BY TOM ARMS
Money talks. And nowhere does it shout louder than in the political arena of the United States of America.
The roll call of companies turning against the president and his acolytes are impressive. A truncated and growing list includes American Express, Mastercard, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Stripe, Apple, Amazon, Google, the PGA, Deutsche Bank, Signature Bank, Hallmark, Verizon, Comcast, AT and T, AirBnB, New York City, the Koch Organisation….
Several on the above list deserve special mention. Deutsche Bank has been (now was) the Trump Organisation’s bank for years. It is owed $340 million by the company. But that is not all, President Trump has personally guaranteed every penny of the loan which is interest only. This means that when the loan falls due in 2023 and 2024 he will have to stump up the full amount.
New York City building projects have been a Trump cash cow dating back to the early days of the business his father created. They have simply cancelled all contracts with the Trump Organisation. That will hurt the bottom line.
The Koch Organisation has been America’s leading contributor to conservative causes since Fred Koch financed the start of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society in 1953. Between 2009 and 2016 his sons Charles and David gave a staggering $889 million to the Republican Party, individual Republican politicians and conservative think tanks.
The Koch Organisation started going off Trump a few years ago. But after the attack on Capitol Hill, they also turned against his Congressional supporters. They have warned those Republican congressmen and senators who either objected to the Electoral College vote or voted against impeachment that the Koch Organisation’s contributions to their electoral war chests will likely be axed.
They need the money. To run for a seat in the House of Representatives costs an average of $1.6 million and you have to raise that money every two years because that is the length of your term of office. Senators hold their seats for six years, but the average cost of a campaign is $12 million. Elizabeth Warren’s last run for office cost $42,506,349.
Of course, congressional campaigns pale into financial significance compared to the cost of a presidential race, which rises almost exponentially every four years. In 2004 the total cost of the presidential campaign was $4.1 billion. By 2016 the candidates were spending $7.5 billion. The number crunchers are still going through the expenses of the 2020 campaign, but all the signs are that it will be another record-breaker.
The candidates would have you believe that most of the money comes from tens of thousands of everyday folk sending envelopes filled with five, ten and twenty-dollar bills. That is a fair chunk of the money but the biggest slice comes from corporate America and other special interest groups.
The amount that corporations can donate to politicians is—unlike in most Western democracies—unlimited. There was an attempt in 2010 (Citizens v. Federal Election Commission) to restrict political spending by corporate America, but the Supreme Court threw it out.
Contributions to Political Action Committees—or PACs—give big business access to Washington’s corridors of power. Their key people are assigned ambassadorships, seats on advisory councils and even cabinet posts. At the very least a CEO is guaranteed that a senator or congressman will answer their phone call and listen to their problems.
Most businesses are unconcerned whether a politician is a Democrat or Republican. They are profit-driven, not ideologically-driven. Often a large company will give equally to opposing camps. Their first priority is political stability as a requirement for economic growth. And to ensure stability they need a government that respects the constitution and the rule of law.
Donald Trump and his supporters have demonstrated contempt for the US constitution by not only refusing to accept the result of the November presidential elections, but actually going to the extreme of trying to overturn the vote. This is politically destabilising which is bad for business.
The Trumpists are thus faced with a dilemma: Their voters support Donald Trump and his destabilising libertarian we-don’t-give-a-damn-about-the law-and-the-constitution policies. But they need the cash from pragmatic businesses to buy the television, radio and newspaper advertising that has become a dominant feature of American elections. The likely scenario is that most of them will end up following the money.
World Review
Apparently, I am a sad, bad man. At least that is the opinion of the co-host of my weekly radio programme. Lockwood bases this judgement on the fact that I am opposed to Donald Trump and support his impeachment and trial in the Senate. I also applaud his removal from social media and the withdrawal of support by corporate America. This, says the die-hard Trump supporter, indicates a strong desire for the sad, bad character trait of vengeance aimed at a “great public servant.” It is now less than a week before Trump leaves the White House. What is the point of a trial aimed primarily at removing a person from office when that person has already left office? Why not let him leave peacefully? Why turn him into a potential martyr? Because it is vitally important that the United States is seen as a nation of laws and that anyone who flagrantly breaches those laws—including the President—suffers the consequences. And there will be consequences for Trump. If found guilty of the charge of the insurrection he will be banned from holding public office forever. He will also lose the perks of ex-presidents, and Trump loves his perks. There will be no pension, Secret Service agents or money for a presidential library. He and his political allies are in the process of being shunned by corporate America and social media. None of this will be vengeance. It will be a consequence of subverting the US constitution and upholding the rule of law. It is justice, not vengeance, which is sought.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appears to be indulging in scorched earth politics as he makes his way towards the State Department’s exit door. In less than a week he has re-designated Cuba a terrorist state, attached the terrorist label to the rebel Houthis in Yemen and re-established diplomatic exchanges with Taiwan. More could well be coming in the last few days. All of these diplomatic decrees are designed to slow down the march of the legislative agenda of the incoming Biden Administration. Joe Biden has made it clear that he wants to improve relations with Cuba and lower the rhetoric with China. The Iranian-backed Houthis might be a different matter. They are pushing themselves beyond the pale by indulging in Red Sea piracy to finance operations against the Saudi-backed regime. But incoming Secretary of State Antony Blinken will almost certainly want to reverse the moves on Cuba and Taiwan as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, it is harder to countermand a decree than it is to make one. This means that the president’s timetable for economic reform and the battle against coronavirus will inevitably be affected.
