Diktats, DOGEs, Dissent & Democrats in Disarray in the Era of Trump

Kim Moody

ANALYZING THE VARIOUS policies and assaults of Trump’s unprecedented blitzkrieg would takes many works. Here, important aspects of the reorganization of the American Empire will be left to others. I will limit my analysis to a few central points that suggest the limits to as well as extent of Trump’s bulldozers and the roots of opposition.

The ultimate tripwire in both Trump’s plans and the Democrat’s efforts to block or minimize them, much less pose a real alternative, lies in the long-term state of capitalism, above all in the United States and other developed economies.

Trade, Tariffs and the Cost of Living

Trump has given new life to imperial conquest. His focus on Panama, Greenland and even Canada may be just plain nuts in political or military terms, but it’s not entirely irrational economically. Indeed, the rush for rare earth and metals needed for Artificial Intelligence and related technology, along with competition for stakes in the Arctic, are some of today’s newer imperial contests.

Reappropriating the Panama Canal would give significant U.S. control over ocean-to-ocean trade and its costs; purchasing Greenland and even more preposterously annexing Canada would give Greater America dominance in the expanding northwest passage Arctic shipping lanes. Alliance with Russia would add a huge presence in the northeast Arctic passage, completing two major northern inter-oceanic routs. Both would reduce ocean-to-ocean trade time significantly.(1)

There are already some 200 ice-free ports on the various arctic shipping lanes, at least twenty of them in Greenland.(2) As the polar ice cap melts the possibilities become, well, not endless — because they will be bringing climate disaster closer — but in the meantime there is money to be made.

Of course, the objects of this colonial fantasy will resist and there are problems of international law. What is more likely than possession is that Trump wants and will get some deals like that reached with Panama.

There the Hong Kong-owned firm Panama Ports Company has sold 90% ownership to a U.S. consortium headed by private equity giant Blackrock that gives them control of the ports at the Canal’s Atlantic and Pacific entrances. In addition, the president of Panama agreed to dismiss China’s Belt and Road initiatives in Panama.(3) Quite a coup for Trump.

Perhaps Greenland will be persuaded to give preference to U.S. shippers in Arctic ports, along with the rights to rare earth and other metals he so covets. Such a reorganization of trade routes, however, would disrupt current global supply chains as some east cost U.S. and European shippers shift from eastward movement to westward “steaming,” rerouting and disrupting major supply chains.

The tariffs are supposed to bring revenue to offset the reduction of taxes on the rich, but their main alleged purpose is to encourage firms to invest in manufacturing in the United States by raising the cost of imports. Customs and tariffs account for about three percent of U.S. federal revenues. Trump raised them to 3.65% in his first term and Biden brought them back down somewhat. While the much larger tariffs he is proposing now would increase revenue somewhat, they would also reduce imports, limiting new income from the tariffs.

In any case, while high tariffs will significantly raise consumer costs, they are unlikely to offset deep tax cuts. As a Biden White House study put it, “It is mathematically unlikely that a broad tariff could ever replace revenue raised by individual income tax.”(4)

While there has been some increase in U.S. manufacturing in recent years, the major reason that increased tariffs are not likely to produce some big manufacturing revival lies in the state of the economies of the United States and most developed nations since the Great Recession of 2008-2010.

This is characterized not only by the tendential fall and volatility of profit rates and the extreme unevenness of the distribution of profits within the United States, but by a decade and a half of low productivity in manufacturing that shows no signs of improving, along with relatively slow economic growth in general combined with a tendency toward inflation.

As a result, tariffs of the sort Trump has put on, off and on again on Mexico and Canada supposedly until April, and his surprise 50% on Canadian steel and aluminium along with those imposed on China, will accelerate the already existing tendency toward inflation.(5)

The auto industry is a clear example. About 40% of vehicles sold in the United States by Stellantis, 30% by Ford, and 25% by GM are made in Canada or Mexico. Nissan, Honda and Volkswagen also produce cars in Mexico for export to the United States. Obviously, a 25% tariff would increase sticker prices significantly. But even cars and trucks “made in the USA” depend on imported parts.

A recent OECD study shows that parts imported from Mexico and Canada account for an average of 10% of costs for cars made in the United States, while Chinese parts add another 5.4%.(6) Obviously, large tariffs on such inputs not only in auto but throughout manufacturing will push prices up across the board, even beyond the underlying inflationary trends in contemporary capitalism.

