(MENAFN- Asia Times)
“God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.” - Otto von Bismarck
Happy Thanksgiving, folks! A friend asked me to write an optimistic post about the best-case scenario for the upcoming trump presidency. So here is that post.
Regular Noahpinion readers will know that I'm not very excited about a second Trump term . I don't think the next four years are going to be hell on Earth or that they'll lead to the collapse of the nation, but I do think Trump is probably going to degrade our institutions, foment chaos, appease our enemies overseas and appoint a lot of very unqualified people.
But, I also do have to admit that Trump's first term turned out much better than I expected! Trump did foment social and political chaos, but consider the following:
The economy demonstrated strong growth, with workers at the bottom of the distribution reaping especially large wage gains .
Thanks to Trump's rhetoric, the US belatedly woke up to the various threats posed by China, and realized that unilateral free trade has many drawbacks.
Trump did not lock Hillary Clinton up, or persecute his political enemies in general.
Trump did great on Covid relief spending , carrying American households through the pandemic and propelling a rapid economic recovery after the pandemic.
Trump's Operation Warp Speed was the best Covid vaccine development effort in the world , creating new and highly effective vaccines in a very short period of time, and saving a very large number of lives.
Very few US government institutions suffered long-lasting damage as a result of Trump.
That's not the best-case scenario for how Trump's first term could have turned out, but it's very far from the worst. All in all, if you told me in November 2016 that this is how Trump's term would go, I would have breathed a sigh of relief (well, except for learning that we were going to have a giant pandemic, but that was hardly Trump's fault).
So best-case scenarios are not pie-in-the-sky magical thinking. The second Trump presidency hasn't been a disaster yet, and there's a chance it won't be one. Here are ten pieces of what I see as the most optimistic plausible scenario.
The economy continues to do well
There's no evidence that economic expansions“die of old age.” Other than the brief weird interruption of Covid in 2020, the US economy has been in perpetual expansion for the last 12 years or more. There's a decent chance this will continue.
The biggest threat to any economic expansion - a financial crisis - just doesn't seem to be in the offing. There has been no big buildup of household debt in the US financial system. The rate hikes of 2022-24 caused no more than a few modestly sized bank failures that were cleaned up quickly and easily.
That means the main threat to the economy is inflation. People
really hate inflation
for its own sake, and also if it rises too much, the Fed could have to raise rates to levels that would choke off the economic expansion. But although inflation did
tick up a bit
this month, overall inflation expectations remain low and stable:
In the best-case scenario, Trump does nothing to upset this apple cart. He will raise tariffs, but much of the effect could be cancelled out by changes in exchange rates .
His threats to curb or end Fed independence - forcing interest rates lower, which would be very inflationary - could turn out to be just a bluff. And Trump's advisors, like Elon Musk, could prevail upon him to cut deficits , removing another inflationary pressure.
In this scenario, inflation will remain low all on its own, and the economic expansion will likely continue uninterrupted, bringing further wage gains for Americans across the economic spectrum.
Unrest continues to fall
Unrest was the worst thing about Trump's first term, but there are some signs that this history won't repeat itself in the second. Trump's victory in 2024 hasn't been followed so far by any giant outpouring of anger in the streets, as happened in 2016. Nor have rightists triumphantly marched through the streets as they did in Charlottesville in 2017.
In general, the left-right street battles that characterized Trump's first term have not reappeared. Two people did try to assassinate Trump during his campaign, but these were lone-wolf individuals without a clear political ideology. There has been no recent outbreak of hate crimes, mass shootings, or stochastic terrorism, as there was in 2016-17.
It's possible that America has simply become exhausted with the constant talk of civil war, coups, and so on. The Palestine protesters are still marching, but they're small in number and the country has tuned them out .
Meanwhile, anger over racism, sexism, etc. seems to be ebbing from newspapers, TV, the internet, and scientific papers. And on the right, the big shift in nonwhite voters toward the Republicans over the past two election cycles may have lessened fears of“replacement”. In other words, the fundamental drivers of the unrest of 2014-2021 may be ebbing fast.
Trump might not do much to revive unrest. He will do mass deportations, but Hispanic voters know this and shifted strongly toward Trump anyway - so it might not make any significant segment of the American electorate very mad. Anger over“migrants” in blue cities may cause even many progressives to turn the other way as Trump gives a bunch of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants the boot.
Trump's rhetoric will continue to be fiery and chaotic, but Americans may simply have gotten used to tuning it out. Users are leaving X , the most divisive and shouty social media platform, and it's unlikely that alternatives like Bluesky will replace it.
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