Reflections on the Tariffs

 When I read that China could potentially bring our economy and our military to its knees by cutting off our supply of rare earths, a part of me thinks that Trump is really doing us a favor by starting a trade war with China.  After all, if China can bring us to our knees in a trade war by cutting off our rare earths, that has some rather alarming implications about what they might do in an actual shooting war.  

What if China invades Taiwan, something that could happen as soon as 2027?  How will we be able to come to Taiwan's defense if mainland China can bring our military to its knees by cutting off our rare earths?  Any why haven't previous administrations -- Trump 1.0 included -- been working on developing our independence from Chinese rare earths? Decoupling ourselves from China now seems rather late in the game but, as the saying goes, better late than never.

That being said, I am not prepared to give Trump credit for any sort of strategic thinking here.  The US economy is about a quarter of the world economy.  Only China comes close to the total size of our economy -- nearly $18 trillion for China versus $27.72 trillion for the US.  Germany, the third in line, clocks in at $4.5 trillion -- less than a sixth the size of the US.  Clearly, then, we are big enough to crush any economy except China.  China is big enough to engage the US in a trade war, although both countries will be much the worse off for it.

What the orange idiot in the White House hasn't figured out is that, while we can crush any economy except China and inflict serious pain on China, we are not big enough to prevail in a trade war against the entire rest of the world at the same time. And our best chances of emerging triumphant in a trade war with China alone is to have as many allies as possible. 

Presumably Trump and company assume that we have the advantage in a trade war with the rest of the world because we are big enough to stand alone, while the rest of the world consists of many different countries that can be split.  Except the Trump has done his best to make it impossible for anyone to strike a deal with us by (1) making clear that he cannot be counted on to keep his word, and (2) not even making clear what he wants (perhaps because he doesn't know himself).  

Or, as this article comments:

Instead of spending years, or even months, investing in American industry, Trump is angling to get rid of the major investments in semiconductor and clean-energy manufacturing implemented under the Biden administration. Instead of engaging in a gradual tariff rollout, the administration jacked up tariffs to 145 percent over the course of a few weeks. Instead of providing businesses and investors with clear guidance, the administration has changed its story by the day, if not the hour. And instead of building a coalition of allies, Trump has spent the past few months threatening, feuding with, and tariffing them. Even if the U.S. were to suddenly change course and try to build an anti-China coalition, a prospect recently floated by Bessent, it is likely too late. What country would sign up for economic hardship for the sake of an “ally” that has not only treated it poorly but has also repeatedly demonstrated that it can’t be trusted to honor any bargain?

JD Vance's Odious Philosophy/Theology

 

The late, great Kevin Drum, in assessing Donald Trump's eight potential candidate for Vice President, rated them as follows:

Greatest willingness to kowtow: Tim Scott

Overall pure shittiness: Elise Stefanik

Nonentity award: Doug Burgum

Willingness to pretend to be an idiot: J.D. Vance

Actual idiot: Ben Carson

Most pathetically ambitious: Marco Rubio

Strong right arm of retribution: Tom Cotton

Freedom Caucus true believer: Byron Donalds

 This somewhat resembles my assessment, but also differs in other aspects, especially its evaluation of Vance.  Drum appeared to believe that Scott, Burgum, Vance, Rubio, and possibly Stefanik were pure opportunists, Carson was completely unqualified, and Cotton and Donalds were the true authoritarians.  Willingness to kowtow, willingness to pretend to be an idiot, and spineless ambition all sound very much like pure opportunism, almost to the extent that they can be hard to tell apart.  Presumably Scott was showing his opportunist through flattery, Vance through insincere agreement, and Rubio by abandoning his former principles.  Add Burgum's obscurity which spares him having any identity apart from Trump and interpret Stefanik's "overall pure shittiness" as shameless opportunism, and you have five different shades of opportunism.  Dismiss Carson as too clueless to be worth taking seriously.  That leaves Cotton and Donalds as the really dangerous ones -- Donalds as a true believer and Cotton taking Trump's desire for revenge seriously.