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It did not take long before the diplomatic repercussions of the assault on Capitol Hill were felt around the world. First of all, Western leaders—who were never great fans of Donald Trump—started abandoning the outgoing US president en masse. They condemned the attack and called on the self-deluded Trump to defuse a tense situation by admitting that he lost a free and fair election. Conspicuous by his silence from this chorus was Nigel Farage; the most sycophantic of Trump’s European supporters who led Britain’s campaign to exit the EU. Beijing took the opportunity to repeat its assertions that the riot proved the superiority of the Chinese political model and then drew parallels between the police/National Guard crackdown in Washington and Chinese actions in Hong Kong. The Foreign Affairs Committee of Russia’s upper house, posted on Facebook that “American democracy is limping on both feet.” Zimbabwe has suffered US sanctions for years for its refusal to implement democratic reforms. President Emmerson Mnangagwa tweeted a demand to the end of the sanctions. He said that the riots showed that “the US has no moral right to punish another nation under the guise of upholding democracy.” Finally, Iranian President Hussain Rouhani declared that the riots demonstrated “how fragile and vulnerable Western democracy is.” FBI director Christopher Wray has warned that there is a distinct danger of even more violence on inauguration day (20 January). That would be the icing on the cake for America’s enemies.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden don’t agree on much. But they do agree that social media has become too big too fast and needs to be curbed. They differ, however, on the reasons for wanting the curbs. To be precise both Trump and Biden want to either amend or repeal the US law known as Section 230. This directive sets the parameters in which the likes of Facebook and Twitter operate. Because almost all of the social media giants are based in the US, the law is the de facto operating position for their business globally. Section 230 is short, to the point and easy to understand. It says: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” This means that the social media giants are not legally liable for anything—no matter how dangerously libellous—that is posted on their digital bulletin boards. Section 230 has been a financial boon for social media companies. Without it they would have been sued into oblivion. Section 230 is one of the main reasons that Mark Zuckerberg and his investors are billionaires. But the law has also been a social disaster as digital walls have become a safe haven for thousands of hare-brained conspiracy theorists and vitriolic politicians who are safe to broadcast secure a knowledge that they are legally protected. The supporters of Section 230 point to the right of Free Speech and the benefits that it brings. Its opponents acknowledge the benefits of free speech but point that with any right comes a corresponding duty of responsibility.
You have to accept that Trump at least tried to deal with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. The US president met his North Korean counterpart three times and exchanged innumerable friendly letters. But he failed to persuade the hereditary leader of the rogue communist country to abandon his love affair with nuclear weapons and join the world community. Now it is Joe Biden’s turn. On the surface, the prospects look dismal. This week Kim put down his marker by public unveiling plans for a nuclear submarine, super-large nuclear warheads, spy satellites and missiles that are both more accurate and longer-range. Then he repeated his oft-stated message that America was North Korea’s public enemy number one. However, the North Korean leader qualified the threat by adding that he did “not rule out diplomacy.” This twig from an olive branch may be grasped by the new Secretary of State Antony Blinken who will be keen for a quick Asian success. If so, what could the diplomacy involve? It is believed that Kim is looking for reciprocal ever so slowly step-by-step reductions in US forces in South Korea to be offset by limited limits on North Korea’s nuclear capability. He would also demand lifting of sanctions which are hitting North Korea harder than ever because of the coronavirus pandemic. No one knows how many North Koreans have been infected, but Covid-19 has severely damaged the North Korean economy as Pyongyang was forced to close its border with China—the country’s primary trading link to the rest of the world. Covid could present a diplomatic opportunity for Biden and Blinken.
Stay Healthy,
Tom Arms