One estimate of the tariffs proposed so far, including those on Mexico, Canada and China sees a $600 billion increase in costs.(7) This will be a serious problem for Trump, who won in part on the promise to control the cost of living.

Shrinking the State, or Political and Ethnic Cleansing?

Today, the U.S. federal state employs about three million civilian workers, down from its 1990 high of 3.4 million with no decrease in the budget. It increased under Reagan, dropped somewhat under Clinton and Obama, then rose under Trump and Biden. But it has never dropped much under three million for the past half century. Nor have its costs ever fallen significantly over the decades.(8)

Elon Musk claims his DOGE has cut 200,000 federal jobs. This would bring it to the 2016 level under Obama, hardly enough to fund Trump’s proposed gifts to the obscenely wealthy. Faced with criticism from many corners, Musk says agency heads will do the rest of the dirty work and he will move on to re-digitizing the already digital agency systems.(9)

 DOGE, however, has already run into trouble from various sources including the courts and, of course, federal workers and their unions. So it is not clear if even these cuts will be permanent. If, on the other hand, they stick and even deepen, the government will more likely face disruptions and closures rather than efficiencies.

This may be fine with Trump, Musk and their billionaire colleagues, but those in the public impacted by this will not be so happy — and they will be many, including current MAGA supporters. Furthermore, a growing number of businesses that have government contracts or depend on government approval have expressed warning in their recent quarterly reports about the chaos created by DOGE.(10)

Along with the inhuman deportation of millions of immigrants, one of the most immediately socially damaging moves under contemplation, and likely to bring a backlash, is the proposed slashing of Medicaid. House Republicans have already moved toward $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid over ten years in their budget resolution. That would be a significant chunk of the $660 billion annual Medicaid bill.

While Medicaid is still seen as a program for the poor, in fact, 72 million people receive Medicaid benefits. Such cuts would hit Democratic districts more, as these are in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, but many Republican districts will also be hit. In Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson’s district, for example, a third of the population get Medicaid assistance. Some Republican representatives have expressed concerns about the electoral effects of such cuts.(11)

Serious cuts in Medicaid will also undermine hospitals and nursing homes in those districts hardest hit. Medicaid and Medicare together account for almost a third of hospital revenue. Medicaid alone provides about 14% of that income and more for nursing homes. The proposed budget cuts would lead to the closing of wards and services, and layoffs of healthcare workers. Thus, communities hit hardest by cuts and already overstretched for medical services would see shrinking facilities.

These cuts will also impact state budgets in general, since combined federal and state Medicaid funds compose an average of 28% of state revenue.(12) Opposition to Medicaid cuts has already taken shape in the form of legal challenges by an alliance of blue state Attorneys General.

Most of the cuts made so far point not only to shrinking or eliminating agencies that aid poor and working-class people at home and abroad, but specifically at asserting presidential power and control over every aspect of the executive branch bureaucracy.

Seven thousand in the USAID program, 1700 in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and three top administrators from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and two at the perpetually understaffed National Labor Relations Board were dismissed or given leave.

Trump’s new agency heads have also carried out political purges in the State Department, the National Security Council, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and two Department of Commerce economic advisory panels. One clear indication of increased presidential power and license is the firing of the 18 Inspectors General who oversee all major federal agencies — that is, the elimination of objective oversight and transparency.

Trump/Musk also fired more than a dozen federal prosecutors who worked on investigations of Trump’s criminal activities.(13) And so on.

Not since Woodrow Wilson segregated much of the federal bureaucracy has a president taken such openly racist actions against federal workers. One of Trump’s first executive orders was a general end to all DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs. This has been followed by firing or placing on “leave” DEI-related personnel throughout the government.

By mid-February this included those at Veterans Affairs, EPA, Education, EEOC, and even the Coast Guard.(14) Along with the planned deportation of millions of immigrants, this is one more step in Trump’s effort to Make America White Again — something it never was. Demonstrations have already broken out in opposition to this overt racism and more can be expected.

