Trump madness-Bat crazy or smart? An analysis
Trump has the world in a spin! What's he really up to? See if this makes some sense!
I’m going to do something I shouldn’t do. I’m going to add a few words to the billions of words that have and are being written about second time around US President Donald Trump. And no doubt I’ll be totally wrong in my analysis and comments. So please accept that fact up front. This is just my attempt at analysis.
In this article I’m interested in how Trump operates and not necessarily whether what he does is good or bad or whether he’s a nice person or horrid. I’m interested in his techniques at deal making. Note. I haven’t read his book The Art of the Deal so I’m not doing a book review but applying my own observations.
My thesis is that no-one can really know what Trump seeks to achieve until he has achieved it! Beware of Trump’s mis-signalling! And, we can only really understand Trump by looking backwards at his actions.
Let me explain with some simple examples to start.
US Unions and labour law
In the US ‘pro-business’ industrial relations consultancy industry, there was huge hair pulling over Trump’s February 2025 appointment of the head of the US federal Department of Labour (DOL). The DOL oversees and administers the major laws governing US labour issues. Instead of appointing a pro-business person Trump appointed Chavez-DeRemer, a former Congresswomen known for her support for union-friendly legislation. Question. Is Trump a secret pro-union guy?
But wait. Think about this. Trumps sacking of thousands of US federal employees is going to cause a huge loss of income for the US union movement and the Democrats. US unions are key funders of the Democratic Party. But there’s more. Trump has signed an order cancelling all industrial relations agreements between unions and most federal government departments. And he has banned future negotiations with unions. This means that federal employees have no reason to join a union because these unions are now irrelevant to employees’ jobs. This possibly could induce a near collapse of these public sector unions through a crashing of their revenue.
In doing these two moves Trump has cut to the heart of his political enemy’s (The Democratic Party) funding base. His moves will possibly strip millions of dollars of steady, base income from the Democratic Party.
The publicity around the downsizing of the US federal workforce has focused on saving money by pulling back on US government spending. The criticism has been about the harm done by reducing government services. But there’s another outcome, that is the attack against the Democratic Party income. Did Trump consciously have this an agenda? Who knows?
This is a simple example of how easy it is to misread what Trump is doing. He gave a wrong signal on the DOL appointment. But then demonstrated a different agenda with his subsequent moves. And it was generally not possible to understand the ‘different agenda’ until after it had been achieved.
Lawyers
Take another example. Trump has moved, vindictively many would say, against lawyers, both in and outside of government who conducted litigation against Trump over the last four years or so. He’s revoked lawyers’ security clearances and threatened termination of contracts. This ‘vindictiveness’ has caused many Trump haters to go into emotional overdrive about the evilness of the man because Trump is destroying American rule of law they say.
Now one thing we can observe about Trump is that he loves his enemies being emotionally enraged. Their rage gives Trump free publicity for his agenda, whatever that might be!
But then look at this. Trump has now leant on some of the biggest law firms in the USA to get them to undertake significant pro-bono work on Trump approved causes. First, this neuters the pro-bono work many of these firms have done on woke causes to date. But more, Trump has sent a signal to legal firms that if he doesn’t like what they do they’ll be denied access to government business.
This is a further attack against the funding base of Trump’s main political enemy The Democrats.
Along with unions the Democratic Party’s other big funding source has and is trial lawyers. The biggest profit for big legal firms usually comes from a steady stream of well-paying government work. If government work stops the flow of money to the Democratic Party is also likely to stop. So, the squeeze is on US law firms. Don’t run woke cases and don’t fund the Democratic Party is the message. And it’s amazing how quickly the legal firms caved to the Trump strategy.
In summary, there’s been a whole lot of focus on Trump being vindictive to lawyers and law firms who opposed him in the past. This has almost been a distraction to what Trump is doing, that is he’s attacking the Democratic Party funding base. Was this Trumps conscious agenda? Who knows because Trump never seemed to talk about this as an agenda item. Again, we ‘discover’ Trump’s agenda after he has achieved it. And as is often the case there are several interwoven agenda’s all operating at once. This makes for confusion in understanding Trump’s game play.
