Graphic: John McCann/M&G
Like many, I have been trying to make sense of US President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. Many others see this as a futile exercise. Either way you look at it, what has happened — and what might still happen — is consequential, not only for the US, but especially for the rest of the world.
For this reason, I was intrigued to see a “By Invitation” column in The Economist by Paul Dans. Dans is one of the architects behind Project 2025, which seems to be the underlying policy blueprint behind Trump’s demolition hammer.
The article begins with an overt defence of Trump’s actions. Succinctly, the argument is that the US was on a hiding to nothing when Trump entered office. National debt is at $36 trillion and “annual debt service exceeds the Department of Defence’s budget”. Moreover, the federal budget of $7 trillion for 2025 is 40% larger in real terms than a decade ago.
But the real concern for Dans seems to be the erosion of weapons stocks and the US’s industrial capacity for replenishment thereof, particularly because of the pushback against coal and nuclear power within the US, and the extensive supply of weapons to Ukraine. His point is that one cannot expect the US to be the global bastion of democracy if it cannot even produce enough weapons to defend itself against an invasion.
On this count, the question should surely be why US defence spending is so inefficient. If the department of government efficiency had gone after the Pentagon, one might have understood. But it went after aid, a much easier target. The US spends more on its military in absolute terms ($916 billion in 2023) than all the world’s “middle income” countries combined ($633 billion in 2023) and has done so for the past 25 years at least, by largely similar margins.
Dans goes on to assert that US infrastructure is crumbling, immigration fuels violent crime and saps resources, and US citizens are dying in the hundreds of thousands from fentanyl and other drug overdoses. The upshot of the argument — regardless of what one thinks of the blanket blaming of migrants (unwise, at best, in my view) — is that US citizens are not seeing sufficient return on investment from the extensive federal budget.
One might buy this argument on some level, as well as share a frustration with the “deep state”, as much as the phraseology can come across as propaganda. On this score, I’d encourage everyone to read Dans’s article because it sheds some light on why Trump supporters are prepared to withstand the barrage of criticism levelled at his administration by the media. Unfortunately, in a polarised world, the criticism is taken as inherent grounds for vindication by diehard supporters.
Putting that aside for a second, it is important to grasp that the architects of Project 2025 see Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal as the root of the current problems and Trump is the expedient vehicle through which to dismantle the effects of that deal.
In the minds of Dans and his colleagues, the end of the old New Deal has been a bureaucratic state at odds with the primary arms of a democratic government. There is also criticism levelled at the “revolving door” relationship between politics and “experts”. From a governance perspective, this point should indeed be heeded — any examination of the 2008 sub-prime crisis does reveal extensive conflicts of interest. The fact that banks became too big to fail is something that analysts on both the right and the left have lamented.
As much as one might sympathise with conservative frustrations at the trajectory of the US since the New Deal, this should not result in an ethic of the ends justifying the means. What seems to have transpired is a wilful overlooking of Trump’s deficiencies for the sake of a myopic triumphalism that leftist, preachy elites and bureaucrats are finally being put in their place. An “activist judiciary” imposing its political views on the executive is being beaten back.
We need to examine the assumptions behind Trump’s defenders more deeply, though. Dans literally tells us that his bet is “on Trump the builder” to rebuild an “America First Skyline”. But Trump does not appear to the outside world at all like a builder. His decisions have appeared erratic at best, ill-informed and potentially self-enriching at worst, literally at the expense of the very majority he claims to represent.
Take aid cuts and tariff wars as just two examples. Turning off the aid taps over time has much merit, so long as it is accompanied by a long-term plan and clear communication with all stakeholders. Trump did not do that; he simply cut overnight. This is not the way to win friends and influence people. Much of that aid money went towards irreplaceable research that makes human existence demonstrably better across the world.
Similarly, tariff wars are no way to re-industrialise the US or tackle its debt problem. In geopolitical terms, it simply alienates allies and reinforces hard lines among perceived enemies. Moreover, tariff wars are inflationary for US consumers, the very people who voted for Trump at least partially in response to the difficulties of relatively low wage growth versus cost-of-living increases.
Tackling bureaucratic and judiciary overreach is clearly important for defending democracy. However, it seems easy for a populist like Trump to ride on the coattails of true democratic sentiment to build a kleptocracy, where policy favours the highest bidder. This is likely to be far more damaging to democracy in the end than the “deep state”, though both are dangers that an informed citizenry should rail against. In the process, they could cut through the deep polarisation that has come to characterise the US and global landscape.
Ross Harvey is the chief research officer at Good Governance Africa’s Southern Africa regional office.