President Trump, Inc.

With Trump in the White House, big business has direct power in government. Trump has stacked his cabinet with former employees of investment banks, big oil and international corporations. Now that big business has its representatives in the cabinet, it no longer needs to indulge in expensive lobbying. Under Trump, corporations control US policy. How and why did this happen and what does it mean for the bulk of the population?

T. J. Coles presents the background to Trump's rise, tracing the history of economic neoliberalism. He shows what a 'liberal economy' means in practice: privatization of public resources, cutting 'red tape' for corporations and internationalizing volatile money markets. For ordinary working people, neoliberalism translates to ongoing falls in living standards, fewer protections for workers, spiralling housing costs and social cutbacks. As a consequence, many voters are turning their backs on mainstream politics, with some supporting far-right, populist parties, including the Trump faction of the Republican Party and UKIP in Britain - despite the fact that these parties support the very policies that make ordinary people poorer.

President Trump, Inc. exposes the Trump hoax. Trump sold himself as a maverick, but in reality big business has been lobbying Congress for years to do what he campaigned for: tearing up the international TPP trade agreement, keeping out low-skilled immigrants whilst fast-tracking specific foreign workers, and helping repatriate corporations to the US. Trump's apparently personal agenda - to Make America Great Again - is actually big business's wish list.

Coles concludes on a positive note, offering tangible hope. Real change, he notes, doesn't come from the top-down. Millions of people all over the world are working at the local level to win power back from centralized elites for their communities. The first step in this process of true democratization is to understand what's really happening, and Coles' essential analysis provides a clear picture of the present reality.

Auteur

T. J. COLES is a postdoctoral researcher at Plymouth University's Cognition Institute, working on issues relating to blindness and visual impairment. His thesis The Knotweed Factor can be read online. A columnist with Axis of Logic, Coles has written about politics and human rights for Counterpunch, Newsweek, the New Statesman and Truthout.