{"id":92299,"date":"2026-05-15T07:02:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T06:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=92299"},"modified":"2026-05-15T07:02:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T06:02:38","slug":"trump-does-not-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/05\/15\/trump-does-not-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump does not care"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p2\">Donald Trump may accidentally have told the truth this week. He openly admitted that he was not thinking about the financial well-being of ordinary Americans when deciding his policy on Iran. That matters because it reveals something fundamental about both Trump and the system that created him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">In this video, I explore why Trump\u2019s government increasingly looks like a government of billionaires for billionaires, detached from the economic reality facing ordinary people. Rising food prices, fuel costs, inflation, shortages and supply chain failures are becoming real pressures across the world, and yet those at the top appear indifferent to the consequences.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">I argue that this is not simply about Trump as an individual. It is about the endgame of neoliberalism itself. A political and economic system built to transfer wealth upwards is now failing economically, politically, socially and even militarily. The warning signs are everywhere: disrupted trade, shortages, financial instability, rising insecurity and growing public anger.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">The question now is what comes next. Can politics based on care, security and well-being replace a model built on extraction and inequality before the damage becomes irreversible?<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JWL6wUBuHvE?si=lQq2tFulxoAaBZI2\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is the audio version:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; min-width: min(100%, 430px); height: 150px;\" title=\"Trump does not care\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/player-v2\/?i=64huf-1ac3e43-pb&amp;from=pb6admin&amp;share=1&amp;download=1&amp;rtl=0&amp;fonts=Arial&amp;skin=f6f6f6&amp;font-color=auto&amp;logo_link=episode_page&amp;btn-skin=c73a3a\" width=\"100%\" height=\"150\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is the transcript:<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p class=\"p1\">Every now and again, Donald Trump almost says something that\u2019s true. Now it\u2019s very rare. Most of the time, I don\u2019t believe a word he says. I doubt that he believes a word he says, but sometimes, just occasionally, something slips out, and this week it did.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">He said he did not think about the financial position of people in the USA when considering his strategy on the war with Iran. Now, that was an astonishing admission; an admission of utter indifference to the well-being of the people of the USA, and on this occasion, I think we should believe every word that he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Trump is arguably the richest man ever to hold the US presidency. He has used his second term to considerably enhance that wealth; that we know. He and his sons have been involved in the most massive amount of trading to improve their financial positions. And his cabinet already contains more billionaires than any other in US history. Patterns of insider trading, now becoming very clear before every one of his press announcements, suggests that those who aren\u2019t yet billionaires are intent on becoming so. And this then is a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Ordinary Americans are simply not part of the Trump world. Trump and his cabinet are totally detached from ordinary economic reality, as most Americans and most people around the world would see it. They can only identify with tech billionaires who backed and funded them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Rising food and fuel prices are beyond Trump\u2019s imagination as a result, and whatever he spends on either, the impact on his well-being is so small that he does not understand that for most Americans, the inflation that he is creating is a real pressure on their well-being.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">He doesn\u2019t realise that Americans are terrified of inflation, job losses and recession, and he is not. That is the difference between Trump and his electorate. That is what is going to break the MAGA regime.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">And none of this is an accident. What is happening is the logical endpoint of neoliberalism. That system was always designed to extract maximum value from working people and to reallocate it to a tiny elite who could claim they were worth it, as the saying goes. Now we can see that not only are they not worth it, but that by pursuing this agenda, they are destroying the American economy, and with it, that of much of the rest of the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The warnings that I\u2019ve given on this channel about forthcoming shortages are now being borne out in real time. What we are seeing is that absolute shortages of fuel and food are emerging, and these will be hitting us from mid-June onwards. They are already hitting Southeast Asia; we know they are coming.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">At the same time, business supply chains are already becoming disrupted, and the warning signals are flashing everywhere about the fact that this is going to get very much worse.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">And it\u2019s not just in the obvious businesses that we are seeing this. You\u2019d think about oil, you\u2019d think about food, but the most recent warning is with regard to insulation materials and paint, both of which are delaying shipbuilding. The crisis is going to emerge everywhere.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Businesses will begin to fail as a result during the autumn, and the banking crisis that I have forecast is going to develop as a consequence, whether we like it or not, unless Trump gets back to the negotiating table, and that\u2019s not very likely.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The sequence I\u2019m talking about is not speculation now. It is already visible, and it is highly likely to see its way through to the end.