well, this is the fault of Donald Trump. You can’t blame capitalism!” I disagree. I’m certainly angry somebody let a bull into the china shop. But why is the world’s largest economy so easily breakable? That problem has a single culprit: capitalism.

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In Solidarity — Joe

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1. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/17/ideological-twist-elon-musk-tariff-opposition-00295173

2. https://www.wsj.com/business/logistics/china-to-u-s-container-shipmentsand-shipsshrink-as-tariffs-bite-ba09103c

3. https://ustr.gov/countries-regions

4. https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs-trade-war/

5. https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2025/4/10/economic-effects-of-president-trumps-tariffs

6. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/trumps-trade-war-is-a-major-economic-and-strategic-blunder/

7. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock-market-made-back-losses-124038060.html

8. https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0911/how-september-11-affected-the-u.s.-stock-market.aspx

9. https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2023/retirement-plans-for-workers-in-private-industry-and-state-and-local-government-in-2022.htm

10. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/trump-just-cut-the-minimum-wage-for-hundreds-of-thousands-of-private-sector-workers/

11. https://www.epi.org/publication/100-days-100-ways-trump-hurt-workers/

12. https://www.epi.org/policywatch/executive-order-on-exclusions-from-federal-labor-management-relations-programs/

13. https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/us-federal-employment-drops-again-doge-cuts-stack-up-2025-05-02/

14. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/business/trump-science-funding-cuts-economy.html

15. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/german-national-green-card-holder-immigration-detention-fabian-schmidt-rcna196714

16. https://qz.com/us-travel-tourism-revenue-airlines-tariffs-trade-ice-1851778550

17. https://www.airwaysmag.com/new-post/united-cancels-newark-flights-atc-walkout