Skip to main content

States and Courts Counterbalance Trump

From the series Chronicles of the new American nationalism

Donald Trump’s political agenda has been dictated by the tempo of the dozens of executive orders, memoranda, and proclamations he has signed, challenging international partners abroad, and Congress, the States of the Union, and the bureaucracy at home. The execution of some orders has already been temporarily suspended by federal judges, while the chaos caused by a memorandum led the administration itself to withdraw it. Other rulings are expected from the courts at the request of citizens, NGOs, and States.

Furthermore, as James Politi of the Financial Times notes, “the result of his political success” in the elections is that Trump will have to satisfy “a much more diverse political coalition” than in his first term. Ross Douthat, a conservative commentator for The New York Times, also believes that “at least until the Democratic Party gets up off the mat, this means the most important conflicts in American politics are happening within the court of Trump”.

Conflicting Factions

An “obvious” conflict for Douthat is the one between MAGA (Make America Great Again) “populism” and “Silicon Valley libertarianism”. Elon Musk said he is ready for “war” to defend the visas with which many companies import skilled workers. Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s main strategists during his first term, has pledged to “take down” Musk and the “broligarchs” of the PayPal Mafia, who do not defend the “Nation-State”.

Additionally, according to Douthat, a clash over foreign policy could arise in the executive. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz are considered to be “hawks” on the Middle East. The Pentagon top brass, however, includes Michael DiMino, a CIA analyst who is cautious towards Tehran, and Elbridge Colby, head of policy planning and author of the first Trump presidency’s National Defense Strategy. Colby considers China to be the main threat and the Middle East a secondary theatre and he does not want the US to be distracted by a war there.

However, there are “a few more internal wars to watch”, continues Douthat. Trump’s “court” is full of financiers from the “elite”, such as Scott Bessent at the Treasury and Howard Lutnick at Commerce, for the likes of whom Wall Street should not be disturbed by an excess of protectionism.

According to the Financial Times, Bessent had prepared a gradual monthly increase in tariffs of 2.5%, to give companies time to adapt and offer partners the opportunity to negotiate. But Trump, with emergency powers, imposed a sharp increase in levies on goods from China (10%) and from Mexico and Canada (25%).

The reaction of the markets and partners constituted a natural counterweight, provoking a reaction from the members of the administration. Peter Navarro, senior advisor to the White House and a strong supporter of tariffs, emerged as a “key figure” working with Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer. Lutnick, playing a “starring role”, apparently met with Canadian and Mexican officials even before the tariffs were imposed. When the tariffs were suspended by Trump, Navarro praised both Lutnick and Bessent, pointing to the “immediate results” obtained in the negotiations.

Challenges from the States

Rana Foroohar, a commentator at the Financial Times, writes: “As fast as the new president can sign executive orders, individual state governments are stepping up to challenge them in court. The upshot will be a more confusing environment for business and a richer one for lawyers”. The States governed by the Democrats “look for ways to shield themselves” from the incursions with which the federal power would like to change their regulations on immigration, production, and “monopoly power”, or make “massive cuts” to subsidies for businesses, health, and emergency services.

Moreover, Foroohar notes, the Democrats govern some of the States with the highest levels of consumption. California, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York “can create strong demand signals for the rest of the country” in favour of certain production standards, which companies adapt to despite the costs, “even if the president doesn’t like it”.

Opposition in the Senate

Former Republican leader Mitch McConnell has retired, but his term has not expired. He outlined a foreign policy strategy with an essay in Foreign Affairs and opposed some of Trump’s nominations. The GOP holds a slim majority (53-47) and the shift of a handful of them can make all the difference.

Matt Gaetz, Trump’s choice for the Justice Department, avoided Senate scrutiny by withdrawing his nomination. Deeming Peter Hegseth unsuitable as head of the Pentagon, McConnell voted against his nomination, together with Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine), forcing Vice-President J. D. Vance to cast a tie-breaking vote. Finally, McConnell, a man who survived polio in the years before the vaccine, was the only GOP senator to vote against Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the vaccine sceptic who has become Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Chuck Schumer, leader of the Democratic senators, urged by six governors, some of them of national fame such as Tim Walz (Minnesota), asked Trump to withdraw the nomination of Russ Vought as head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Vought believes that the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which reaffirmed the power of Congress over public spending, is “unconstitutional”. He supports the idea that the executive branch has the power to seize funds approved by Congress and to reform the so-called administrative state. “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected”, he said in 2024, and that “when they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work”. In an essay for Project 2025 of the Heritage Foundation, he called for a president with the “boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy” and the “self-denial to [...] send power away from Washington” and “back to America’s families, faith communities, local governments, and States”.

