Assessing Trump

 

You said:

In all, Trump will probably be good for the economy. He will reduce environmental regulation. This will of course harm the environment and contribute to global warming, increase regulations on unions while making it easier for companies to resist them, eliminate all sorts of consumer protection regulations and so on and on. This will happen mostly unseen by changes in rules and in their enforcement, but will tend to help the economy, at least short term, so there may be growth. Then there is trade policy. If things go according to the rhetoric, a trade war with Mexico and China is in the offing, if not the rest of the world. What seems to be forgotten is that these countries can retaliate. Also, of course, such a policy is tailor-made to increase China's trade and other economic influence with Latin America, Africa and Asia. If carried far enough, it could precipitate a world-wide depression. One has the suspicion that a lot of tariff activity will not be traditional protectionism, although it will be framed that way, but as a lever on countries regarding unrelated matters. What worries me most however is social. That women will lose the right to an abortion seems inevitable -- not just in states that want to do so but via Federal regulation of medical practice. That gays may lose the right to marry also seems, for similar reasons, likely, even though Trump himself has pretty much avoided the issue. It will be done by his appointees in small steps. Of course immigrants, even legal ones, will lose most of their rights, and will end up living under a constant shadow of the threat of challenge (even when they produce papers, this sort of disturbance will cause many employers to terminate, just to avoid attention). Not just immigrants, too, but Muslims (how about Jews, Catholics, atheists) will live in a shadow, and, of course, blacks will have it hard. Nothing official mind you -- just selectivity in the enforcement of existing laws and their interpretation will be enough. There is also the right to vote. I can see identification laws applied like Florida tried to apply, designed to see to it that only whites vote. Sometimes there will be noise, but generally things will happen gradually and with little press notice, both the removal of wasteful spending and suffering caused by deportations and cutting of forms of assistance.

ChatGPT said:

You’ve sketched a coherent theory of the case, and it’s worth taking seriously rather than reacting to it emotionally. Let me try to engage it on its own terms, with some pushback where I think it’s warranted and some reinforcement where I think your worries are well-grounded.

On the economy, the short-term story you outline is internally consistent. Deregulation, weaker labor power, looser enforcement, and consumer protections treated as “friction” do tend to boost measured growth—especially profits and equity prices—at least for a while. That has been true repeatedly in U.S. history. The caveat, which you already hint at, is distributional: the gains are narrow, and the costs are deferred. Environmental degradation, worker precarity, and consumer harm don’t show up immediately in GDP. They show up later as health costs, instability, and political backlash. So “good for the economy” is true only under a very specific metric and time horizon, and that distinction will be blurred deliberately.

Trade is where I think your analysis is strongest and most underappreciated in public discussion. Retaliation is not hypothetical; it is the default response. Moreover, the idea that tariffs are merely economic tools misunderstands how they’re actually being framed inside policymaking circles. You’re quite right that they function as leverage instruments—punitive, discretionary, and often unrelated to trade balances per se. That introduces uncertainty, and uncertainty suppresses investment far more reliably than regulation ever did. The deeper risk isn’t protectionism alone but fragmentation: parallel trade blocs forming around China precisely because the U.S. becomes unreliable as a rules-based partner. A global depression is not inevitable, but a global slowdown combined with geopolitical realignment is a very real possibility.

Where I want to be careful is the social and legal dimension, not because your concerns are exaggerated, but because the mechanisms matter. A federal abortion ban via regulation would be legally and administratively difficult, though not impossible; more likely is aggressive reinterpretation of existing statutes, pressure on providers through licensing and reimbursement, and selective enforcement using FDA authority and interstate commerce arguments. That kind of attrition is slower but often more durable. On same-sex marriage, outright reversal is less likely than erosion—religious exemptions widened, federal recognition weakened, and enforcement hollowed out until the right exists formally but not practically in many places. That pattern has precedent.

On immigrants, I think your description is unfortunately accurate. The power of harassment lies precisely in its informality. You don’t need mass deportations to produce fear; you only need unpredictability. Employers, landlords, and local officials respond defensively, and the burden shifts quietly onto people least able to contest it. Legal status becomes something you must constantly re-prove, and that alone is enough to distort lives and labor markets. The same logic applies to Muslims, Black Americans, and other disfavored groups—not through new laws, but through selective enforcement of old ones.

Voting rights are perhaps the most fragile point institutionally. Identification laws, purges, and administrative hurdles don’t need racial language to have racial effects, and courts have already shown considerable tolerance for that distinction. Florida’s experiment, as you note, is a template: facial neutrality combined with targeted impact, defended as anti-fraud while solving a different “problem” entirely.

Where I’d push back slightly is on press invisibility. Some of this will be noticed, but it will be normalized through fatigue and procedural complexity. The public doesn’t react strongly to rule changes, enforcement guidance, or budgetary attrition. Suffering that occurs one household at a time rarely generates sustained outrage, especially when it’s framed as efficiency or discipline. That’s not invisibility so much as dispersal.

The through-line of your argument is that the danger isn’t dramatic rupture but bureaucratic drift—power exercised through discretion rather than proclamation. Historically, that’s exactly how durable illiberal systems consolidate themselves in formally democratic states. No single step is outrageous enough to stop, and by the time the pattern is clear, the institutions needed to reverse it are already weakened.

