For the most part, I agree, but in my opinion, you miss some things that matter.
Why does this happen? It's not like Trump fell from the sky. The election campaign, Biden, many developments since decades leading up to that all are a logical path unfolding. It's ideology delivering answers that match less and less.
You do not question that the intention is to MAGA, despite reasoning self-destruction. Could it just be greed for money and power? That's what made the USA big at a time when that answer led to success. The birth rate and the absurd cost of living shows the decline has started long ago. It's not a crisis, it is a development. The majority does not benefit since a while already. An atmosphere where people primarily defend themselves economically is what brings nations down.
Trump isn't the root cause. He is a symptom. You can love or hate him, the root cause will not be impressed. The world has seen many cultures and all of them always thought to be the best and last, and traversing history, the majority was wrong. There were other world dominating powers in history that are now gone. Do you seriously think it will be different this time?
And within that context, there is hope. Should the USA be able to reduce bureaucracy, even if something breaks in the process, it would be the first country managing to do that and it would help big time. All countries so far assigned that task to bureaucratics. Nobody expected that to work and it did not. It is not sure such a radical change will work, but anything less radical will fail for sure. If a bunch of rich people get richer from that by taking from the poor, well, that would have happened any other way, too.
Speaking of reducing Bureaucracy, and Speaking of Hope, there is a real hope that we can return to our Founding Fathers Roots, Tea Parties, Rebelling against taxes and corrupt Monarchies/bureaucracies.
1776-2026: 250 yr Bday coming up, what will we be celebrating? Will we be celebrating the status quo of USAID, corruption, crime, racketeering, propaganda, extortion, etc.... or the hopes and aspirations of our Founding Fathers?
Speaking of root causes and symptoms, healing is always a process of inflammation followed by anti-inflammation. The Bell Curve of Healing always requires a period of inflammatory messengers w their attendant inflammation/fire/heat to destroy the rot before sending out antiinflammatory messengers that heal a sick country.
We are still on the left side of this Bell Curve. Be Patient Grasshoppers. Things are for the first time in a very long time moving in the Direction of Cure. In the meantime, please keep our country, and the entire world in your daily prayers, as by no means is the Direction of Cure guaranteed.
Trump is trying something. It may work, or not. The problem is not that he's trying. The problem would be if he didn't recognize bad outcomes and would persist in mistakes.
The present is not the past. Some things may stay the same, some may be different than decades ago, regardless what the economic history books say. (Not the same person, not the same river.) We don't know until we try. One thing is sure: we can't keep going the way we have been going for the last 2 decades. This is decline and fall. We need a change in direction.
Soros became a billionaire by changing his mind very fast when facts changed. As long as Trump does the same, and it seems that he does, I'm optimistic.
I don't see anything bad in renegotiating bad deals with our "friends" and "allies". On one hand, people are complaining that we have an increasing gap between haves and have nots, on the other the same people whine when the government is trying to stop the hemorrhage of money to various other countries and special interests. Instead of goods, we've been exporting ideology (e.g. at USAID) and projecting weakness (very dangerous when one is the alpha).
I agree that it deserves a chance. For the last 40 years the system has deteriorated and the 40 years before that we did not really pay attention to learn what really worked and what didn't.
If we were the only place in the world that had tried the current approach it might be different but all G7 countries are struggling in similar ways.
If we keep going as before other, different, more agile systems will replace our role in the world.
It seems many ideas being pursued right now are either not well thought through, or are, but with a need to pretend otherwise.
For example, using tariffs to fund income tax reductions is a transfer of tax payments from those with the most to those with the least.
The biggest beneficiaries of income tax reduction will be the people with the largest incomes, and the people most impacted by tariffs will be the people who spend the highest percentage of their income.
The idea that Trump and his people promoting these polices don't know this seems hard to accept.
I don't necessarily agree with you on everything that you are saying here, but I very much appreciate the very well argued and analyzed piece that you put together. Neither side is completely right, but we need more of what you are doing here instead of yelling at each other, so thank you and keep up the good work.
Well, between presidential riffing for ethnic cleansing in Gaza and Musk’s defenestration of the public interest (CFPB, NHTSA, etc) there is a lot of Crazy going on…
Yes, true. What made me chuckle a few times recently is the fact that we are all commenting and having differing levels of concern when this term is 3 weeks old. I guess we are no longer used to a lot of stuff happening by political leaders. In comparison the last 4 years feel like we were on vacation...