I shared the assessment that Burgum, Scott, Rubio, and Stefanik were opportunists telling politically expedient lies, that Carson was too clueless to matter, and that Donalds was a dangerous authoritarian.  My main difference was on Cotton and Vance.  I was ambivalent about Cotton.  On the one hand, he seemed like a real authoritarian rather than a pure opportunist.  On the other hand, he appeared to have real principles (particularly as a Russia hawk) that sometimes differed from Trump.  He was definitely the only one of the eight who I could imagine ever standing up to Trump.  As for Vance, he struck me as having all the worst traits of an opportunist and a true believer, with all the zeal of a convert.

When Trump picked Vance, Drum said, "So I guess that's what Trump values the most. He wants someone who shows his loyalty by a willingness to say anything, no matter how dumb or obviously untrue he knows it to be."  Well, I disagree.  I do not think Vance's distinguishing trait is his willingness to pretend to be an idiot.  I think his distinguishing trait is his ability to offer an intellectual defense of the most indefensible actions on Trump's part.  To the extent Vance is a pure opportunist, this is an uglier and more dangerous form of opportunism than mere flattery or abandonment of principle.  It shows a deeper level of commitment to Trump's worst actions that makes Vance unlikely to change course if Trump is ever gotten out of the way.

Did Trump lie and say the election was stolen.  Vance acknowledges it was exactly stolen, but also says, “What verifiably I know happened is that in 2020, large technology companies censored Americans from talking about things like the Hunter Biden laptop,” and that therefore “I think that Big Tech rigged the election in 2020," and that what is really important is not the election outcome, but that "censorship is bad."  Needless to say, this would allow the loser of any election to find some sort of unfair story to blame it on and demand that the outcome be overturned.

Were stories about Haitians eating people's pets false?  Vance was prepared to defend the lies, by saying, "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do."

But above all that is Vance's defense of DOGE's destruction of USAID -- programs that ended the ravages of AIDS in Africa, feed starving children, fight Ebola, etc.

As an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens. That doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders, but there’s this old-school [concept]—and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way—that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.

Well, yes, I don't think the basic concept is very controversial.  Who would dispute that people who neglect their children to aid people halfway across the world are being irresponsible?  And who would dispute that our primary duties are to the people closest at hand.  

The flaw here is obvious.  From the completely uncontroversial proposition that we should care more about the people closest at hand,  Vance leaps to the wholly different proposition that we must value anyone who is not a fellow citizen at zero, and that the tiniest act on behalf of a non-citizen (seriously, PEPFAR is a miniscule portion of the federal budget and has saved millions) is a betrayal of one's fellow-countrymen.

I will add, just to be clear, that it was something similar that made me lose all respect for Jonathan Haidt's moral foundations theory.  Some people were calling to close to lawless terrorist prison in Guantanamo and Haidt dismissed that as "liberal moral myopia."  Liberals were so obsessed with harm avoidance, and with justice concerns that some of the prisoners did not appear to be actual terrorists that they totally ignored the larger picture -- the Guantanamo prisoners were not part of our in-group and any concern for their well-being, or even whether they were guilty or innocent, is a betrayal of our in-group.  Apparently having normal, healthy, well-balanced values means dividing everyone into an in-group of people who morally matter and an out-group of unpeople who do not morally matter.  

Certainly that appears to be Vance's philosophy as well.  Granted, Vance sees no need to hate people outside your borders.  But indifference is an absolute moral imperative. 

MAGA versus MAHA

 

It is not exactly a new observation that RFK, Jr. and his "Make America Healthy Again" is not quite the same movement as MAGA and appeals to a somewhat different crowd.

MAGA itself appears to be split between two different ideologies -- the hardcore economic royalists, who think America was at its greatest in the Gilded Age, and the working class nationalists, who hark back to the 1950's.

I don't think RFK, Jr. fits with either ideology.  Most notably he is a great advocate of food regulations that are wholly at odds with the economic royalism pervading most of the administration.  I certainly don't think he aspires to return to the Gilded Age.