Now for more complex examples
Putin, Ukraine Oil and the Middle East
Trump’s treatment of Ukraine and Ukrainian President Zelensky has been met with horror in many quarters. That is that Trump is seemingly prepared to let Russian President Putin overrun Ukraine, subjugate the Ukrainian people and put Putin’s troops on the doorstep of central Europe. At least that’s been a lot of the commentary around Trumps aggressive approach to Ukraine.
Yes, Trump has been damn obvious that he wants Europe to step up their military spending to be able to counter any Putin threats on their own. That Trump agenda has been clearly stated. But Trump is also accused of being best buddies with Putin seemingly ‘proof’ of how evil is Trump.
But look at this. In January this year Trump was pressing OPEC to slash oil prices so as to squeeze Putin’s oil revenue to make it harder for Putin to conduct war. That’s surely a strange way to be ‘friends’ with Putin! And where is Trump going on his first overseas visit in his second term? It’s Saudia Arabia! planned to occur in May. I wonder if he’ll be talking oil prices with the Saudis.
So, what’s Trump doing? Is he a friend of Putin or Putin’s nightmare? What is Trump end game? Is Trump willing to allow Putin to defeat Ukraine or is he looking to contain Putin? Who knows? There are so many mis-signals coming out from the Whitehouse on Ukraine that it’s difficult to understand Trumps game plan. There’s huge speculation on what the game might be, but no-one really knows. Is it that Trump doesn’t know what he wants to achieve and he’s an idiot? Or does Trump have a plan that that will be obvious once he’s achieved his objective?
Another complex example.
Tarriff chaos -world order meltdown
Trump initiated his tariff chaos game with hits against Canada and Mexico in early February 2025. His justification at the time was to put pressure on the two countries to stop fentanyl entering the USA. That had the commentariat wildly discussing fentanyl. But why would Trump want to be so nasty to long time US friends and allies and break existing agreements?
Then just two months later on ‘Liberation Day’ (2 April) Trump imposed tariffs across the globe on friend and foe alike. World stock markets crashed triggered by predictions and expectations of a global recession. Why would Trump deliberately set out to ‘destroy’ the global and US economy? Surely the man is an unhinged, ego driven maniac. Then within a few days he ‘paused’ most of the global tariffs except on China. Trump said that everyone was ‘getting yippie’ and that some 75 countries are now seeking talks on trade relations with the USA. However, critics would say that Trumps ‘on and off’ process shows that he mis-read the stock market, the economy, Wall Street and politics and that he’s a fool.
But what is Trump actually up to with his tariff war?
In trying to find some calm explanation I came across this YouTube explanation by economic researcher Joeri Shawford. What I liked about this 23 min presentation is that Joeri shows excerpts of direct speeches by Trump and key economic advisers. These excerpts and related documents state clearly that Trump is intentionally upending the current global trading system. That is, that Trump is dumping what was put in place in 1944 under the Bretton Woods system and Regan and Thatcher in the 1980s with the neo-liberal order.
Joeri’s YouTube analysis reasons that Trump is creating tariff chaos to create negotiating positions. He’s using reciprocal tariffs to force nations exporting to the USA to drop their restrictions on the USA exporting to them. China is the primary target of this. The ‘negotiating strategy’ is now (in mid-April) pretty much accepted as Trump’s tariff negotiating game. But what’s Trump’s end game?
Joeri’s reasons that the end game is a new global currency accord to weaken the US dollar (which is currently dropping) while keeping it as the reserve currency. And get this! The intent is hold a global conference at Mar-a-Lago! Yes, the new world economic order will be the Mar-a-Lago order. Beautiful!
Well, if this analysis is accurate is Trumps agenda ‘wacky’ and is Trump a delusional fool? Is Trump inducing economic war with China in which the USA will lose? And will such Trump’s behaviour cause a US-China military conflict?
