Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/204466 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
Research Note
Publisher: 
The Bichler and Nitzan Archives, Toronto
Abstract: 
Trump has promised to ‘make America great again’. As a self-proclaimed expert on everything of import, he knows exactly how to increase domestic investment and consumption, boost exports, reduce the country’s trade deficit, expand employment and bolster wages. And as America’s leader-and-policymaker-in-chief, he has taken the necessary steps to achieve every one of these goals, or so he says. Capitalists and pundits follow him like imprinted ducks. His tweets rattle markets, his announcements are dissected by academics and his utterances are analysed to exhaustion by various media. A visiting alien might infer that he actually runs the world. And the alien wouldn’t be alone. The earthly population too, conditioned by ivory-tower academics and popular opinion makers, tends to think of political figureheads as ‘leaders’ and ‘policymakers’. Situated at the ‘commanding heights’ of their respective nation states and international organizations, these ‘leaders’ supposedly set the rules, make policies, steer their societies and determine the course of history. Or at least that’s the belief. The reality, though, is quite different.
Subjects: 
America's decline
capitalist mode of power
economic policy
Trump
JEL: 
E61
F13
F1
P16
F23
F51
D3
O24
URL of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-nd Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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