Nor do I think the 1950's are really what RFK, Jr. aims for.  After all, smoking was rampant.  It was also when fluoridation of the water became widespread.  Diet and exercise were sort of meh!  The real back-to nature movement began in the 1960's.  It seems most likely that the 1960's are RJK, Jr's golden age of when Americans were healthy.  Needless to say, that decade is anathema to either branch of MAGA!

I will also add that the decade has its advantages for an anti-vaxxer.  I have not heard Kennedy come out against the polio vaccine, which was developed in the 1950's.  Nor has he voice much opposition to the DPT (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus) vaccine, which dates back to the 1940's. His hostility is toward the MMR vaccine, developed in the 1960's and not widely used until the 1970's.  The purported reason for this is supposed to be a study linking the MMR vaccine to autism.  

My suspicion is that something else is at work.  Nostalgia is part of it.  Polio and DPT vaccines were part of Kennedy's childhood.  MMR is a later development.  But perhaps more to the point, polio or tetanus -- perhaps even diphtheria and pertussis -- are scary enough that Kennedy is unlikely to want to take a chance with them.  But it is hard to escape the impression that he basically misses the good old days when catching measles, mumps, and rubella were an ordinary childhood right of passage, and that he basically thinks catching them builds character and that avoiding catching them is decadent.

And in that, at least, MAHA may match up with MAGA.

Vance's Vision as an Exercise in 1950's Nostalgia

 

Make America Great Again presupposes some good old days when America was great that we have declined from.  The slogan works better when you leave it somewhat unclear when America was great.  After all, different people are apt to have different ideas of exactly how far we want to turn back the clock.  And no matter when you want to return to, closer inspection will reveal the time has problems.

Donald Trump has now revealed when he thinks our golden age was -- during the Gilded Age.  William McKinley is his ideal President, mostly because he charged high protective tariffs.*  That makes sense from an economic royalist perspective, but Vance is no economic royalist.  Vance is a champion of the working class, and the Gilded Age was most definitely not a golden age for the industrial working class.

The Gilded Age was the time of The Jungle, of brutal work hours and frequent industrial accidents with no workers' compensation.  It was also a time of a chaotic business cycle, with alternating bouts of inflation and deflation, and of widespread, violent industrial strife, particularly during economic down turns, and the National Guard being called out to suppress strikes.  It should also be noted that at the time the industrial working class, far from being seen as the most quintessentially American of all Americans, were regarded as suspect -- immigrants whose first language was not English, associated with radical anarchists and socialists or, at best, corrupt political machines.  Identity politics were rampant at the time, with each ethnic group of immigrants sticking together in its own separate neighborhood, voting for its own candidates, and not trusting outsiders.

The Progressive Era brought in some workplace safety laws, limitations on hours, and Workers Compensation laws.  But it was the Great Depression, the New Deal, and mass diversion of manufacturing to military use during WWII that brought about national recognition of unions and the right to strike, the National Labor Relations Board, and good-paying manufacturing jobs.  In short, the golden age of good-paying manufacturing jobs was the 1950's.  

Many  people have pointed out that people in the 1950's were less wealthy in absolute terms than today.  One of the reasons people could afford to buy a house right out of high school was that houses were smaller then, even though families were larger.  Many appliances were bough separately instead of coming with the house.  A single car was the general rule, at least at the outset -- a two-car garage was a clear status marker.  But I don't think the MAGA working class crowd would find that concerning.  If absolute wealth has gone up, they may say, why can't we afford a larger house now on a blue collar wage.

But there were serpents in the garden even in the 1950's.  For one thing most men in the 1950's did not actually work in manufacturing.  The number runs to about 30-32% of the workforce.  Similarly, only about a third of the workforce belonged to a union even at their height.  Nor were women quite so uniformly full-time housewives as nostalgia would have it.  About a third worked outside the home, albeit at lower wages than men.  Though factory jobs paid well, they were not appealing in most other regards -- extremely regimented and prone to repetitive-stress injuries.  And then there was the matter of race.  Immigration was mostly restricted to northern and western Europe, so the ethnic strife of the past largely faded.  But there were plenty of Black people who were long-term residents of the United States and were largely excluded from the general prosperity -- not only in the segregated South, but in the North the good-paying jobs were generally White-only.  And let us not forget that the GI bill led to an ever-growing expansion in the college-educated population, turning college from the preserve of a small elite to something available to the broader public.  Presumably Vance and his cohorts would see this a a bad thing.

