SAM MAGAZINE 2/25 | 23 The explanation is that it’s better for the rest of the country this way, even if rights granted by the U.S. Constitution are ignored. The President has even proposed similar punishment for those U.S. citizens he thinks are insufficiently patriotic in support of him and his agenda. Respect for laws and human rights has disappeared. The parallels to the Nazi regime’s treatment of Jews and the Stalin regime’s treatment of dissidents are unmistakable. Trump’s admiration and support of Putin is equally obvious. Putin disapproves of NATO, then so does Trump. Putin wants to take over Ukraine, or at least Crimea, so Trump wants to emulate Putin by taking over Gaza and turning it into a resort. And why stop there – he wants Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal too. As for private business, industries abroad and throughout America have paused future U.S. investment plans in light of the uncertainty created by Trump’s tariffs and from the lack of any coherent action plan or message beyond vague claims of trade unfairness to America that are mostly disproven by real statistics. Business decisions must await more clarity and consistency. An equally likely prospect is that international business will carry on without waiting for America. Economists have started to speculate seriously about other options, including an analysis of the theoretical possibility that all trade between the USA and other countries would stop in 2025 (a Global Trade Alert study by Simon J. Evenett, updated in April 2025). Instead of a feared collapse of the world economy, the model predicted that within a year at least 40 percent of America’s trading partners will have recovered fully from lost exports to the USA and by 2030 nearly 70 percent of them will have recovered totally from the loss of U.S. sales because of growth in other economies. The model predicted Finland’s 100 percent recovery to be a bit later, in 2033. So even if trade with the USA stopped entirely this year, the rest of the world would continue to trade just as successfully as before after an adjustment period. Predictions and models are imperfect, but the point is that nations other than the USA are starting to make their own plans and seeing that they can succeed without any American participation in the world economy. America has lost its long-term trustworthiness because Trump has proven that the United States can and will turn its back on its trading partners without hesitation and without any reason. What does the United States gain from any of this? There’s no gain, there’s only great loss. Even when viewed from a self-serving goal like “America First” the Trump administration’s actions will ensure the exact opposite result. Alienating America’s allies in Europe and the rest of the world serves only to erode and to eventually destroy America’s soon-to-be former status as a superpower. Calling into question America’s trade relationships and military alliances serves the interests of Russia and China, certainly not America. Trump is hell bent on ending anything resembling democracy and on ending American leadership in world politics for democracy or for mutual economic cooperation and free trade. In the meantime, American society continues to wallow in conspiracy theories and self-imposed economic chaos with little or no regard by America’s leaders for the accuracy of information. Do Americans care? Has this produced a mass revolt among Americans? Not yet. Not even close. Even though Trump’s poll numbers have dropped, an astonishing 40-something percent of Americans still support everything he does. That’s nearly half of America and some of his ardent supporters have a lot of money, so their support counts even more. The rest of the world can conclude correctly that Trumpism is not a passing craze that Americans were temporarily duped into believing. Instead, it’s already a real basis of 21st century American politics and the global economy. The world’s rejection of this America, its politics and its way of doing business is a valid response.
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