Bureaucratic-media tangle

Through the president’s executive orders and the actions of the Department of Government Efficiency led by Musk in liaison with the OMB, the administration is attacking the prerogatives of departments and their officials, even at senior levels. An executive order has frozen the funding of USAID, the foreign development agency, whose goal, writes the Wall Street Journal, is “to make friends and influence countries in the American interest”, through funding and NGOs.

The attack on USAID has been toned down by Marco Rubio, the head of the State Department on which the agency depends. Moreover, USAID was founded by an act of Congress, and in the controversy one of the claims is that it would be unconstitutional to dissolve it and to cut its programmes, which are mostly financed by other acts of Congress. The WSJ “wouldn’t mind” if USAID “vanished” but warns that the “uproar” around the operation “is a taste of the pushback that Messrs. Musk and Trump are going to face as they work to shrink and reform the executive branch”. The conservative newspaper predicts a revolt of the departments, hand in hand with the opposition newspapers.

Lotta Comunista, February 2025

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Uneven Development, Job Cuts, and the Crisis of Labour Under Global Capitalism

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 16 Uneven development is a fundamental law of capitalism. We have a macroscopic expression of this in the changing balance of power between States: Atlantic decline and Asian rise are the key dynamics behind the political processes of this era, including wars caused by the crisis in the world order. But behind all this there is a differentiated economic trend, starting from companies and sectors: hence the differentiated conditions for wage earners. And this is the element to keep in mind for an effective defensive struggle. It’s only the beginning The electrical and digital restructuring imposed by global market competition affects various production sectors. The car industry is the most obvious, due to the familiarity of the companies and brands involved. We have already reported on the agreement reached before Christmas at Volkswagen, which can be summarised as a reduction of 35,000 employees by 2030. Die Zeit [De...
Read more

In the Depth of Our Class

The pandemic of the century is a storm that does not subside; it returns to its rampage after 40 million infections and more than a million official victims, perhaps two million according to estimates on the excess deaths. In the contention between powers, China stands as the winner: it seems to have tamed the virus, and industry and services are up and running; the USA and Europe, on the other hand, are moving towards a new wave of infections that casts yet more shadows on the economic cycle. Political structures and health systems are at the height of tension. In America, the elections have judged Donald Trump’s rash demagogy on the basis of the opposite reasons for containing the pandemic and the intolerance of small and large producers; in Europe the executives are attempting to steer between the surge in infections, increasingly stringent confinement measures and the threats of fiscal jacquerie in the tourism and catering sectors. Almost everywhere, in the Old Continent, governm...
Read more

Bolsonaro Squeezed between Pandemic, Lula Card and Armed Forces

This article is taken from Intervenção Comunista — the journal of our Brazilian comrades We wrote in May last year that the ‘tropical Trump’ causes a perfect storm . This first quarter of the year seems to demonstrate this clearly: GDP decline (-4.1%) and increased unemployment (14.2%); an end to emergency aid and a delay in the resumption of a new, much leaner aid plan; a record number of deaths and Covid infections. With 2.7% of the world’s population, the country accounts for about 12% of Covid-19 deaths. In March alone, Brazil recorded an increase of about 33% in its daily deaths. The pandemic crisis, coupled with historical imbalances, is shaking up the dysfunctional government of Jair Bolsonaro, who has just appointed his fourth health minister in a year. Increased dependence on the Centrão The second half of Bolsonaro’s term began — for their politics — with the election of Arthur Lira (Progressive Party-Alagoas) as president of the Chamber of Deputies, and Rodrigo Pac...
Read more

Forces and Consequences of the New Strategic Phase

The new strategic phase in the world balance, with its new corresponding political cycles within powers, requires attention to the materialistic, historical and dialectical method of political analysis itself. The changing forces and basic trends need to be identified; we can make conjectures about the developments in single political battles, but the outcome of these battles will always require us to contemplate a plurality of solutions: some more probable. others less. but never Just a mechanical consequence of long-term economic movements. Many fixed points of the method of political analysis are usual tools in our Marxist elaboration, but this does not mean they must be taken for granted: it is of use to recall them, in relation to the new unknowns of the political battle. Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from t...
Read more