It should also be noted that the 1950's were the beginning of the liberal international order that Vance so despises.  The Cold War drove our foreign policy, and the US founded the NATO alliance, and well as other anti-Communist alliances.  We also worked to reduce trade barriers, believing that protectionism greatly contributed to the Great Depression and the rise of fascism.  Even much of our domestic policy -- encouraging unions and good blue collar jobs, and support for Civil Rights -- was driven by the Cold War and the perceived need to maintain our moral authority against the Communists.

And, just for what it is worth, popular culture of the day did not valorize manufacturing work the way so many people do today.  Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, and Father Knows Best all featured white collar families.  Art imitated life in I Love Lucy -- Ricky was a night club performer.  The Honeymooners was an exception, a show about a blue collar family, but a bus driver, not a factory worker.  Blue collar characters became more prevalent in the 1960's and 70's, but still one has Fred Flintstone (crane operator), Archie Bunker (retired dock worker and taxi driver) and a whole spate of movies with truck drivers for heroes.  The same may be said for the 1980's and 90's, featuring Dan Conner (drywall contractor) and Al Bundy (shoe salesman).  

Manufacturing jobs began taking on a certain political glamour when they started being automated away or going overseas.  But they never employed more than a minority of the workforce even at their height, and were never all that appealing, except in retrospect.

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*During Trump's first term his favorite President was Andrew Jackson.  Jackson is a controversial figure, seen by admirers as the first true People's President and the transition of the US from aristocratic republic to true democracy and associated by detractors with the Trail of Tears, the spoils system, and a depression caused by his veto of the national bank.  But no on  disputes that Jackson was a highly consequential figure.  McKinley is a strict mediocrity, noted mostly for being assassinated and making way for Teddy Roosevelt.

Trying to Understand JD Vance's Social Vision

 

I will not waste any brain cells trying to discern the method to Trump's tariff madness.  There is none.  By contrast, I do think that some of Trump's advisor's have a semi-coherent vision that they are trying to execute.

The one that interests me most is JD Vance because he appears to be the closest to the working class populist MAGA appeal.  JD Vance has come out strongly against the post-WWII international order, saying that it does not serve the working class well, and proposing that we put something else in its place.  What he appears to have in mind is a much more nationalist vision, with a focus on each country as a self-contained unit having as little as possible to do with the outside world.

Two things are notable about Vance's vision.  Once is that it is a departure from the Republican Party's old ideology of economic royalism.  Vance does not think that either the free market or capitalists are infallible, and he is willing to allow government intervention on behalf of the working class.  The other is that it is a conservative vision in the sense of favoring depth over breadth in social commitment.  In fact, he appears to believe that the working class is best served by strong social cohesion, and that he sees breadth as a threat to depth and therefore to be excluded.

But how far does this go?

Hershel Walker often sounded like a sort of caricature of this viewpoint -- proposing a sort of hermetic seal around the United States that would stop China from breathing our clean air and keep China's pollution out of the US.  Vance, I have no doubt, is more sophisticated than that.  But his vision sounds like a milder version of the same.  But a lot is unclear.

One thing that is clear is that his vision is one of zero immigration. No family migration, no refugees admitted, no asylum claims.  Afghans who put their lives on the line assisting the US who face torture and execution by the Taliban will just have to find somewhere else to go.  And, so far as I can tell, no naturalization law, no permanent legal residents, no green cards, no work visa, no student visas, no admission of anyone except (presumably) foreign diplomats and tourists.  All  non-citizens should be expelled.  Any work that citizens are unwilling to do can be automated.  

He extends this view to Europe, urging Europeans to refuse admission to any non-Europeans and to expel "the enemy within."  Certainly Elon Musk has maintained the importance of each country keeping its own distinctive character.  Vance appears to agree.

