Terrific piece from @davidoatkins.bsky.social on the real purposes behind Trump's economic agenda: washingtonmonthly.com/2025/04/08/t... - ThreadSky

paulwaldman.bsky.social • 20 days ago

Terrific piece from @davidoatkins.bsky.social on the real purposes behind Trump's economic agenda:

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/04/08/trumps-tariffs-arent-economics-theyre-a-cultural-purge/

Comments

rosemmason.bsky.social•20 days ago

📌

davidoatkins.bsky.social•20 days ago

Thanks!

kerravon.bsky.social•20 days ago

I really am getting sick of this.

There really is no 5D chess at play here. Trump is a guy who thinks that because he inherited his wealth from his dad, he's a genius at economics and can extort money from every other country via tariffs.

To paraphrase the Glass Onion meme, it's just dumb.

texaskrusty.bsky.social•20 days ago

A cultural revolution, if you will.

nojustdan.bsky.social•20 days ago

I don’t think Trump really understands trade deficits. Countries in which the citizenry is impoverished will always have a trade deficit. They are never going to buy Lincoln Navigators from us but we will buy bananas, coffee, and vanilla beans from them.

sweetsueblue.bsky.social•20 days ago

And yet, his voters will see the damage to themselves more than many of us.

davidcsloane.bsky.social•20 days ago

Economic collapse and social service collapse, concurrently, makes everyone poorer and sicker all at once. Hard to be sure whose lives are upended first, it's a race to the bottom for everyone.

sweetsueblue.bsky.social•20 days ago

But we expected it. It will be a big surprise for his followers.

akajuhlz.bsky.social•20 days ago

If I had a nickel for every "real agenda" postulation, I could buy a carton of eggs.

xgerman.bsky.social•20 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_to_the_Countryside_Movement. - “Mao […] send people to the countryside. Mao was from the countryside and wanted all educated youth to have experience there” also “many students could not deal with the harsh life and died in the process of reeducation” — checks out

mikethemadbiol.bsky.social•20 days ago

📌

fergdawg.bsky.social•20 days ago

"...gutting the cities, and pushing men into manual labor while nudging women into domestic roles. It’s not incoherent—it’s a plan being implemented methodically." /3

fergdawg.bsky.social•20 days ago

"... the project is about deskilling America: reducing white-collar work through AI and remote job cuts, destroying universities, starving higher education, using tariffs to wall off the country as a manufacturing-and-extraction island..." /2

zathras5.bsky.social•20 days ago

I don’t subscribe to all of this, seeing much of Trump’s action as lashing out at the many people and interests he dislikes (and thinks his followers can be made to dislike) rather than as part of a strategic plan.

But that some in Trump’s circle do think as Atkins believes they do seems clear.

nadinbrzezinski.bsky.social•20 days ago

Curtis Jarvin and nick Land. That's the core of this.

lucyksy.bsky.social•20 days ago

That is why they are destroying the government and crashing the economy. He is declaring everything is an emergency. This lays the ground to declare martial law (especially as the protests grow). Then he will be a dictator, which is his goal. Can he do it? He gets closer every day.

dmolina1051.bsky.social•20 days ago

Interesting.

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