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">And in that case, let me make one warning: never underestimate the anger of a mother who cannot feed her children. Faced with that situation, most people, most especially mothers, will do almost anything to feed their kids. That is a reality. Their children matter to them more than anything else in the world, and they will not see them go hungry. That\u2019s when we get societal breakdown. The risk is that it may happen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Steve Keen is talking about world food shortages of up to 20%. I think he may be overstating it a bit, but the reality is, there is going to be real suffering as a consequence of food shortages, and that is the crisis that we face. And this reality is going to hit the USA, the UK, the whole of Europe, and we are already beginning to see it in Southeast Asia. There are food shortages there already. Anyone who does not understand this is out of touch with reality, and that includes the man in the White House.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Is Trump worried about any of this? I take him at his word. He is not.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">What he is worried about is losing face over Iran. The fact is that having to stand down there will be the biggest strategic US military defeat in history. It is fear of that which motivates him and not fear of the suffering of his own people. The gap between his priorities and theirs could not be wider, and that gap is now a danger to all of us.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">What the evidence shows is that neoliberalism has reached its endgame. It cannot deliver on its own promises, not even to those it claims to serve. It can\u2019t even deliver victory in war anymore.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">In pursuing wealth and power for an elite, it is destroying the societies it governs. People are already beginning to reject this political philosophy as a consequence, and the USA is heading for both an economic and a political crisis, and that will hasten this rejection. The UK, Europe, and many others will follow in that wake, and this then is the moment when we need to talk seriously about what happens next.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The politics of care is, of course, the answer, but the road to it will be painful. There is going to be a great deal of suffering because of Trump\u2019s indifference to the people of the USA and the world, and that suffering is the direct consequence of the choices made by people like him and by all those who supported and enabled him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The question now is whether we can build something better before the damage is complete. That\u2019s what I\u2019m asking myself. That\u2019s what I\u2019m hoping for. I don\u2019t know whether we can; I fear the consequences of Trump and his indifference, but what about you?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">What do you think? There\u2019s a poll down below. Let us have your opinions. Please like this video if that\u2019s what you do. Please share it, and if you\u2019re so inclined and would like to give us a donation towards the cost of doing these videos, we\u2019d be very grateful.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Poll<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"polls-400\" class=\"wp-polls\">\n\t<form id=\"polls_form_400\" class=\"wp-polls-form\" action=\"\/Blog\/index.php\" method=\"post\">\n\t\t<p style=\"display: none;\"><input type=\"hidden\" id=\"poll_400_nonce\" name=\"wp-polls-nonce\" value=\"0d0a018111\" \/><\/p>\n\t\t<p style=\"display: none;\"><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"poll_id\" value=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n\t\t<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>What does Trump\u2019s admission reveal about the current political and economic crisis?<\/strong><\/p><div id=\"polls-400-ans\" class=\"wp-polls-ans\"><ul class=\"wp-polls-ul\">\n\t\t<li><input type=\"radio\" id=\"poll-answer-1767\" name=\"poll_400\" value=\"1767\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-1767\">Political elites are increasingly disconnected from ordinary people\u2019s lives<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"radio\" id=\"poll-answer-1768\" name=\"poll_400\" value=\"1768\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-1768\">Rising shortages and inflation could trigger major social unrest<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"radio\" id=\"poll-answer-1769\" name=\"poll_400\" value=\"1769\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-1769\">Neoliberal economics has failed and is now breaking down visibly<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"radio\" id=\"poll-answer-1770\" name=\"poll_400\" value=\"1770\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-1770\">We urgently need a new politics focused on care, stability and public wellbeing<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<\/ul><p style=\"text-align: center;\"><input type=\"button\" name=\"vote\" value=\"   Vote   \" class=\"Buttons\" onclick=\"poll_vote(400);\" \/><\/p><p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"#ViewPollResults\" onclick=\"poll_result(400); return false;\" title=\"View Results Of This Poll\">View Results<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n\t<\/form>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"polls-400-loading\" class=\"wp-polls-loading\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-polls\/images\/loading.gif\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Loading ...\" title=\"Loading ...\" class=\"wp-polls-image\" \/>&nbsp;Loading ...<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Donald Trump may accidentally have told the truth this week. He openly admitted that he was not thinking about the financial well-being of ordinary Americans<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/05\/15\/trump-does-not-care\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92299","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=92299"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92304,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92299\/revisions\/92304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}