To top off his ethnic cleansing of the government with plutocracy or even oligarchy, Trump appointed no fewer than 13 billionaires and an additional number of multi-millionaires to fill high level positions in his administration. Some are friends of The Donald, many are in finance, private equity or real estate. Together they are said to be worth $380 billion.

This doesn’t count Elon Musk whose wealth at over $400 billion exceeds that of the whole bunch, at least until his Tesla stock plummeted in March.(15) This is quite a lineup for a supposed populist.

Barriers to MAGAnomics, Roots of Resistance

Both the barriers to much of Trump’s dream of a smoothly running, manufacturing-based economic Fortress America and the roots of growing resistance lie in part in the long-standing state of the U.S. and world economy. I say ”in part” because human social action is never simply a reflection of economic conditions.

Trump will go against the economic grain as long as possible, and inflation and anti-deportation driven resistance from below will help but not ensure increasing numbers of grassroots leaders and organizations, potentially including growth of organized labor. I along with many others have often argued for the need of a self-conscious and well-organized, working class “militant minority,” such as emerged in the 1930s, to provide leadership in mass resistance.

By now it is almost universally recognized that capitalism in the advanced economies, with the United States at their center and China catching up, have slowed to a near crawl over the last decade or more and are expected to continue at this pace. Even the International Monetary Fund and World Bank confirm this. As IMF Director Kristalina Georgieva put it last year, the rest of the decade appears “sluggish and disappointing” and “without a course of correction, we are…heading for a tepid Twenties.”(16) While there is debate over this reality, from a Marxist perspective a general decline in profit rates, with some ups and downs, has limited investment in productive areas of the economy.

Furthermore, even if the super-rich spent their new tax breaks less on crypto currencies, stocks and other financial speculation (against Trump’s advice), success is sure to be limited. The U.S. economy has been distorted by disproportionate amounts of investment in developing the huge (super-expensive and ecologically disastrous) infrastructure required by generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related technology. Much of this is likely to have little practical industrial use — although Musk will soak up some as he remakes the U.S. state.

 The huge amounts of capital sucked up by this AI sector, in turn, have been one factor in undermining productivity in the rest of the economy, particularly in the production and movement of goods. In an effort to increase profits, firms have raised prices and contributed to inflation. Together these trends point toward a period of “stagflation” analogous to that of the 1970s rather than a new “golden era.”(17)

In the United States the mass of non-financial profits has increased from year to year, but their distribution has prevented a period of general growth. One the one hand, hundreds of billions for AI and a small group of large corporations (mostly “The Magnificent Seven” tech bros); on the other, “zombie” firms slumping along with few if any profits comprising twenty to thirty percent of all corporations in recent years, and those in the middle falling below par.(18)

An indication of the spread of profits can be seen in the fact that measured in net profit margins (after expenses, interest and taxes), information technology firms lead by twice the average. With so many corporations showing poor returns on investment, average profit rates since 2022 have fallen again.(19)

Furthermore, the idea that generative AI will bring about a renaissance in manufacturing is another techno-fantasy. As Daron Acemoglu, a leading expert on AI, notes, as of late 2024 “only about 5 percent of businesses in the United States have reported using AI.” Further he argues:

“A.I. is an information technology. It will not make your cake or mow your lawn. Nor will it take over the running of companies or scientific inquiry. Rather, it can automate a range of cognitive tasks that are typically performed in offices or in front of a computer.”(20)

A recent Brookings Institution study drew the same conclusion that “AI is not likely to disrupt physical, routine, blue collar work much at all, barring technological breakthroughs in robotics.”(21) The latter has failed to impact manufacturing or transportation productivity for over a decade despite some new developments.

A 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that almost 80% of workers don’t use AI or haven’t heard of it in their workplace. Furthermore, those who do use it are concentrated in a few “high-skill metro areas,” i.e. San Jose, San Francisco, Durham, New York and Washington, DC, not major cites of manufacturing.

AI may well speed up and eliminate many jobs, but these will not be primarily in the production and movement of goods or in most services that require physical effort and movement, the majority of working-class jobs.(22)

Finally, inflation is almost certainly going to undermine Trump’s plans and, at the same time, produce increased resistance among greater numbers of working-class people. This is likely to encourage both pushes for union militancy and new organization, despite Trump’s undermining of the NLRB and general anti-union fanaticism.