2) Regarding Tariffs / Goodwill: Neither Canada or Mexico have been acting as goodwill as they allow illegal aliens, deadly drugs, weapons, and criminals cross our borders causing rapes, murders and drug deaths to skyrocket. Goodwill of China similar. Goodwill of EU and NATO, deplorable.
3) The Founding Fathers are applauding the first three wks of Trump rn. Raskin is a horrible actor and therefore a horrible source to quote about 4th branches of govt. Regarding any 4th branch of govt I refer you back to Tom Renz thread regarding the legitimacy of DOGE.
ps. We all color our conclusions from our own personal framework and biases, but I think you could stand a closer inspection regarding your framework and biases. pss. I still love you.
The flow of illegal guns in particular and also organized crime, including the cartels, has been primarily from the US to Canada. It is true that fentanyl and its precursors mainly come from China - and probably worth studying the opium trade of the 19th century to understand why they might use it as a weapon. The amount of fentanyl seized at the Canadian border would fit easily in a wheelbarrow - meanwhile it comes across the border with Mexico in trucks, boats, submarines and planes (as do the well-heeled drug traffickers)
One weird puzzle piece in all of this is Japan, the US' 4th biggest trading partner. Everything seems fine? Trump seems to really like Japan (see all the Shinzo Abe/Trump memes). They're terrified of China, but also seem totally capable of navigating Trump's ego and interests to ensure continued partnership. I suspect it is because they do not criticize him in public, invest in US manufacturing, and Tokyo is impressive (Trump's a big aesthetics guy apparently). There's probably worth studying something there about what Trump wants from potential partners.
I do think there are other alternate futures than the ones you mapped out. One is the Long Rebuild, where US consumers absorb a decade of higher prices as US domestic supply catches up to demand, pricing underneath the tariffs. They would have to drive much lower with automation to be competitive globally, but who knows where trade would be in that world? Another (a very low confidence, practically conspiracy theory) is that Trump would prefer China as an ally than anybody else, Europe, Canada, Mexico, etc. I have this hunch he actually admires China and Xi—he wants an economy like that, he loves all the construction and manufacturing, he'd love to have the power that Xi has. If he could find terms to carve up the world with China, he would do it (I think the cries of fascism are premature, but this scenario is very heavily shaded by 1940s Japan and Germany).
I think there might be a secret verbal agreement to have China and USA be the AI leaders of the world, develop their versions of AI solutions and then carve up who gets to dominate who. US will take care of G7 and probably some other parts of the world, China with BRICS will take care of those countries and Africa. Just imagine a world in 20 years where work as we know it will no longer exist and AI, robots, etc. will take care of all of that. Two strong powers could be a solution to handle a world like this and avoid 1984 style systems or Aldus Huxley's fears
Coming from the semi world, I doubt this very much. It may appear that way if only because semis are so expensive only the richest countries can play, but the supply chain is everywhere and every company is trying to maximize profits by competing intensely. It’s a cutthroat, low trust business (see: Andy Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive).
My wife is a physician in Canada. She says that Canadian scientists can no longer reach scientists in the States to develop the flu vaccine for next Fall. Without public health data and investigation, they can’t develop an effective vaccine. That means next winter many people will die from the flu unnecessarily. Don’t even get her started about the bird flu that has now jumped to cows and then humans. The human mortality rate from the bird flu is currently 50%. COVID was about 1 to 2 percent.
Efficiency is fundamentally fragile and easily disrupted. Governments should not place their primary focus on being efficient. What we need from governments is for them to be effective. Efficiency should of course be part of the equation, but too frequently it becomes the only focus and ultimate end goal. The result is an efficient, yes, but unstable system that will fail at the slightest perturbance. Governments and public services that fail with the slightest disturbance is not good! For example, don't want a maximally "efficient" food system where an unexpected weather event or logistical failure ends up causing the system to collapse. Resilient systems inherently have "waste" and are not efficient, but they are effective.
