The capitalism of fools: Trump’s mirror-world New Deal.
Cory Doctorow: Trump’s tariffs, demands of government stakes in companies and selective antitrust enforcement superficially echo left‑leaning industrial policy. But Trump’s policies aren’t thought out; they’re just performative chaos. Trump is part of a right-wing mirror world of imagined conspiracies that superficially resemble real problems. One danger is that when Trump is gone, America will desperately need robust state action, but Trump’s bad example will convince America that all state action is reckless.
The problem isn’t that tariffs are always bad, nor is it that demanding state ownership stakes in structurally important companies that depend on public funds is bad policy. The problem is that Trump’s version of these policies sucks, because everything Trump touches dies, and because he governs solely on vibes, half-remembered wisdom imparted by the last person who spoke to him, and the dying phantoms of old memories as they vanish beneath a thick bark of amyloid plaque.