Low productivity combined with longterm stagnation of real wages and mark-ups to increase profits (even though unevenly distributed) tend to push price increases and inflation. After falling somewhat from February 2024, inflation rose again beginning in September through January 2025 to three percent on all goods before falling slightly to 2.8% in February due almost entirely to falling airfare and car prices — reductions that won’t last long with Trump’s tariffs.

Overall, Goldman Sachs expects Trump’s tariffs to increase inflation by a full percentage point in 2025.(23) Real GDP growth fell over that period to 2.3% and unemployment remained around four percent. Despite rising profits, fixed investment was down and business bankruptcies were up, all pointing to “stagflation,” slow growth combined with increasing prices.(24)

Strikes of course are about more than wages, with work-related issues often being even more important. And here too there is reason to expect resistance as employers seek to increase slumping profit rates through work intensification — driven often these days by digital technology.

As things stand now in early 2025, however, there is no upsurge in strikes. As the Institute for Labor Research (ILR) Labor Action Tracker reports, the number of strikes fell from 471 in 2023 to 359 in 2024, while the number of strikers dropped from 539,000 to 293,000. These levels are still well above 2022 and 2021. By early March this year, however, only 36 strikes were recorded by the ILR tracker, considerably below the previous three years.(25)

The number of strikers in 2023 were buoyed by such big bargaining units such as 160,000 SAG-AFTRA actors, 75,000 SEIU members at Kaiser Permanente, and 65,000 teachers in Los Angeles.(26) Two possible reasons for this decline in strike action are that consumer prices increases slowed for most of 2024 and that the number of contracts expiring, which is when most strikes occur, was lower than in 2023.

In terms of major strikes by 1000 or more workers, however, the numbers were up with 31 involving 271,500 workers, over 90% of the total, beginning in 2024. The number of major strikes was well above that for any year since 2000, while the number of strikers was also above most years since 2000 except for 2023 and the “Red State” teachers’ upsurge of 2018-19.

Education and health services have been the biggest sites of strikes, and the West the location of a majority, reflecting changes in the working class.(27) A large proportion of the contracts expiring in 2025 are in education and health services so that a significant number of large strikes are likely.

On the other hand, new organizing accelerated somewhat in 2024 with an improved NLRB and bolder tactics — although still far short of what is needed for labor to actually grow through this method. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates union membership barely changed, squeaking up by 31,000 due entirely to the education and health sectors.(28) Early, if partial, organizing victories at Amazon by the Teamsters and “transplants” by the UAW, however, could preview a major breakthrough with or without the NLRB’s aid.

At the same time reform movements in recent years have pushed for greater democracy and action in a number of unions including the United Auto Workers (UAW), Teamsters, rail unions, United Food and Commercial Workers, Theatrical and Stage Employees, Professional and Technical Engineers, and the National Association of Letter Carriers.

Following the examples of Teamsters at UPS in 2023, more workers engaged in active contract campaigns and contract rejections, often winning significant gains with a serious strike threat.(29) These are indications that while the new level of strikes and increased organizing remains low by historical standards, the new tactics and greater rank and file involvement suggest the “militant majority” is growing.

Winning by conventional means will be even more difficult in 2025, not only because Trump will do whatever he can to prevent victories, break unions and attack immigrant workers who are key in many industries, but because of the underlying problem of profitability. In addition to poor profits for many companies, production costs have already risen as measured by increases in the BLS’s producer price index, and employers will resist the big gains of the last couple of years.(30)

At the same time, however, rising costs of living will encourage worker action. It is not possible to predict which of these contradictory forces will dominate, but the underlying conflict has intensified. Signs of resistance are growing both in collective bargaining and the opposition to the mass deportations of immigrant workers.

The Chicago Teachers Union, for example, is attempting to build a coalition of local unions willing to fight Trump’s initiatives. Strategically, building on the successes of the last year or so, by Teamsters and others, a serious breakthrough at Amazon or other highly profitable firms could shift the balance of class forces significantly.

Dazed Democrats in Decline and Disarray

One place where serious resistance is notably missing is the Democratic Party. From past and current office holders, sympathetic strategists and pundits, allied consultants and newspaper columnists consultants to major donors, there is disillusionment and disagreement about the party’s election defeat, its loss of traditional Democratic voters, its fate, and what to do about it.

