Miguel Afonso Caetano<p>"Far from being “good on the economy,” there’s a lot of evidence that Trump is basically incapable of understanding abstract entities like “the market” or “the economy.” His entire notion of the world comes down to personal relationships and he personalizes every concept and event. If the market goes down, someone is trying to screw you, personally. If it goes up, and you benefit, it’s because you’re smart. Many commentators are pointing out that he’s establishing something like a patrimonial or personalist regime, which replaces the impersonal rationality of bureaucracy with a network of personal ties and loyalty.</p><p>His entire business is based on the notion that his touch is what counts: his brand, and, before that, his businesses worked through what I’ve called “personal arbitrage,” basically leveraging the advantages of an entrepreneurial small businessman against large, impersonal institutions like big banks, financial markets, or the state, which have consistently mispriced the value of his assets. It’s easy to understand why he’d come to the conclusion he’s got some special sauce: if you’ve been counted out so many times and then come back, you might start to think you have some kind of magic power to pull things off, too. He and many of his followers believe he can resolve all contradictions and problems through the sheer fact of his charisma, which, not for nothing, sounds like what a demented dictator and his acolytes believe."</p><p><a href="https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-juggler" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">unpopularfront.news/p/the-jugg</span><span class="invisible">ler</span></a></p><p><a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/USA" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>USA</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Trump" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Trump</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Tariffs" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tariffs</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/TradeWar" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>TradeWar</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Nepotism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Nepotism</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Capitalism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Capitalism</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Markets" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Markets</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Corruption" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Corruption</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Cronysm" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Cronysm</span></a></p>