How Trump Will Make America Second Rate
February 26, 2025
by William P. Meyers

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Accelerating America's Decline with Stupid Actions

Is it possible to predict the rise and fall of nations? In retrospect it may seem so. The Roman Empire rose because of its stoic, practical culture. But before the wars with Carthage, could anyone at the time predict (objectively, not just promoting their team) the winner? I doubt it. When Spain, France, China and even little Netherlands were more powerful, who would have predicted that the British Empire would have come to be dominant over half the world by 1900? Who could have predicted that the rustic Mongols would rule much of Eurasia, and then collapse almost as quickly as they had conquered?

And anyone who thinks that in 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, it was possible to believe that the U.S. would, in three decades, replace the British Empire as the world's main power, is delusional.

There are many aspects to President Donald Trump's campaign to Make America Great Again. There is certainly an isolationist component to it, an unwillingness to help our (former) allies abroad. But clearly he and his American Nationalist supporters want the United States to be the greatest nation in the world, and that means dominating it.

Based on my understanding of this rather complex world, and on observing Trump and friends since about 2016, but with emphasis on his first few weeks in office: I believe Trump's policies are very likely to make America a clearly second-rate nation.

Whether that is true depends on a multitude of variables. Here I will describe a few that appear to be the most important. First, there is the length of time President Trump has for action. The longer Trump has power, the more certain America will be second rate. A safe bet would be until his current term ends in January 2029. However, several events could shorten his span of action. Democrats could pick up seats in the House of Representatives next year. While Trump would still be President, and capable of further harming the nation, he would not have the free hand he has now. There is some small chance, too, that a few Republicans in the House or Senate will revolt, even before the next election, and so be able to tamp down on the madness. It is also possible that Donald Trump will refuse to give up the Presidency, by either not holding elections at all, or by rigging them, or by declaring that the Twenty Second (XXII) Amendment to the Constitution does not apply to him. Whichever scenario play out, the longer Trump has power, the quicker the U.S. decline will be.

Donald Trump has never been a clear thinker about business or economics. He helped manage his father's real estate rental business and eventually inherited it. He has made some decisions outside that sphere that worked out, and many that did not. He played a smart executive on a long-running TV show, but that is not the same as being a smart executive. But whatever his past experience, he has formed the wrong conclusions about how to improve the American economy. I believe he sincerely wants to improve the American economy, but his ego and lack of understanding of macroeconomics and complex global systems combine to spell a coming disaster for most Americans and our economy.

We have a complex system that needs constant repairs to keep the economy moving. This includes roads, trains, ocean shipping, and telecommunications. Unfortunately many of these systems were built out long enough ago that they are now fragile and prone to breakage. Much of the repair work is done with funding from the government (local, state, or national). Removing funding, as Trump has done, will lead to breakdowns, which will lead to economic hits, which could lead to general economic decline.

When the future is uncertain it is difficult to make good decisions. This is true in business. Trump has added a great deal of uncertainty to the economy. He says he will not do something, but then he does it anyway, or vice versa.

Tariffs are not a magical fix to anything, but for some reason the frontal-lobe decision making area of Trump's brain has decided they are. Tariffs are typically used to generate income for a national government and to protect a nation's economy from foreign competition. Once a tariff is set, manufacturers and merchants can make rational decisions. But Trump tariffs are on-again, off-again, ways to make deals among his business friends. They are influenced more by who he sees as his enemies (China, Asians, liberal democracies) than by any benefit they could have for the American economy. Generally they drive up the price of imported goods without resulting in more production in the U.S. So they fuel inflation, which forces the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates high, which makes borrowing for anything, from a bar tab to a first house to production machinery for a new factory, too expensive for most players.

Tax cuts for the rich are the stupidest idea in the Trump playbook, though admittedly they were also supported by the pre-Trump Republican Party. Not all rich people are alike. Some are good stewards of capital, most are not. Wall Street mostly thinks short term, so capital is deployed that way, and long-term opportunities are missed. Compare China. True, they also are human, they do no always make the best choices. But they went from an economic backwater to the main U.S. rival in the past 30 years. They were better at allocating capital. The details matter.

Then there is the climate. True, global warming caused by greenhouse gas buildup affects all nations. So far the worst hit nations have typically been underdeveloped, so that droughts, heat waves, and storms have killed people and had economic impacts that have made recovery difficult. Because of the complexity of the U.S. economy, it is starting to take big hits, and these seem likely to grow exponentially until the entire nation becomes a disaster area. Hurricanes, tornadoes, derechos, droughts, and fires may fluctuate from year to year and region to region, but they are on a sharp upward curve. How they interact with the economy is difficult to predict, but we have already seen one nightmare come true: higher rates for property insurance. If the insurance industry collapses, then the housing and commercial property markets cannot be far behind, and the banks will collapse like dominoes. Would someone please show Donald his latest insurance bill from Mar-a-Lago?

Finally, we have the culture wars. Culture is important. American culture has grown increasingly defective since about 1950. Clearly that is not entirely Trump's fault, but his prescriptions for improvement are mostly wrong. We have developed a paycheck-to-paycheck culture. People need to be rewarded more for saving regularly from their paychecks. Transferring money from the poor and working people to the rich does the opposite. America became an industrial nation because rationality was embraced over religious mumbo-jumbo. Trump's promotion of Christian nationalism is likely to have the same effect that the Emperor Constantine's embrace of Christianity had on the Roman empire: collapse [See Parallel Lives: Donald Trump and Constantine the Great] While there are other Trump cultural mistakes, likely the most important negative is his promotion of ass-kissing and class snobbery.

So what will the fall look like? Not like a Hollywood apocalypse movie, where one week everything is fine and 15 minutes in most people are dead.

We are in a global, Slow Motion Apocalypse. Other nations will have their own problems, but will be ready to step in if the U.S. falters. It could be Russia or China, or India or England. Keep in mind that three third-rate (at the time) nations, Spain, England, and Netherlands, emerged from the pack starting around 1500 and became world powers. A rational futurist at the time would have been more likely to pick the Turks, the Mughal Empire in India, or China as possible dominators of the globe. Some nation may have a competitive advantage we don't understand yet.

President Trump's mental condition has concerned me for some time, as did Biden's. Too many politicians love power so much they won't let go of it before dying, as Senator Feinstein illustrated. How will Trump react if his actions cause an economic downturn? Of course he will blame it on others. He might change course on some of his worst decisions; he might double down. I suspect China will be fine, whatever their own troubles. Former U.S. allies, who already feel they have been stabbed in the back, might wait for the U.S. to select a successor to Trump, or they might set out to expand their own national powers. Alliances might shift dramatically. What if Japan and China team up? Or Saudi Arabia and one of the European powers?

In any case I don't see how America can keep up its pretensions given its national debt, the interest on the national debt, and a military designed to fight the last war. Too much of our economy consists of luxury services for the rich (the top 20%, in this case). That is pretty much the same type of economy the Roman Empire had in 306 A.D. when Constantine the Great institutionalized the unworkable.