Too “woke” or not too “woke”? Oppose or cooperate (when possible)? “Play dead” (James Carville) or “wait and see” (Hakeem Jeffries). Or perhaps that old one, “It’s the economy, Stupid.” While there are suddenly occasional rhetorical denouncements of billionaires, there is no serious reconsideration of economic or social policy with which to win voters.

One thing almost everyone seems to agree on is that, while there are plenty of contenders for the 2028 presidential nomination, this party lacks leaders and leadership. Additionally, say politicians and pundits alike, the problem is one of the party’s “message” and “brand.”(31)

This is the language of advertising, not politics or policy, much less grassroots organization. It is the analytical framework of a party that spends billions on advertising, consultants and party bureaucracy, lacks a membership or organized base, and depends on the kindness of donors. Its electoral base is an individualized public and it is losing more and more of that.

It wasn’t always so. Whatever one thinks about the limitations of the New Deal Coalition that collapsed decades ago, and they were many, it was rooted in urban neighborhoods through its old machines, corrupt as they were, with their county organizations, party club systems, and after 1937 active industrial unions. By the 1970s the machines, starved of patronage with urban demographics changed, clubs abandoned and county organizations hollowed out, were gone.(32)

Even before the industrial jobs left and the unions shrank, as the industrial unions increasingly embraced business unionism, they lost their ability to mobilize members for political action. Politics and political endorsements, like collective bargaining, became the sole possession of the leadership. In the workplace, grievances were increasingly settled at the highest level and shop stewards and committees reduced to legalized case work rather than mobilization and action, economic and political.

So, after a brief increase to 80% against Goldwater in 1964, with no organized resistance to the “white backlash” of the late 1960s, the Democratic union household and white union member vote collapsed long ago. The union household percentage has since been stuck in the mid-to-high fifties except for 1976 after eight years of Nixon, never to recover, not even after four years of Trump.(33)

In their place beginning in the 1970s came the corporate PACs, followed by wealthy donors, high-priced consultants, and increasingly well-financed and staffed top-level party committees.(34) In 2024, the three major national Democratic Party Committees alone — not including what related PACs, individual candidates and state parties raised — spent over $2 billion compared to $620 million in 2000, much of it spent on media and consultants.(35)

Politically, the centrists who now control these party committees have no plan to change any of this, and no economic policies to alter the perception that the Democrats are the party of the (previous, unsatisfactory) status quo.

The Democratic hierarchy’s major, ongoing problem is the erosion of its electoral base seen in 2024 by the loss of six million votes compared to 2020, including the continued decline of the Black male vote and the steep drop in the Latino vote.(36)

Over the last two decades registered voters who identified fully as Democrats fell from between 37-40% to 33% in 2024. Things were no better down ballot as the percentage of Democratic state legislators became a minority, at 44%, for the first time in over one hundred years.(37)

The economic conditions discussed above — combined with an inability to tax high incomes, obscene individual wealth and the bloated profits of the financial and high tech giants due to the Democrats’ dependence on them, as well as the ideology of most officials and office holders — precludes the Democrats advocating a significant redistribution of wealth.

That’s why universal healthcare, job guarantees, low-cost housing, increased minimum wages, price controls of any sort, vast expansion of renewable energy sources, etc. are beyond serious consideration.

Furthermore, the 2024 election moved the national party even more to the center. In the House of Representatives, the Squad lost two members and the Progressive Caucus made no net gains. On the other hand, 23 of the 33 newly elected House Democrats joined the centrist New Democratic Coalition, making it the largest caucus in the House by far.

If that wasn’t a bad enough sign, the New Dems picked conservative Blue Dog Brad Schneider as Chair. Any hope that this bunch will either do serious battle with Trump or improve the party’s economic and social policies is a fantasy.

 The Democrats may take back Congress in 2026 as a result of the reaction against Trump’s excesses. That contest, however, will be fought in a little more than 40 districts (out of 435) that are at all competitive. Many of these are in disproportionately well-to-do suburban Congressional districts where the “message” will be a moderate one, so any shift to the left is ruled out. The party’s handpicked “frontline” candidates who will defend competitive Democratic districts are always overwhelmingly moderate New Dems.

