{"id":81337,"date":"2025-04-03T09:58:26","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T08:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=81337"},"modified":"2025-04-03T09:58:26","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T08:58:26","slug":"reich-on-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/04\/03\/reich-on-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Reich on Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an excerpt from an article by Robert Reich (Clinton's labour Secretary, amongst much else) on his SubStack<\/a> this morning.<\/p>\n

I recommend reading the rest and subscribing, which is free for most content. I think it worth paying the annual sub, which is I think $40:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Trump\u2019s major interest is capitulation itself.\u00a0<\/strong>Surrender is the whole point. He and those under him who are managing these extortionate initiatives want headlines that say \u201cthey\u201d have surrendered to him \u2014 whether \u201cthey\u201d is a country, a major university, a large law firm, a big nonprofit, even a Democratic state like California. Surrender is the point. Domination is his goal. (It always has been.) <\/li>\n
  2. Each surrender feeds the public impression that Trump wants fed \u2014 that he is all-powerful, invincible, and able to get every person, institution, and country to cower to him.<\/strong>\u00a0He knows intuitively that each capitulation feeds his power \u2014 because\u00a0power<\/em>\u00a0is itself an impression; invincibility, the consequence of everyone\u2019s capitulation. <\/li>\n
  3. Each capitulation encourages him and his goons to engage in even more bullying of more institutions and countries.\u00a0<\/strong>Trump\u2019s need for dominance is insatiable. Every time he succeeds in gaining capitulation, he and his goons look for other opportunities to enlarge the impression that he has boundless power. <\/li>\n
  4. Most of these institutions and countries will cave to Trump because their leaders are mainly concerned about their own institution\u2019s or country\u2019s survival.<\/strong>\u00a0They are not concerned about the effects of their capitulations on other institutions or on the world as a whole. The costs of significant losses of funding, clients, or access are borne by them; the benefits of resistance are felt by all. <\/li>\n
  5. It\u2019s vitally important, therefore, that institutions and countries join together to fight this systemic intimidation.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Will the world do as he suggests?<\/p>\n

    My own thinking is very close to his, as was noted here by a commentator earlier this morning, which is why I went to look.<\/p>\n

    Most especially, I share his points 1 and 2 when it comes to motivation, point five when it comes to action and point four when it comes to fears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This is an excerpt from an article by Robert Reich (Clinton’s labour Secretary, amongst much else) on his SubStack this morning. I recommend reading the
     Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,106,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-politics","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81337"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81340,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81337\/revisions\/81340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}