Alternative Visions - Trump in Davos: Is Global Inter-Capitalist Competition About to Intensify? -01.26.18

While ‘Davos Men’ at the World Economic Forum gathering celebrate a short term resurgence in global economic growth, more serious longer-run problems in the global economy remain and appear to be growing. Dr. Rasmus discusses how global trade growth in relation to GDP has been slowing dramatically, how global income and wealth inequality is accelerating (fueling populism and economic nationalism), debt levels are rising even faster everywhere (for households, business, and governments), productivity and wage incomes are stagnating (except for a small 5% top layer), and currency and trade wars are on the verge of erupting, as the US economic elite wing behind Trump continue to signal their intent to rearrange the global profits pie distribution once again more favorably to the US.  Trump’s ‘America First’, and recent salvos of tariffs and treaty renegotiations, and US Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin’s, declaration this past week of a US ‘low dollar’ policy have riled the global capitalist community at Davos. Rasmus argues the recent Trump tax act—which delivers more than $2 trillion in subsidization to US multinational corporations (and more than $4 trillion tax subsidy to US businesses and investors in general) should be understood as part of this global offensive by US business to garner more of the US and global economic pie for itself—at the expense of global competitors and the US middle class.