This means a continued cycle of center-versus-right winning the House, or worse, the growth of the right with or without Trump, rather than any hope of a progressive development. That is, unless grassroots opposition grows rapidly and the left takes seriously its own rhetoric about building a workers’ party, even if it’s only a few experiments in that direction in 2026.

Notes

1. Nordregio.org., Sea Routes and Ports in the Arctic, Nordregio.org., January 2019, https://nordregio.org/maps/sea-routes-and-ports-in-the-Arctic/
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2. Guardian Staff, “US firm to take control of ports on Panama canal in $14bn deal,” The Guardian, March 5, 2025: 2.
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3. 3. White House, Tariffs as a Major Revenue Source: Implications for Distribution and Growth, White House, July 12, 2024, https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/cea/written-materials/2024/07/12/tariffs-as-a-major-revenue-source-implications-for-distribution-and-growth/ ; Felix Richter, “Tariffs Are Not a Meaningful Source of Government Revenue, Statista, November 12, 2024, https://www.statista.com/chart/33464/us-government-receipts-in-fy-2023-by-source/
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4. BLS, Manufacturing: NAICS 31-33, Industries at a Glance, February 19, 2025. See below.
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5. Kana Inagati, et al. “How the car industry is exposed to Donald Trump’s tariffs, “ Financial Times, November 29, 2024, https://www.ft.com/content/3d21261d-6c58-4487-9191-1c848df9fde9
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6. Michale Roberts, “”Trump’s ‘little disturbance’,” Michael Roberts Blog, March 5, 2025.
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7. USAFacts, How many people work for the federal government? USAFacts, December 19, 2024, https://usafacts.org/Arcticles/how-many-people-work-for-the-federal-government/
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8. Elixabeth Dwoskin, Faoz Siddiqui, and Emily Davies, “Turmoil within DOGE spills into public view as Musk’s group confronts a PR crisis,” The Washington Post, March 10, 2025. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/03/10/doge-musk-rebrand-trump-conflicts/
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9. Douglas MacMilan, Aaron Schaffer and Daniek Gilbert, “Companies warn investors that DOGE’s federal cuts might hurt business,” The Washington Post, March 9, 2025.
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10. Michael Kinnucan, “Republicans Want to Gut Medicaid. They Might Regret It,” New York Times, February 28, 20205, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/opinion/medicaid-republicans.html; Margot Sanger-Katz and Alicia Parlapiano, “What Can House Republicans Cut Instead of Medicaid? Not Much,” New York Times, February 25, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/upshot/republicans-medicaid-house-budget.html
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11. Jenny Yang, “Hospital Revenue share in the U.S. as of 2021, by payer mix,” Statista, July 15, 2024, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1029719/composition-of-hospital-revenue-by-payer-contribution-in-the-us/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20Medicare%20payments%20contributed%20to%2018.9%20percent,notified%20via%20email%20when%20this%20statistic%20is%20updated; Kinnucan; and Sanger-Katz and Parlpiano.
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12. Amy Schoenfeld, et. al., “Where Trump, Musk and DOGE Have Cut Federal Workers So Far,” New York Times, February 11, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/11/us/politics/trump-musk-doge-federal-workers.html; Reuters, “Trump administration disbands two expert panels on economic data,” Reuters, March 5,2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-disbands-two-expert-panels-economic-data-2025-03-05/
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13. Schoenfeld, op cit.
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14. Peter Charalambous, et. al., “Trump has tapped an unprecedented 13 billionaires for his administration. Here’s who they are,” ABC News, December 18, 2024, https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-tapped-unprecedented-13-billionaires-top-administration-roles/story?id=116872968; The Economic Times, News, “Billionaires in Trump 2.0 team worth over $380 bn, exceeding 172 countries’ GDP,” January 3, 2025, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/global-trends/billionaires-in-trump-2-0-team-elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-warren-stephens-linda-mcmahon-jared-isaacman-howard-lutnick-steven-witkoff-doug-burgum-scott-bessent-worth-over-380-bn-exceeding-172-countries-gdp/Articleshow/116919672.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
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15. Michael Roberts, “The Tepid Twenties,” Michale Roberts Blog, April 14, 2024.
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16. Ascension Mejorado and Manuel Roman, Declining Profitability and the Evolution of the US Economy: A Classical Perspective, New York: Routledge, 2024; Michael Roberts, The Long Depression: How It Happened, Why It Happened, and What Happens Next, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016; Anwar Shaikh, Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises, New York: Oxford University Press, 2016; Michael Roberts “Blog” which is cited in places below. For shifting logistics and falling productivity see Kim Moody, “The End of Lean Production & What Lies Ahead for Labor: The US Experience,” Capital & Class, forthcoming.