To be more specific, the foreign food aid via USAID encourages surplus overproduction of food or "waste" in the system. We then cleverly re-purpose that "waste" and turn it into foreign "good will". Without USAID buying the surplus food, food production will drop. Farmers will produce less food making the system more "efficient", but in the event of some climate calamity, we will have no "wasteful surplus" to fall back on and people will go hungry. This focus on efficiency will make our world more dangerous and fragile and potentially get us all killed.
Put me down for another member of the “We Love Kyla’s Brain” fan club.
Your articles have grown more pessimistic as of late (for understandable reasons). I think you lay out who the losers are fairly clearly here. My question becomes, then, who are the winners?
This group of folks in and around the Trump orbit aren’t dumb. So what is the long game? Or have we given up the long game for short term gains followed by a hard exit of our wealthy class once they’ve gained what they can?
Not in a conspiracy theory game, mind, just in a blast of profit maximization.
I think the winners are those who do align themselves to this game!. It's all speculation, no one really knows. This article was more walking through what's happening, I apologize if it sounded overly negative - I think uncertainty can do that!
No need to apologize! Uncertainty is uncomfortable in the best of circumstances. Thank you for your insights and taking the time to answer our comments.
Don't you think it's a shame that it took a combo like Trump and Musk to give taxpayers even limited access to see where their money has gone? And that the greatest sign of life from the Democrats has been their attempts to block taxpayers from seeing where their money went?
I love your insights and have for years. This one is very depressing.
For the most part, I agree, but in my opinion, you miss some things that matter.
Why does this happen? It's not like Trump fell from the sky. The election campaign, Biden, many developments since decades leading up to that all are a logical path unfolding. It's ideology delivering answers that match less and less.
You do not question that the intention is to MAGA, despite reasoning self-destruction. Could it just be greed for money and power? That's what made the USA big at a time when that answer led to success. The birth rate and the absurd cost of living shows the decline has started long ago. It's not a crisis, it is a development. The majority does not benefit since a while already. An atmosphere where people primarily defend themselves economically is what brings nations down.
Trump isn't the root cause. He is a symptom. You can love or hate him, the root cause will not be impressed. The world has seen many cultures and all of them always thought to be the best and last, and traversing history, the majority was wrong. There were other world dominating powers in history that are now gone. Do you seriously think it will be different this time?
And within that context, there is hope. Should the USA be able to reduce bureaucracy, even if something breaks in the process, it would be the first country managing to do that and it would help big time. All countries so far assigned that task to bureaucratics. Nobody expected that to work and it did not. It is not sure such a radical change will work, but anything less radical will fail for sure. If a bunch of rich people get richer from that by taking from the poor, well, that would have happened any other way, too.
Excellent points!
Speaking of reducing Bureaucracy, and Speaking of Hope, there is a real hope that we can return to our Founding Fathers Roots, Tea Parties, Rebelling against taxes and corrupt Monarchies/bureaucracies.
1776-2026: 250 yr Bday coming up, what will we be celebrating? Will we be celebrating the status quo of USAID, corruption, crime, racketeering, propaganda, extortion, etc.... or the hopes and aspirations of our Founding Fathers?
Speaking of root causes and symptoms, healing is always a process of inflammation followed by anti-inflammation. The Bell Curve of Healing always requires a period of inflammatory messengers w their attendant inflammation/fire/heat to destroy the rot before sending out antiinflammatory messengers that heal a sick country.
We are still on the left side of this Bell Curve. Be Patient Grasshoppers. Things are for the first time in a very long time moving in the Direction of Cure. In the meantime, please keep our country, and the entire world in your daily prayers, as by no means is the Direction of Cure guaranteed.
The Hope of the founding fathers was certainly NOT that we would arrogate the powers of Congress to a single unelected plutocrat…
That Argentina tidbit really hit hard. He is leading our country as if he was an enemy of our country.
This article feels quite biased.
Trump is trying something. It may work, or not. The problem is not that he's trying. The problem would be if he didn't recognize bad outcomes and would persist in mistakes.
The present is not the past. Some things may stay the same, some may be different than decades ago, regardless what the economic history books say. (Not the same person, not the same river.) We don't know until we try. One thing is sure: we can't keep going the way we have been going for the last 2 decades. This is decline and fall. We need a change in direction.
Soros became a billionaire by changing his mind very fast when facts changed. As long as Trump does the same, and it seems that he does, I'm optimistic.