This raises a number of questions.  Nationalists love to mock the liberal vision of all different ethnic groups living side by side in harmony and equality as impractical.  But the nationalist vision of neat lines across the map with only one ethnic group one each side of the line and no moving across is not all that practical either.  In any event, it is out of the question in the US.  At  most, we can halt all future immigration and push heavy measures for assimilation.  How far does Vance (or Musk) propose to take this in Europe?  Clearly he/they want to halt and reverse all non-European immigration.  Are there prepared to tolerate immigration within Europe, or should European countries harden their borders against each other as well?  Both men are notably hostile to the European Union, but is that just because it is friendly toward non-European immigration and other forms of "wokeness," or do they consider maintaining sharp border within Europe to be important?  And have they thought it through at all?

I don't think Vance's vision goes so far as to say no trade.  Even Trump has not formally committed to a policy of autarchy, although he appears to think we should never have a trade deficit with any country anywhere.  I assume Vance is more sophisticated than that.  But he clearly wants much less international trade.  In particular, he emphasizes the importance of everyone having their own manufacturing with good paying jobs.  Again, Vance is thinking mostly about the US which is, after all, a very large country.  One wonders if he would approve of much smaller European countries having more internal trade that would at least allow each country to specialize in a different kind of manufacturing, rather than require each country to go it alone.  (Maybe even some kind of common market).

But clearly he wants a lot of heavy industry and manufacturing with good-paying jobs in the US.  One gathers he is open to manufacturing jobs being union jobs and offering good health insurance and defined benefit pensions.  All this is a clear break with traditional economic royalism.  (More on that later).

This economic vision is closely tied to a social vision, mostly of increased social cohesion.  Central to this vision is that raising male wages will raise the marriage rate.  It assumes that women will be more inclined to marry and less inclined to divorce if men have good paying jobs -- especially if women don't have good paying jobs.  It is also hard not to see this as a way of discouraging college attendance, since it seems clear that the MAGA crowd sees college as something that makes people more liberal and therefore an evil to be prevented. It assumes that men will be less inclined to go to college if they can get a good paying manufacturing job with benefits right out of high school.  (How to keep women out of college is less clear.  The offer of jobs in the garment industry is unlikely to be much of an inducement).

And, in fairness to Vance, one can see other advantages in social cohesion here.  A manufacturing job that offers employment for men's full work life can promote social cohesion in many ways.  It offers enduring friendships with coworkers that may encourage association outside of work, either doing things together as individuals or in an organized fashion.  This is especially true if coworkers also belong to a union together.  And offering a long-term job encourages the workforce to stay in the same place and build strong neighborhoods, and stronger commitments to a long-term church, school, etc.

There is an obvious flaw in Vance's criticism of the liberal post-war international order in favor of a more cohesive, more nationalistic view of each country as a self-contained unit, preserving its unique character, admitting no immigrants, and building its own industrial base.  Such a system can flourish only if it follows another key precept of the liberal international order -- no redrawing of borders.  If countries make a habit of invading each other and annexing each others' territory, it is hard to see how each country can maintain its unique, stable, cohesive character.  People in border areas will either see their nationality change quite regularly, or else will be regularly ethnically cleansed to make way for some other ethnically cohesive, but geographically larger, country.  Either way, it is hard to see how the interests of either social cohesion or the working class would be served by countries invading each other and annexing territory.

I suppose Vance might say he agrees that countries should not invade their neighbors or annex territory.  But if that is the case, why is he so dead set against assisting Ukraine when it is being invaded by Russia, and why does he appear to support the US invading Greenland?  Here I suppose he might say that he likes the no invading part and is just opposed to alliances, which undermine a country's sovereignty by forcing it to other countries' interests into account.  

Or he might say that he likes the no-invading rule but doesn't see it as our place to enforce it.*  By this standard, the no-invading rule would stand, but each country would be on its own if actually invaded.  The result of that would be predictable.  Each country would have little choice but to build up its military to defend against invasion.  That would tend to promote domestic manufacturing, but at some cost to the standard of living.

Or, he might be honest and say that he favors invasions, but only by countries like Russia that uphold illiberal values.