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17. Mejorado and Roman: 14, passim; Michale Roberts, “From the Magnificent Seven to the Desperate Hundreds,” Michael Roberts Blog, April 7, 2024.
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18. Full:ratio, Profit Margin by Industry, March 2025, https://fullratio.com/profit-margin-by-industry; Michael Roberts, “Profits: margins and rates,” Michael Roberts blog, March 18, 2024.
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19. Daron Acamoglu, “America is Sleepwalking into an Economic Storm,” New York Times, October 17, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/20/17/opinion/economy-us-aging-work-force-ai.html
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20. Molly Kinder, et. al., “Generative AI, the American worker, and the future of work,” Brookings Institution, October 10, 2024.
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21. Mark Muro, et. al., The Geography of generative AI’s workforce impacts will likely differ from those of previous technologies,” Brookings Institution, February 19, 2025.
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22. Robert Kuttner, “Trump’s Stagflation,” The American Prospect, March 12, 2025.
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23. BLS, Consumer Price Index-February 2025, USDL-25-0332, March 12, 2025; BLS, Employment Situation-February 2025 USDL-25-0296, March 7, 2025; BEA, Gross Domestic Product, 4th Quarter and Year 2024, BEA 25-05, February 27, 2025; Michael Roberts, “A whiff of stagflation,” Michael Roberts Blog, February 17, 2025.
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24. Deepa Kylasam Lyer, et. al., Labor Action Tracker: Annual Report 2024: 3-4, 11.
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25. Jenny Brown, “Big Strikes, Bigger Gains,” Labor Notes 538, January 2024: 8-10.
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26. BLS, Major Work stoppages in 2024, USDL-25-0226, February 20, 2025; BBLS, Work Stoppages, Annual work stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers, 1947 – Present, February 20, 2025.
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27. BLS, Union Members 2024, USDL-25-0105, January 28, 2025.
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28. See Jenny Brown, “Strikes and Organizing Score Gains, but Storm Clouds Loom, “ Labor Notes 550, January 2025: 8-10.
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29. BLS, Producer Price Indexes-January 2025, USDL-25-0176, February 13, 2025.
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30. Citations for this would take up pages, but the major sources are New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, The Hill, Jacobin, HuffPost.
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31. Steven P. Erie, Rainbow’s End: Irish-Americas and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840-1985, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988; Dennis R. Judd and Todd Swanstrom, City Politics: The Political Economy of Urban America; Iro Katznelson, City Trenches: Urban Politics and the Patterning of Class in the United States, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
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32. For a few analyses of this see: Mike Davis, Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the US Working Class, Verso, 1986; Kim Moody, US Labor in Trouble and Transition: The Failure of Reform From Above, The Promise of Revival From Below, London: Verso, 2007.
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33. There are many accounts of this, but for a recent look at the rise of money, despite its misleading title: Ryan Grim, We’ve Got People: From Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement, Washington DC: Strong Arm Press, 2019; also Kim Moody, Breaking the Impasse: Electoral Politics, Mass Action & The New Socialist Movement in the United States, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2022.
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34. OpenSecrets.com, Political Parties, 20204, 2000.
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35. For more detail on this see: Kim Moody, “The Democrats’ Path to Defeat,” Against the Current #234, February 2025: 14-18; Howie Hawkins, “A Political Paradox: A Progressive-Leaning Public Elects A Far Right President,” New Politics Vol. XX No 2, Winter 2025: 3-16.
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36. Pew Research Center, “The partisanship and ideology of American voters,” Pew Research Center, April 9, 20204; Ballotpedia, “Democrats lost 92 state legislative seats during the Biden presidency,” Daily Brew, March 10,2025.
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37. Michael Li and Gina Feliz, “The Competitive Districts that Will Decide Control of the House,” Brennan Center for Justice, October 24, 2024, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/competitive-districts-will-decide-control-house
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May-June 2025, ATC 236