Donald Trump has eliminated many of the impediments to his lust for unlimited power. Unfortunately for the people of the United States and for the rest of the world, this has quickly led to accelerating catastrophic consequences.

Trump unleashed has collided with reality. There are several issues of concern we will examine.

First, there is the denial of climate change, and destroying the government’s ability to respond to and mitigate worsening and rapidly accelerating climate disasters.

Second, is embrace of arbitrary tariffs imposed by the U.S. on all trading partners, turned on and off in an arbitrary fashion that is a relentlessly inflationary burden on U.S. consumers and businesses and threatens the status of the dollar as global reserve currency.

Third, is the economics of passing Trump’s mega BBB bill based on taking money from the poor, by slashing Medicaid and food stamps in order to give tax breaks to the super rich, and swell the U.S. deficit to new record levels. This will mean higher and higher interest rates for American consumers and businesses.

Fourth, is Trump’s signature plan for expelling more than 15 million migrants, the largest anti-migrant effort in US history, removing not just criminal migrants but 90% of undocumented migrants with zero crimes, and stripping millions of workers from jobs that will harm or bankrupt thousands of companies and farmers.

Fifth, is an anti-science push led on the health front by appointing an anti-vaxer as head of Health and Human Services. This has quickly led to a measles epidemic and expanding COVID-19 cases as vaccinations are reduced. Anti-science has moved beyond health care to academic research of all sorts.

Six is the destruction of the tradition limits on presidential power by a Supreme Court that has given Trump more power over formally independent federal agencies, and federal employees who must bow to Trump's whims.

What will happen? Warren Buffett, for one, foresees a market collapse as he is ready to buy good companies at cheap prices in the rubble.

But the danger to American democracy and the United States is irreversible. The Trump collapse will have at least a great depression impact that will mean fundamental change in the U.S beyond the business cycle.

For example, the U.S. may find itself fiscally helpless, the dollar no longer serving as a global reserve currency, and no longer a global military leader. The U.S. may emerge as a democratic partner among a democratic order of nations.

The US, without trillions of dollars in war expenses and reforming Wall Street mega manipulation, can embrace a cooperative economy based on community justice and ecological health, monetizing and capitalizing the ecological benefits of renewable energy, focusing on sustainable investments. The shape of a new democratic order remains to be seen. But there is a real possibility for dramatic reform.

Dynamics of Trump’s driven collapse

The denial of climate change reality and the government's ability to respond

Reality has meant the inability to warn people in Texas of the deadly catastrophic overnight floods where 120 bodies recovered and 160 more still missing. Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp, confirmed the deaths of 27 campers and counselors.

The Texas town of Comfort had zero fatalities from the Guadalupe River floods because the town invested in advance warning systems including sirens that were credited with saving lives.

The deaths in Texas were the logical consequence of the Trump plan to dismantle government work of the EPA to study and mitigate climate change crippling NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) by severely damaged the capacity of the National Weather Service and the Hurricane Center, and by deliberately limiting FEMA’s ability to respond to disasters. A true trifecta of self-inflicted harm gathering speed with much, much more coming daily as climate catastrophe relentlessly bites.

Trump tariff mania

Trump’s firm belief in the use of tariffs for the economic health and power of the U.S. is a fundamental and catastrophic error for a number of well understood economic reasons.

First, the Great Depression that began with the stock market crash of 1929 was dramatically worsened by passage of the 1930 U.S. Smoot Hawley tariffs on international trade which became a reciprocal international model . Canada, the UK, France, and Spain imposed their own tariffs on U.S.imports. US exports and imports collapsed. Trade with Europe fell by two-thirds between 1929 and 1932 deepening the depression.

Tariffs represent a tax on imports that are paid by importing businesses and by consumers. The higher the tariffs, the higher the prices that must by born by consumers. They are inflationary. Prices rise, like the price of eggs and many other products in the U.S., business declines.