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*Or he might say that if I am so committed to countries not invading each other, what about the US invading Iraq and didn't that violate that rule.  And I agree, our invasion of Iraq did violate the no-invading rule.  I opposed it for that very reason.  

What We Should Fear: Competitive Authoritarianism

 

The other risk Trump poses besides patrimonialism is competitive authoritarianism.  In other words, something that is no longer democratic, but not fully a dictatorship:

What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. . . . Under competitive authoritarianism, the formal architecture of democracy, including multiparty elections, remains intact. Opposition forces are legal and aboveground, and they contest seriously for power. Elections are often fiercely contested battles in which incumbents have to sweat it out. And once in a while, incumbents lose . . . But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair.

One obvious tool for rigging the system is the use of selective prosecution:

The most visible means of weaponizing the state is through targeted prosecution. Virtually all elected autocratic governments deploy justice ministries, public prosecutors’ offices, and tax and intelligence agencies to investigate and prosecute rival politicians, media companies, editors, journalists, business leaders, universities, and other critics. In traditional dictatorships, critics are often charged with crimes such as sedition, treason, or plotting insurrection, but contemporary autocrats tend to prosecute critics for more mundane offenses, such as corruption, tax evasion, defamation, and even minor violations of arcane rules. If investigators look hard enough, they can usually find petty infractions such as unreported income on tax returns or noncompliance with rarely enforced regulations.

While the independent judiciary will probably protect Trump's opponents from imprisonment, the time and expense of defending against completely meritless prosecutions can be ruinous.  And regulatory actions are more easily politicized.  The author offers as an obvious example IRS audits and withdrawal of non-profit status for unfriendly organizations.  I was very much afraid of that myself ahead of the election.  At least for now, DOGE seems more interested in crippling the IRS than weaponizing it.  The author also warns (correctly) about attempts to coerce higher education with the threat of withholding funds and frivolous libel suits.  One thing neither he nor I anticipated -- denying security clearance and access to government buildings to law firms that oppose the Administration or its supporters.  That is proving to be extremely dangerous.

And other forms of abuse are easily deployed:

A weaponized state is not merely a tool to punish opponents. It can also be used to build support. Governments in competitive authoritarian regimes routinely use economic policy and regulatory decisions to reward politically friendly individuals, firms, and organizations. Business leaders, media companies, universities, and other organizations have as much to gain as they have to lose from government antitrust decisions, the issuing of permits and licenses, the awarding of government contracts and concessions, the waiving of regulations or tariffs, and the conferral of tax-exempt status. If they believe that these decisions are made on political rather than technical grounds, they have a strong incentive to align themselves with incumbents.

This is already well underway.

None of this would be entirely new for the United States. Presidents have weaponized government agencies before. The FBI director J. Edgar Hoover deployed the agency as a political weapon for the six presidents he served. The Nixon administration wielded the Justice Department and other agencies against perceived enemies. But the contemporary period differs in important ways. For one, global democratic standards have risen considerably. By any contemporary measure, the United States was considerably less democratic in the 1950s than it is today. A return to mid-twentieth-century practices would, by itself, constitute significant democratic backsliding.

More important, the coming weaponization of government will likely go well beyond mid-twentieth-century practices. Fifty years ago, both major U.S. parties were internally heterogeneous, relatively moderate, and broadly committed to democratic rules of the game. Today, these parties are far more polarized, and a radicalized Republican Party has abandoned its long-standing commitment to basic democratic rules, including accepting electoral defeat and unambiguously rejecting violence.

Moreover, much of the Republican Party now embraces the idea that America’s institutions—from the federal bureaucracy and public schools to the media and private universities—have been corrupted by left-wing ideologies. Authoritarian movements commonly embrace the notion that their country’s institutions have been subverted by enemies. . . 