I don't see anything bad in renegotiating bad deals with our "friends" and "allies". On one hand, people are complaining that we have an increasing gap between haves and have nots, on the other the same people whine when the government is trying to stop the hemorrhage of money to various other countries and special interests. Instead of goods, we've been exporting ideology (e.g. at USAID) and projecting weakness (very dangerous when one is the alpha).
P. S. Still a fan of this substack.
I wish I shared your optimism but Trump’s history of recognizing and adjusting to “..Bad outcomes…” is not particularly auspicious.
(2020 election comes to mind)
Besides, why do all the hard work when scapegoating’s so much easier.
I agree that it deserves a chance. For the last 40 years the system has deteriorated and the 40 years before that we did not really pay attention to learn what really worked and what didn't.
If we were the only place in the world that had tried the current approach it might be different but all G7 countries are struggling in similar ways.
If we keep going as before other, different, more agile systems will replace our role in the world.
It seems many ideas being pursued right now are either not well thought through, or are, but with a need to pretend otherwise.
For example, using tariffs to fund income tax reductions is a transfer of tax payments from those with the most to those with the least.
The biggest beneficiaries of income tax reduction will be the people with the largest incomes, and the people most impacted by tariffs will be the people who spend the highest percentage of their income.
The idea that Trump and his people promoting these polices don't know this seems hard to accept.
I don't necessarily agree with you on everything that you are saying here, but I very much appreciate the very well argued and analyzed piece that you put together. Neither side is completely right, but we need more of what you are doing here instead of yelling at each other, so thank you and keep up the good work.
Thank you!
Kyla for President!
Ray Dalio predicted the fall of America as an economic superpower, and here we see it coming to fruition in the matter of a fortnight. Sheer insanity.
This might be true but Ray Dalio predicted it to happen completely without interventions of the kind Trump is trying
Are you saying Trump is accelerating it or are you saying he is doing it wrong to avoid what Ray Dalio predicted?
Looks to me like trump is accelerating the implosion of the United States.
Yes, possibly
Still, auditing and cutting is not the thing that will be the reason of implosion - crazy decisions will be…
Well, between presidential riffing for ethnic cleansing in Gaza and Musk’s defenestration of the public interest (CFPB, NHTSA, etc) there is a lot of Crazy going on…
Yes, true. What made me chuckle a few times recently is the fact that we are all commenting and having differing levels of concern when this term is 3 weeks old. I guess we are no longer used to a lot of stuff happening by political leaders. In comparison the last 4 years feel like we were on vacation...
Make politics boring again
Kyla,
You are very much off base here in your op-ed.
1) Regarding DOGE, I leave you w Tom Renz Thread regarding the legality and more. https://x.com/RenzTom/status/1887038847629877714
2) Regarding Tariffs / Goodwill: Neither Canada or Mexico have been acting as goodwill as they allow illegal aliens, deadly drugs, weapons, and criminals cross our borders causing rapes, murders and drug deaths to skyrocket. Goodwill of China similar. Goodwill of EU and NATO, deplorable.
3) The Founding Fathers are applauding the first three wks of Trump rn. Raskin is a horrible actor and therefore a horrible source to quote about 4th branches of govt. Regarding any 4th branch of govt I refer you back to Tom Renz thread regarding the legitimacy of DOGE.
ps. We all color our conclusions from our own personal framework and biases, but I think you could stand a closer inspection regarding your framework and biases. pss. I still love you.
Thank you for sharing!
John is wrong
The flow of illegal guns in particular and also organized crime, including the cartels, has been primarily from the US to Canada. It is true that fentanyl and its precursors mainly come from China - and probably worth studying the opium trade of the 19th century to understand why they might use it as a weapon. The amount of fentanyl seized at the Canadian border would fit easily in a wheelbarrow - meanwhile it comes across the border with Mexico in trucks, boats, submarines and planes (as do the well-heeled drug traffickers)
You can write out "fuck" Kyla, we're all adults here
One weird puzzle piece in all of this is Japan, the US' 4th biggest trading partner. Everything seems fine? Trump seems to really like Japan (see all the Shinzo Abe/Trump memes). They're terrified of China, but also seem totally capable of navigating Trump's ego and interests to ensure continued partnership. I suspect it is because they do not criticize him in public, invest in US manufacturing, and Tokyo is impressive (Trump's a big aesthetics guy apparently). There's probably worth studying something there about what Trump wants from potential partners.
