Don Trump

This editorial by José Blanco appeared in the July 15, 2024 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier leftist daily newspaper.

William Chaloupka published Everybody Knows: Cynicism in America (1999), a work indebted to Peter Sloterdijk’s lengthy essays on cynicism. According to Chaloupka, American society has become a society of disbelievers, hypocrites, and cynics. It may be an exaggeration to say that all society has acquired such repulsive attributes. Regarding cynicism in particular, Chaloupka defines it as “a hypocritical, reactionary, and aggressive attitude”; in any case, Donald Trump is a typical product of that society.

Trump is a poor performer, playing the sly one, while acting like Don Vito Corleone, who for Mario Puzo embodied the American Dream impeccably. With a sardonic, tight-lipped chuckle, Don Trump imposes “reciprocal” tariffs, even though they are vile extortions. “I’m imposing a 30 percent tariff on you because you treat the US so badly; if you respond in kind, I’ll impose another reciprocal tariff on you.” Although this isn’t “Mexico,” but rather private citizens, Mexicans and Americans, who—without any coordination or agreement between them—sell, that is, what American citizens buy. “Let them come and produce here,” Don Trumpeone loudly demands; and since it’s surely just enchiladas, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow they’ll have set up factories there, producing… much more expensively. Cynicism, extortion, stupidity, and illegality, unchecked.

The current brutality will end, and the US will recognize migrants are as necessary as oxygen; but they will be maintained as working arms and producing hands, not as human beings and citizens.

At one point, Don Trump reproached Europe for not buying Chevrolet cars. Europe should have bought them, even if the product is of inferior quality to its own cars. But it persists; the cynical attitude is strengthened because “I’m the biggest bastard in the neighborhood; I have greater economic and military power, I can extort them and make them bend” to his arbitrary madness. Europe did bow to extortion, by canceling taxes on the digital operations of American tech giants like Apple and Meta. [Editor’s note: Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney also canceled an incoming digital services tax after Trump expressed his dislike.] But not everyone is willing to comply: Brazil is a prime example.

In the letter he sent to the President of Mexico, Don Trump says he imposed his abusive and arbitrary tariffs also because of “Mexico’s inability to stop the cartels, made up of the most despicable people ever to walk the Earth, from flooding our country” with fentanyl. The cynical show-business is in front of us: it’s the Trump administration that is incapable of monitoring and protecting its own border and its own territory; incapable of apprehending the American and Mexican drug traffickers operating there. Through no fault of its own, Trump’s ineptitude must be remedied by Mexico, with an economy 16 times smaller than that of the United States.

Anything can happen these years. The Nobel Peace Prize has become a tragic caricature: it has been awarded to four American presidents. Don Trump also wants it, while maintaining his proxy war against Russia, bombing Iran, and supporting the devastating extermination of Palestine by the master genocidaire, Netanyahu, who has already nominated him for the coveted prize: grotesque? That’s too weak a word. And, of course, the Norwegian Committee can give in and grant it.

For Mexico, American society and its government are disastrous. Whether there is an agreement now or not, we don’t have to compromise with them forever. Even less so if, as is the case, many of the US’s furious gestures are an expression of its ongoing demise as a dominant power. The “exorbitant privilege” of the dollar, as Valéry Giscard d’Estaing once called it, is nearing its end. Meanwhile, the future of the world is in full swing. There should be no doubt about it. It’s called BRICS, it’s called China, it’s called the multipolar world.

The gringo government is once again disgracefully mistreating migrants. Our poverty, our history, our dependence deny all Mexicans a decent place to live; we must correct this vile iniquity here. Our millions of migrants are there. The current brutality will end, and the US will recognize that migrants are as necessary as oxygen; but they will be maintained as working arms and producing hands, not as human beings and citizens. American racism will not end; it is part of the DNA of the gringo whites. We cannot pretend to turn a blind eye to such misfortune; they are part of our future.

It’s time to make a national decision. It’s time to begin charting a decisive and resolute path; a path built on intelligence and knowledge. Let all relevant areas of the State study the problem and speak out; let knowledgeable academics do so; let business leaders and workers’ organizations weigh in. The PRI-PAN party has always been in the position of a servant of the Americans; it will remain the same. 

The G-7’s share of global GDP, measured by purchasing power parity (PPP), has declined over time. It stood at 32.6 percent in 2015. By 2025, it will account for around 29 percent. The BRICS’ share of global GDP, measured by PPP, could rise to 41 percent by 2025. It is growing at a significantly faster pace than the ailing G-7 economy.