 The author then goes on to offer at least some grounds for hope.  The United States has more independent institutions -- governmental and private -- than many other democracies that were subverted.  And Trump is less popular than most successful authoritarian leaders consolidating power.  Although, I will add, an authoritarian is most dangerous at the outset when he is most popular.  That popularity can offer cover for subverting democracy.  Once the subversion is complete and the leader has established a dictatorship, the danger is greatest when the leader becomes unpopular -- it is at that point that the leader throws off the democratic mask and becomes openly dictatorial.  (See Russia, Venezuela, Turkey, with Hungary trending that way fast).  Hence rule number on of smart authoritarians -- save the unpopular stuff until after you consolidate power.  Trump, needless to say, is blatantly violating this rule.

But none of that is a guarantee that he will be stopped.  Most people, after all, are easily intimidated.  Even modestly raising the costs of opposition may be enough to allow consolidation of power.

 Although I will throw in this article -- by two Hungarians -- to argue the advantages the US has over Hungary in opposing a dictator:

Unlike the two main parties in the United States, Fidesz holds no primaries, and it has been systematically deprived of internal diversity because all of its senior ranks are subservient to Orban. As party leader, the Hungarian prime minister has the right to handpick all parliamentary and local (mayoral) candidates; he decides on the parliamentary group leader; and he can freely replace members of his administration who have no independent, let alone opposing, agenda or ambition. There is no loyalty to Fidesz as an organization—only to Orban.

. . . .

Trump’s rampage through the federal bureaucracy and efforts to begin purges of civil servants, along with his flurry of executive orders that demonstratively challenge constitutional limitations on executive power, may seem shocking to U.S. democratic norms. But none of these plans have been put before Congress, and many of them will face legal and legislative roadblocks before they can be fully implemented. By contrast, Orban has been able to use his disciplined supermajority in parliament to formally change Hungary’s legal foundations: tax laws, reforms, and even electoral amendments are regularly passed within days. Even the new constitution of Hungary has been amended 14 times by Fidesz without public debate—something impossible in the United States, where constitutional amendments have been comparatively rare, requiring not only broad congressional approval but a laborious process of state ratification.

The federal foundations of American democracy also give U.S. states considerable leeway to set their own policies, including in education and environmental standards. They can also use their own legal authority to challenge federal laws and the behavior of the federal government, as groups of states have already done in response to some of Trump’s executive orders. Hungary offers no such federal balance. Instead, Orban has centralized power by stripping municipalities of most of their competences and revenues.

Finally, the diversity of U.S. news organizations makes it much more difficult for Trump to wield decisive influence over the media. In Hungary, the Orban regime controls media revenues, and independent news media account for just 21 percent of the market by income. It’s important to note, as well, that the culture of debate is very different in the United States, even in a media and social media environment in which Trump has gained considerable influence, than it is in Hungary. Fox News, which is often considered a Trump mouthpiece and has close ties to many officials in the Trump administration, nevertheless also features Democrats in its programs and has organized debates between the two parties’ candidates. By contrast, in Hungary’s 2022 parliamentary election, Hungarian public television, which has long served as a platform for government propaganda, provided the joint opposition candidate a total of five minutes of airtime during the entire campaign.

The authors also mention a danger that is both more and less serious than in Hungary -- Elon Musk.  In Hungary, wealth is dependent on political connections.  Hungary's richest man became so solely because of his ties to Viktor Orban.  Musk's came by his wealth independently of any political ties, but is using it to attempt to buy up the government:

Whereas Trump, following Orban, seeks to weaken the institutions of public deliberation, Musk is undermining the principle of elected government by appropriating for himself powers that are reserved for the state. This is not a case of regulated privatization or transparent outsourcing but of big oligarchy. By using his immense economic power to integrate himself into politics, Musk is effectively buying statelike powers and threatening the foundations of liberal democracy. . . . U.S. democracy is unlikely to be replaced by a full-fledged Hungarian-style autocracy any time soon, though it may face another challenge: the rise of an oligarch, a high-tech loose cannon, whom neither the president nor the state can entirely control.

I will finally add that Trump has one clear disadvantage compared to leaders such as Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin, Recep Erdogan, and Viktor Orban.  He is much older than any of these leaders (all came to power in their 40's) and therefore does not have as much time to consolidate his power.

I plan to write more later on about further implications of patrimonialism and competitive authoritarianism.