The New Energy Shock

Internationalism No. 33, November 2021 Page 6 Can a good recovery do damage? The answer is: yes, sometimes it can, if it triggers major imbalances. The capitalist mode of production is a source of imbalances, inequalities and asymmetries. This time, the imbalance is largely due to the states which have concocted an unexpectedly strong recovery, pulled along by private consumption, with their stimuli, subsidies, relief, tax cuts and zero-rate credits. According to The Economist , the stimuli handed out by governments during the pandemic amounted to about $10,400 billion in the world, equal to one eighth of the 2020 gross world product in current dollars. According to the April IMF Fiscal Monitor , governments, additional expenditure and lost revenue in the advanced economies were equal to 16% of the sum of their GDPs, in the face of losses which, in the final balance sheets, amounted to 4.5% of it. A good part of this went on governmen...
Read more

Another Kind of Politics

Donald Trump has said goodbye as befits his fame, with a tragic riotous revelry. A crowd with improbable disguises took its cue from the fake news on the Internet fomented by the presidency, assaulted the Capitol and wandered around its rooms and corridors with the aim of intimidating representatives and senators. All of this, however, taking selfies: a moment of fame on Facebook or YouTube and a trophy to show off back home in deepest America, while carousing in the local pub. His successor Joe Biden will seek a rebalance in a bipartisan collaboration, but he cannot escape from the dominant trait now characterising the political show . The swearing-in ceremony was the enthronement of a republican king, according to the rites of Hollywoodian show business: pop singers, actors, directors, and rock stars, and the new reigning couple hand in hand as they admired the fireworks in the night. Meanwhile, on the other shore of the Atlantic, a similar depressing show is going on the air with ...
Read more

British Nostalgia

From the series European News In his book Britain Alone , the Financial Times columnist Philip Stephens argues that David Cameron’s decision to hold the Brexit referendum in 2016 was self-serving […] The prime minister wanted to snuff out a Tory rebellion and to give himself a quieter life in 10 Downing Street . For short term tactical reasons, Cameron gambled on the strategic issue of Britain’s link to Europe. As for Boris Johnson, backing Brexit had been about personal ambition: establishing his claim to the leadership . In Stephens’ reconstruction of events, Brexit was an unwanted outcome for the leaders of the Leave campaign: When Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, […] appeared before the cameras on the morning of 24 June, they looked shell-shocked rather than triumphant. […] Winning was not part of the plan. However, once Brexit had been set in motion, Johnson pursued it with wild abandon and made it the cornerstone of his bid for No. 10. According to Stephens, there was no und...
Read more

The future of work in Europe

Every moment of transition presents its own complexities: for our class this means that further divisions are sown within it. Such is the present moment — one when different dynamics stack up and intertwine. Past, present and future On the one hand, there is the troubled exit from the pandemic crisis, still under the threat posed by the emergence of new Covid-19 variants. The pause on redundancies has come to an end in Italy. This, albeit partially, would have spared about 520,000 jobs in Italy up until now, according to Centro Einaudi’s estimates [ 25 th Annual Report on Global Economy and Italy , June 2021]. Company closures and staff reductions (in a mixture of arrogance and callousness) have marked the summer months, only to announce a difficult autumn, when the redundancy ban will be lifted also for small businesses and services. However, it is clear how uncertain the workers’ condition remains, regardless of any collective agreement signed, and how necessary it is always to ...
Read more

The Syrian Crisis Reveals the Limits of the Russian Power

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 5 When, in 2015, Moscow initiated direct military intervention in Syria against ISIS bases and in support of Bashar al-As-sad's regime, this was seen as a signal of Russia’s resurgence as a great power: it was its first deployment in a war zone outside the territory of the former USSR since its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989. Singers of the resurrection Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, and currently one of the most fervent supporters of the war in Ukraine, wrote that this action “has strengthened Russia’s international position”, to the point of making 2015 “one of the most successful years in the history of Russian foreign policy” [Russia in Global Affairs, February 23, 2016). Dmitri Trenin, then head of the Carnegie Center in Moscow, which was later closed by the authorities in 2022, revisited this in his 2018 book What is Russia up to in the Middle East?, ...
Read more

Crisis in Europe’s Auto Industry: Labour Struggles, Class Conflict, and the End of Social Partnership

Internationalism No. 71, January 2025 Page 16 We have on several occasions pointed to the automobile manufacturing sector as an indicator of the shifting economic and, consequently, political balance of power between States. It is inevitable that this also applies to the dynamics of the labour market and therefore to the balance of power between classes. A new social cycle The emergence of the Chinese imperialist giant is also shaking up social relations in the old metropolises. We have defined this moment as the descending phase of social-democratisation , the era in which the “conquests” of the previous ascending cycle are called into question. It is the phase in which what was believed to be guaranteed, including in terms of employment relationships, is in danger of being lost. What appears at first glance as merely an effect of technology (in this sector, specifically the development of the electric car) in fact reflects a more general shift in influenc...
Read more