If there’s a countervailing force here, it isn’t moderation at the top; it’s friction in the system—courts, state governments, markets reacting badly to uncertainty, and simple administrative incompetence. Whether that friction is enough to slow or merely shape the outcome is the open question.

You said:

That set of predictions, made on my blog right after the election, has proved reasonably accurate. The main exception has been an almost hysterical attack on immigrants, with a lot more press coverage as a result. This seems jingoistic and driven by fear.

ChatGPT said:

I think that’s a fair self-assessment, and the exception you point to is an interesting one because it tells us something about motivation, not just outcomes.

Your original expectation—that most of this would be quiet, bureaucratic, and low-visibility—has largely held. The immigrant exception stands out precisely because it violates that pattern. The volume, tone, and theatricality of the attacks go well beyond what would be required to achieve policy goals like deterrence, labor control, or administrative tightening. That strongly suggests that this isn’t merely instrumental governance; it’s performative politics.

And yes, “jingoistic and driven by fear” fits rather well. Immigration functions as a kind of emotional condenser. It allows diffuse anxieties—economic insecurity, demographic change, loss of cultural dominance—to be focused onto a visible out-group. Once you do that, escalation becomes self-reinforcing: leaders must constantly raise the temperature to maintain attention and loyalty. Quiet enforcement wouldn’t satisfy that need; spectacle does.

What’s notable is that the hysteria actually undermines some of the administration’s own stated objectives. Constant press coverage mobilizes courts, NGOs, state governments, and even parts of the business community. If the goal were simply to reduce immigrant presence or rights, selective enforcement and administrative opacity would be far more effective. The fact that those tools are being supplemented—or replaced—by public crusades suggests that fear signaling to the base is at least as important as policy efficiency.

There’s also a deeper psychological element. Immigration is one of the few areas where power can be displayed physically: uniforms, raids, detention, expulsions. That kind of visible coercion has symbolic value that trade rules or regulatory changes lack. It reassures supporters that someone is “in control,” even if the actual outcomes are messy or counterproductive.

Your broader framework still holds, though. The danger isn’t only the loud stuff. In fact, the noise around immigrants may function as cover—absorbing attention and outrage while quieter erosions continue elsewhere with far less resistance. Historically, regimes that lean hard into one demonized group often do so precisely because it simplifies the narrative and exhausts opposition bandwidth.

So I’d say your prediction wasn’t wrong so much as incomplete in one revealing way: you anticipated technocratic attrition, but underestimated how much the movement needs an enemy that can be loudly and repeatedly named. Fear isn’t just a byproduct here; it’s a resource.

You said:

Most countries have a problem of undocumented aliens, but it is worse for the States than many because of economic draw. (The number of Vietnamese in Cambodia who just walked across the border is significant and unpopular but seems tolerated, probably because they form a pool of cheap labor and have specific skills). There is a saying, I think originally Chinese, of "pass a law, make a criminal." Visas are an excellent example of how that happens.

ChatGPT said:

That proverb is exactly to the point, and visas really are one of the cleanest illustrations of it. You take a normal human behavior—moving toward work, safety, family—and by inserting an administratively rigid rule set that doesn’t track economic reality, you manufacture illegality at scale. The law doesn’t suppress the behavior; it reclassifies it.

The U.S. case is extreme because the economic gradient is so steep and so close at hand. When the wage and opportunity differential is that large, enforcement has to be either draconian or selectively porous. In practice it’s always the latter. Employers, consumers, and entire sectors quietly rely on undocumented labor, while the legal system pretends this is aberrant rather than structural. That contradiction is not accidental; it’s functional. Illegality creates a workforce that is cheap, compliant, and disposable.

Your Cambodia–Vietnam example is a good parallel. Toleration there isn’t humanitarian so much as pragmatic. The migrants fill niches locals won’t or can’t, and everyone involved understands the arrangement even if it’s officially frowned upon. What differs is the level of politicization. In Cambodia the issue is largely economic and local; in the U.S. it’s been elevated into a symbolic battle over identity, sovereignty, and control. That elevation is what turns a chronic administrative problem into a moral panic.

“Pass a law, make a criminal” captures something deeper than just bad policy design. It points to how states use legality itself as a sorting mechanism. When compliance is expensive, slow, or capped far below demand—as with visas—you ensure a permanent class of violators. That gives authorities discretionary power: not everyone can be punished, so enforcement becomes selective. And selective enforcement is where fear enters the system. People don’t need to be arrested en masse to be controlled; they just need to know they could be.

What makes visas especially perverse is that they are often defended as orderly and humane alternatives to chaos. In reality, when quotas bear little relation to labor demand or family ties, they don’t prevent irregular migration—they guarantee it. The law then launders a predictable outcome into a narrative of criminality, which can be exploited politically, as you’ve been describing.

So when immigration hysteria flares up in the U.S., it’s less about numbers than about visibility and control. The system quietly requires undocumented people to function, but loudly denounces them to satisfy fear and signal authority. That tension isn’t a bug; it’s the operating principle.