TGIF Digressions

Trump II is a norm violating Presidency. But he is enabled to do so because the Legislative Branch is ceding power to it. And the underlying reason for that is that Trump has succeeded in exercising control over his party in a manner more familiar from European and South American politics (than politics Stateside).

This control is primarily rooted in Trump’s rather decisive victory in the Republican primary back in 2024, and his subsequent Presidential win. Of course, this control is not uniquely rooted in the will of the voters. Through his unpredictability and his willingness to intimidate political opponents and would-be-opponents as would-be-enemies, he also keeps his intra-party critics (if any) on the backfoot.

Qua Executive, the Presidency is exercising control over events in four distinct ways: first, by using its wide authority over the flow of people and goods across the border, it has successfully made border control an instrument of control over resident aliens, asylum seekers, foreign students, and green-card holders that reside Stateside. The manner in which this is policed with masked agents that whisk people off the streets in darkened minivans is effectively terror-inducing. The budget for the Department of Homeland Security is going up by 2/3rds next year, so controlling other people will be a source of job growth and technology spending. Trump’s executive orders have also undermined the civil rights and civil visibility of trans citizens not the least in the armed services.

The control over tariffs is an attempt to dominate not just foreign nations, but also some of the largest corporations who are invited to please the President’s wishes if they want to gain carve-outs. (I write this while looking obliquely at a headline about Trump’s latest tariff directed at Apple Corp.)

Second, the Presidency is effectively closing down and downsizing dramatically a whole number of departments and agencies; and laying off public servants even in the ones that remain. Many of the cuts have targeted the imperial US soft power abroad, so it is a bit surprising these have not been welcomed by leftist critics of the US. Just this week the Supreme Court, handed Trump the authority to fire the heads of at least some independent agencies. Whatever the many intended and unintended effects of all these changes and cuts are, it makes it much more difficult for bureaucrats to block Trump’s policies.

Third, the Presidency is massively cutting science and health research funding inside the government and in universities. It has done so in the most egregious fashion possible by unilaterally violating existing contracts. Universities and medical research will never be the same again.

Fourth, the legal resources of the Executive branch are used to extract cooperation from would be political critics (not the least in media and law) and to extract resources from them. Since without effective Congressional oversight, the resources of the Executive branch are very high few can afford to fight it for any length at a time without effective resource pooling.

Concentrating power in the Presidency, even when the motives are pure, is not risk-free. Tariffs and tax-cuts are inflationary. And 10 year US yields are the highest they have been since the Great Financial Recession (much higher than in the pre-covid period.) The era of free money is over. That’s not all bad because high interest rates will impose a new business model on Silicon Valley; pensioners can live on a fixed income again, etc. The inevitable slower growth will counteract some of the bad environmental consequences of Trump’s assault on renewables. Slower growth also ought to allow the opposition to develop cleavages in Trump’s coalition (in the trade dependent areas of the Midwest, Sunbelt, and Plains states, especially).

More subtly, the greater risks will increasingly be unforeseen. By attacking the technocratic and bureaucratic elements in the executive branch, and by undermining the independence of many agencies, the Presidency and the people he leads are not protected against egregious and costly policy blunders.

I am not without admiration for the repoliticization of the Executive branch. However, the Achilles heel of the unitary executive theory is its own success. What the Executive gains in unitary purpose and effectiveness by breaking the political and bureaucratic logjams of the last few decades, it loses in the capacity to foresee obstacles to its aims. The American polity and economy is very complex with public and private infrastructure that presupposes incredible fine-grained, technical expertise. It’s the kind of expertise that is unavailable to (Fox) journalists, lawyers, political operators, and even wealthy oligarchs from the private sector. The unitary executive theory presupposes that the executive branch is capable of generating a unified cockpit with the help of AI in the White House that can shape all branches from the top. This is a recipe for disasters, even if one grants that some of the departmental closures imply some simplification of public administration.

For example, by undermining the expertise that maintains the machinery of government, the government’s ability to witness truth in many areas is being fatally undercut. For example, Trump is retreating from funding thee National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Integrated Ocean Observing System. Reliable information these produce is not just a public good that makes private and public activity (and forecasting) possible, it also leaves whole communities at the risk of facing unknown unknowns (with an understaffed Federal Emergency Management Agency).

So much for set up.

I close with four observations (that ignore foreign policy).

First, it is unquestionable that the shift of power to the Executive branch is potentially lucrative to connected insiders. Relative to (say) Scandinavian countries during the last few decades, the US has always been somewhat tolerant of public corruption; but there is no attempt to maintain accountability anymore. More subtly, the undermining of the creditworthiness of the US (and the inflationary policies accompanying them) is making Crypto attractive. This may well be a deliberate policy aim.

Second, because the Congressional majority is allowing the Executive branch to ignore (and violate) existing Congressional mandates it is very hard to say what the effect will be on long term legislative policy. But a whole range of past grand bargains or bipartisan projects that allowed legislation to pass or agencies to exist have been de facto unraveled. While intra-party control seems firm now, I actually suspect it will make it much more difficult to maintain it over time. For, when it comes to impoundment, the post-Nixon reforms are now dead. Either way, as I have said before, I can easily imagine Trump creating the blueprint for a more activist Presidency in general.

Third, let’s stipulate, for the sake of argument (on behalf of Bonapartism), that the American President is the one elected official that can claim to represent the will of the American people. Greater executive control also means greater unpredictability (as any student of monarchy will tell you). This unpredictability may well accurately reflect the fickleness and opinions of the electorate. But unpredictability generates uncertainty and lowers trust; it also is itself fear-inducing. This may well be a deliberate policy aim because fear is profitable to some and shapes a political environment that rewards Mercantile policies (even if these produce stagflation).

Fourth, Trump has been exceedingly lucky in his political opponents. But as he ages that will not remain so.