The reality is that we don’t know any answers to anything. Trumps agenda could be as described or not! It’s confusing. I contend that we won’t really know the outcome until Trump achieves his outcome. And to counter those who say that Trump is a mad idiot who doesn’t know where he is going, I argue that he has clear objectives. I’ll explain further below. But remember, I’m not putting a view on whether Trumps agendas are good or bad or even what those agendas are!
What’s Trump game plan?
My ‘take’ on reading Trump’s behaviour starts with remembering that he is a builder and property developer. In this he is both a wrecker and a builder. That is, he wrecks an existing structure to build something else in its place. Plus, he has a long history of dealing with government bureaucrats to get what he wants.
In building in New York in particular Trump has a long history of driving people mad and creating opposition to his plans. He’s either hated, seen as corrupt and evil, or tolerated and sometimes admired. What he does is create new ‘realities’ both in buildings and in the way things are done.
He’s also extremely flexible. The technique is one where he has an obsessive eye on what he wants to achieve. (eg) a new hotel. But the way he gets there is not necessarily direct. He’ll focus on a building site he wants and start negotiations. He’ll argue over detail and will give mis-signals about whether he really wants a particular site or not. He’ll start looking at other sites. He’ll seem to be close to a deal but then walk away or seem to walk away. And he is prepared to walk away from one deal if another deal pops up.
The mindset is like this and very typical of many entrepreneurs. They have a focus and push in a direction. They upset the status quo and people who are wedded to the status quo. They are obsessive about what they want. But they are totally flexible, within limits. If they need to back off and go in another direction they will and couldn’t care less what people think or say about their ‘backing off’.
The thing is that they often come back to their agenda in a different and often unexpected way. The ‘art’ if there is an art, is to be in control of the agenda, to keep everyone guessing, to shift and move, be prepared to take what appear to be negative ‘hits’, re-evaluate and use the negative to move to the next step. This is very Sun Tzu, the Chines ‘Art of War’ philosophy. Move from your defeats to your victories!
And overriding this approach is a generalised ‘experience’ about how things happen. Often when you obsessively push in a particular direction opportunity comes at you from an unexpected direction. This is a ‘rule’ that applies in many areas of life. Someone may be looking for love and spends a lot of time on internet dating sites. But then they may go to a social event, a football match, a church gathering or a work setting and seemingly by accident ‘find’ their love match. It’s similar in business. Often opportunities come from a different direction than expected. Business entrepreneurs learn to recognise this and respond accordingly to grab unexpected opportunity.
Another aspect of successful property developers is that they build loyal teams. The loyalty comes from the fact that the developer keeps delivering ‘success’ to the team, enabling them to build their own business and income. Trump is experienced at creating good ‘working’ relationships with his construction workers and subcontractors. If he hadn’t there’s no way he’d have been successful as a builder.
But there’s a story I love about Trump. You might be part of his ‘team’ but be ready for surprises!
The 1980’s re-development of New York’s Central Park’s ice-skating rink by the city was a mess, massively over budget and late. Trump stepped in and offered to do the redevelopment at no cost to the city. Trump pulled in all his subcontractors (plumbers, carpenters, concreters etc) and everyone got to work. It was finished fast. But the story goes that when the subcontractors came to Trump for payment his response was ‘you make enough money out of me, this one is for New York’ and he didn’t pay them.
What does this tell us about Trump? One thing is that you can be never sure of what the deal is. He’s sneaky. You may have to take a ‘loss’ to keep doing business for a longer-term gain. And you don’t necessarily know what Trump’s ‘game’ is and only discover it after Trump has achieved his objective. And be careful of Trump’s signalling. He’ll mis-signal to put you off track.
My thesis is that Trump is applying these techniques and strategies of an entrepreneurial property developer to politics and now geopolitics. This time the ‘game’ is massive. It’s foolish to think that Trump is a fool. Yes, he might frequently behave as the circus clown. But Trump keeps demonstrating that he’s the circus ring master.
Champion as usual, Ken !!
BRICS aims to destroy the USD reserve currency within 10 years. If that happens and the US has no domestic (advanced) manufacturing capacity owing to trade inequities and high dollar effects over decades then it is curtains for us all. Must also develop energy independence and grow a Pacific trade route.