A Simple Way To Look At Trump's Complex Agenda

Trump wants to extract tributes from the rest of the world. But his policies could end up diminishing America's prominence, making the respect he seeks harder to come by

- SATYAJIT DAS

CCAM's razor, a problem-solving principle, suggests that given the choice between multiple explanations, the simpler, obvious one is to be preferred. Applying this approach, US President Donald Trump's agenda does not require complex economic or political theorising. They involve three simple objectives.

The first is power. The president wants to increase his own authority, forcing others to supplicate themselves. The reciprocal tariffs require countries to make "phenomenal offers" to buy favourable treatment. NATO chief Mark Rutte's craven flattery, including allegedly referring to Trump as "daddy," is the behaviour expected.

The second objective flows from the president's association of intelligence with wealth—the attitude summed up by the line, 'If you're so smart, how come you're not rich.' Many of his policies are designed to enrich the president and his funders. Examples include the first family's own investments and trading, BlackRock's pending acquisition of two Panamanian ports and the administration-aligned firms' interest in TikTok's US business. The parallel is 1990s' Russia, where a small group of oligarchs became wealthy by looting state assets as the Soviet empire disintegrated.

The third involves Thomas Carlyle's 'great man of history' theory. Trump sees himself as an extraordinary leader, possessing superior intellect and heroic courage, whose manifest destiny is to change and rule over America and the world. This is allied to nostalgia and a worldview firmly rooted in the 1980s.