President Trump, Inc.: How Big Business and Neoliberalism Empower Populism and the Far-Right by T. J. Coles

Author:T. J. Coles [Coles, T. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business, Economics, International, General, Political Science, American Government, State, Politics, Conservatism, Republican Party, Neoliberalism, Capitalism, Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9781905570874
Google: fwEmDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B0744NTGND
Goodreads: 36147198
Publisher: CLAIRVIEW BOOKS
Published: 2017-06-18T23:00:00+00:00

Myth #5: Trump is Anti-establishment

Anti-establishment means different things to different people. If you hate immigrants, ‘anti-establishment’ could mean a Republican candidate who is ‘tough’ on migration, even though more immigrants were deported under Obama than under any other President. ‘Anti-establishment’ could be opposition to the billionaires who have enriched themselves at everyone else's expense. Or it could mean opposition to government regulation which constrains the freedoms of the rich.

There is so much hatred of government and big business – at all levels – among ordinary Americans, that someone who appears to share their anger, even if they are part of the ruling class, will resonate with a solid – if small – core of voters. But Trump is the very definition of the establishment. He is worth $3.1bn, according to Forbes. There are 319 million Americans. According to Forbes, there are 540 billionaires in the USA. Ergo, Trump is not a member of the upper 1%: he's in the upper 0.00016%.13

‘Outside of his eponymous real-estate focused Trump Organization, the New York billionaire also holds liquid investments worth as much as $170 million – including shares in the big banks and multinational companies he railed against on the campaign trail’. Forbes alleges that Trump owns or until recently owned at least $2.5m in Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. As he chided Ford for its outsourcing of American jobs, he continued to hold $lm in the companies. He also holds millions of shares in Apple, Bank of Nova Scotia, Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett's hedge fund (which some argue isn’t a hedge fund)), Celgene (pharma), Chevron, ExxonMobil, GlaxoSmith-Kline, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Kinder Morgan (pipeline company), Merck, Phillips 66 (which has a stake in the Dakota Access pipeline), Procter and Gamble, Royal Bank of Canada, Shell, Toronto Dominion Bank and Walmart.14

As one would expect, Trump's political views reflect his business interests. In his own books, Trump has constantly championed the very deregulation which enriches his class, to which we will now turn.

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