I do think there are other alternate futures than the ones you mapped out. One is the Long Rebuild, where US consumers absorb a decade of higher prices as US domestic supply catches up to demand, pricing underneath the tariffs. They would have to drive much lower with automation to be competitive globally, but who knows where trade would be in that world? Another (a very low confidence, practically conspiracy theory) is that Trump would prefer China as an ally than anybody else, Europe, Canada, Mexico, etc. I have this hunch he actually admires China and Xi—he wants an economy like that, he loves all the construction and manufacturing, he'd love to have the power that Xi has. If he could find terms to carve up the world with China, he would do it (I think the cries of fascism are premature, but this scenario is very heavily shaded by 1940s Japan and Germany).
I think there might be a secret verbal agreement to have China and USA be the AI leaders of the world, develop their versions of AI solutions and then carve up who gets to dominate who. US will take care of G7 and probably some other parts of the world, China with BRICS will take care of those countries and Africa. Just imagine a world in 20 years where work as we know it will no longer exist and AI, robots, etc. will take care of all of that. Two strong powers could be a solution to handle a world like this and avoid 1984 style systems or Aldus Huxley's fears
Coming from the semi world, I doubt this very much. It may appear that way if only because semis are so expensive only the richest countries can play, but the supply chain is everywhere and every company is trying to maximize profits by competing intensely. It’s a cutthroat, low trust business (see: Andy Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive).
Yes, I believe that. On the other hand, there is a lot of software and computer science/engineering to utilize the hardware
My wife is a physician in Canada. She says that Canadian scientists can no longer reach scientists in the States to develop the flu vaccine for next Fall. Without public health data and investigation, they can’t develop an effective vaccine. That means next winter many people will die from the flu unnecessarily. Don’t even get her started about the bird flu that has now jumped to cows and then humans. The human mortality rate from the bird flu is currently 50%. COVID was about 1 to 2 percent.
Efficiency is bad actually.
Efficiency is fundamentally fragile and easily disrupted. Governments should not place their primary focus on being efficient. What we need from governments is for them to be effective. Efficiency should of course be part of the equation, but too frequently it becomes the only focus and ultimate end goal. The result is an efficient, yes, but unstable system that will fail at the slightest perturbance. Governments and public services that fail with the slightest disturbance is not good! For example, don't want a maximally "efficient" food system where an unexpected weather event or logistical failure ends up causing the system to collapse. Resilient systems inherently have "waste" and are not efficient, but they are effective.
To be more specific, the foreign food aid via USAID encourages surplus overproduction of food or "waste" in the system. We then cleverly re-purpose that "waste" and turn it into foreign "good will". Without USAID buying the surplus food, food production will drop. Farmers will produce less food making the system more "efficient", but in the event of some climate calamity, we will have no "wasteful surplus" to fall back on and people will go hungry. This focus on efficiency will make our world more dangerous and fragile and potentially get us all killed.
Excellent point. It seems to me that the discussion gets framed in a way that presumes government to be simply an engineering optimization problem.
thank you for persistent analysis and truth-telling. Your work helps me remain hopeful.
Put me down for another member of the “We Love Kyla’s Brain” fan club.
Your articles have grown more pessimistic as of late (for understandable reasons). I think you lay out who the losers are fairly clearly here. My question becomes, then, who are the winners?
This group of folks in and around the Trump orbit aren’t dumb. So what is the long game? Or have we given up the long game for short term gains followed by a hard exit of our wealthy class once they’ve gained what they can?
Not in a conspiracy theory game, mind, just in a blast of profit maximization.
I think the winners are those who do align themselves to this game!. It's all speculation, no one really knows. This article was more walking through what's happening, I apologize if it sounded overly negative - I think uncertainty can do that!
No need to apologize! Uncertainty is uncomfortable in the best of circumstances. Thank you for your insights and taking the time to answer our comments.
Don't you think it's a shame that it took a combo like Trump and Musk to give taxpayers even limited access to see where their money has gone? And that the greatest sign of life from the Democrats has been their attempts to block taxpayers from seeing where their money went?
And, I want to throw up. Do we need to build bunkers? 😬 Asking for a friend…