Trump’s tariff dreams are fundamentally based on 16th to 18th century economic ideas of mercantilism. This is the belief that a nation's wealth and power is based on increasing exports and reducing imports.This is a zero sum game in a world order of empires and their colonies that serve them. The colonies provided raw materials and the mother country manufactured high valued add products to be sold both to the colonies and to other customers. That’s Donald’s catastrophic plan for a new mercantilism to make America Great Again. But mercantilism is particularly toxic for the U.S.

The U.S.dollar as global reserve currency makes all imports to the United States beneficial to the wealth of the U.S. Imports to the United States are paid in dollars and used to invest further in US businesses, in U.S. dollars, and to buy U.S. bonds to finance U.S. deficits.

Trump’s embrace of high tariffs and reducing imports will encourage the abandonment of the dollar as global reserve currency and embrace more desirable relations with the EU or with China or other new international trading partners. Republican politicians humor Trump and refuse to standup to save the dollar and the American economy. They are willing to burn the house down. The fire is burning.

In Asia, particularly in the Aswan countries , there is the grown between nations of Local Currency Trade (LCT). For example, Indonesia has LCT agreements with Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, China, South Korea. Indonesia are currently taking to the EU about deals in response to Trump tariff madness.

LCT multinational trade not only sidesteps the dollar in Asia. Internationally we are seeing the prospects for developing multinational replacements for the primacy of both the US and China, and also encouraging the growth of new multinational trade rules based on transparent, fair, and democratic rules. These were the basis for U.S, trade and the international SWIFT dollar trade system. The dollar was considered good as gold.

Under Trump, the value of the gold soars as the value of dollar shrinks. One ounce of gold on July 14 2025 is valued at $3,358.90. On July 14 2024 an ounce of gold was worth $2,408.62. That means in one year the dollar has lost 29% of its value. This also suggests that the rise in stock market values is more a matter of staying even with real buying power of the dollar as inflation soars.

The dollar is now a decaying asset that is destabilizing the normal global US dollar trade under the SWIFT system. Dollar dominance will rapidly decline if Donald Trump piles on arbitrary tariffs attacking trading partners around the world in the belief that the U.S. must have a positive trade balance with all nations. These are mercantilist memes from four hundred years ago.

For Trump, the stock market is still high today. All must be well. He is still getting away with Tariff Bingo. Trumps strategy is to revitalize the US economy by tariffs that will make the value of the dollar plunge and thus make American goods cheaper internationally. Meanwhile prices for American businesses and consumers rise as the dollar collapses and interest charges soar for paying the trillions in US debt that Trump and pursued. Embracing 1930 high tariffs to stop imports was a disaster then and will be again.

Legal weakness of Trump tariffs

It’s important to understand that the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the sole power to set Tariffs. The Congress has passed laws giving the Presidents some emergency power. Trump has leaned heavily on the the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) that gave President broad economic powers during national emergencies. It is absurd to term Trumps on again off again global tariff policy as an ever changing national tariff emergency.

This is mostly about the complete failure of the Republican Senate and House to do their jobs. Meanwhile in May 2025 the US Court of International Trade ruled that much of Trump's IEEPA-based tariffs were illegal, including the 10% April 2nd tariffs his higher "reciprocal" tariffs based on U.S.trade deficits. Appeal hearings are scheduled for July 31, 2025. The World Trade Organization has also ruled against. The Trump Tariffs. But as in all these matters here are all kinds of loop holes for delay.

The August 1 tariff threat

Trump’s August 1 new tariff threats targets 20 countries. Top three on the list were major U.S. trade partners Canada with 12.6% of US imports facing a 35% tariff (justified by minuscule fentanyl drug smuggling). Japan with 4.5 % of U.S.imports and South Korea with 4.0 % of U.S. imports. Both facing a 25% tariff.

Brazil is threatened with a 50% tariff even through the U.S.already has an 6.8 billion dollar positive trade balance that represents 1.3 present of U.S imports. Trump is furious because as a leading member of the Bricks group Brazil represents a threat to the supremacy of the U.S dollar that is compounded by the upcoming prosecution of former Brazilian strong man and Trump pal Bolsonaro.

Most of the remaining countries were poor, small, and economically insignificant like Laos, Tunisia and Brunei.

Unless Trump abandons, or is forced to abandon, his tariff nightmare before the global economy reorders itself to the detriment of the U.S.

Economics and politics of Trump's BBB to steal from the poorest to help the richest

Trump worked really hard striping billions from the poorest Americans including millions of Trump voters in red states, cutting Medicaid, rural hospitals, food stamps, maternal health care. It will kill large numbers of MAGA voters.I trillion dollars in Medicare cuts to finance one Trillion dollars for tax cuts for the richest, to benefit the top 1 percent of Americans and at the same tell swelling the federal deficit..

Income of the highest 10% of earners will rise two percent each year. The lowest 10% of earners will see their income drop by four percent every tears for next ten years.This will mean a catastrophic effect on low income Americans who will be stripped of many existing essential social services.

The Trump plan is that he will win the midterm election in 2026 because the tax cuts start immediately and the destruction of social services begin after the mid terms. That level of cynicism is stunning. By the already manifest incompetence and cruelty of the Trump regime has made itself clear and rural hospitals, for example, are already closing.

Fema neglects disaster after disaster and more and more. The BBB is a level of cruelty that we have never seen in in many many decades.

War on millions of immigrants

The cruelty is the purpose. The target, of course, is dark skinned people with particular animus toward Central and South Americans who are living and working in the U.S. sometimes for decades and lack the requisite paperwork.

The total number of people without proper documentation is estimated between between 11 and almost 14 million. In July 2023, the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) estimates the undocumented population is 11.7 million in July 2023.

The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimates the undocumented population at 13.7 million in 2023.

Being undocumented is not a crime. It is an offense, like a traffic ticked that does not put you in jail. You have the legal right to contest the finding and claim asylum. About ten percent of the undocumented have serious criminal records and some of whom are dangerous active felons. The refusal on many states and Towns to refuse to cooperate with ICE to arrest the undocumented does not mean that local police will not arrest and jail undocumented criminal migrants.

For most police forces, no crime means no arrest of undocumented immigrants. This is a practical position. If local cops act like ICE hunting the undocumented, there will be zero cooperation with local police and forcing people and businesses to live literally in a police state. The Economic Policy Institute in July 2025 estimates that if Trump deports a million people a year for 4 years will result in loss of 6 million jobs from migrants and U.S. born workers. Job cuts in various sectors are estimated: 1.5 million workers in construction; 225,000 in agriculture; 1 million in hospitality, 870,000 in manufacturing,461,000 in transportation and warehousing.

There are related consequences as well. Fewer immigrant roofers mean less work for US born electricians and plumbers. Fewer cooks and dishwashers mean limiting. hours of operation reducing jobs for waitstaff and managers. The American Immigration Council estimates that mass deportation will reduce GDP by 4.2 to 6.8% , costing $1.1 trillion to $1.7 trillion. That’s similar to the 4.3 GBP loss in the Great Recession. Well known people who have not yet been deported include Elon Musk, who started his first company in the U.S. under a student visa ,and Melania Trump , who worked as a high priced model while on a Tourist visa in 1996 that forbid work.

Conclusion

Donald Trump is becoming spectacularly unpopular. This is beyond anti- Trumpers and currently pervades all groups of Americans. MAGA itself is at war over the Epstein scandal and the Texas flood disaster. Trump mentions a path for immigrant citizenship since the pols now strongly support working immigrants.

We live in interesting times under the rule of the Mad King and daily Proclamations valid for one day at least. American life is tiring, maddening, and sad. But millions are in the streets in the defense of democracy.