Elections have consequences. Boy, do they ever have consequences. In attacking Iran, Trump has done what six previous presidents had carefully considered and rejected as being a massively bad bet.
This is not some easy one-off like Venezuela. This is having drastic ripple effects across the globe that we can pretty much guarantee never crossed the minds of whoever in their infinite wisdom approved of and validated what came out of Trump’s whimsical, unbalanced ego. And those effects are going to be landing here shortly.
As reported by Patricia Cohen, the New York Times economic correspondent in London:
The widening war in Iran has delivered a stunning punch to a worldwide economy that has already been walloped by a breakdown of the international trading order, war in Ukraine and President Trump’s chaotic policymaking.
“This really is the big one,” David Goldwyn, a former U.S. diplomat and U.S. Energy Department official, said of the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important choke point for oil. It is the emergency scenario everyone feared, he said.
And for those white evangelicals cheering this, who expect a thousand foot-tall hologram of Jesus to descend and inaugurate the “End Times,” they’re in for a rude awakening. It’s not going to be the Apocalypse. It’s just going to suck.
As Cohen reports, Trump has unfolded a global catastrophe.
Central bankers around the world face a difficult combination of circumstances. The United States has a stronger economy than many other countries. Nonetheless, its Federal Reserve confronts the same questions that are confounding other central bankers. Do they raise interest rates to head off a revival of inflation as energy prices spike, or lower rates as labor markets are weakening and growth is slowing?
Elevated rates will also keep borrowing costs high at a time when rich and poor countries are facing record levels of debt. That means more money that might have been used for health care, roads, housing or education instead will go to interest payments on debt.
Like it or not, the cost of energy affects practically everything we do. And yes, this is how it hits home:
It’s not just that small business owners and corporate executives must once again re-evaluate their supply chains, manage additional price increases and track shifting restrictions on who they can do business with. Or that the added uncertainty undermines confidence, making consumers reluctant to spend and businesses reluctant to invest.
When consumers don’t spend and companies don’t invest, no one gets hired. Good luck to any young people trying to find a job in that environment. Hell, good luck keeping your current job. Think anyone will be hiring with that kind of forecast?
Since taking office for the second time, Donald Trump has done nothing positive— nothing — for the young people in this country. But he has sure has done things to make their hopes and futures disappear.
Those “tech bros” the media has so lionized and canonized with their brilliant, glittery toys are now firmly embedded in our government, and their prime directive from corporate America is to take young peoples’ jobs away so corporate CEO’s can rake in more profit. Their tool to accomplish this is something no one ever asked for. It’s called “AI.”
Trump loves AI, because it goosed the stock market (it was doing the exact same thing during Biden’s tenure, but, of course, Trump always takes credit for things he had nothing to do with). Along with his Republican enablers he has poured hundreds of billions of US tax dollars into the pockets of the biggest AI names. The thing about AI, though, is that it substitutes speed and convenience for actual human thought. And when actual human thought is no longer necessary, the humans who previously did all the thinking become obsolete. They become useless appendages.
So they get fired. Corporate CEO’s right now are pouring hundreds of billions into AI because it promises them a drastically reduced workforce. Ergo, most of the jobs that (primarily young ) people used to do in order to “climb the corporate ladder” are going to disappear.
And with this pointless war totally disrupting the oil markets, and barring some miraculous denouement in hostilities, it’s going to happen even faster. Just think about what a nation of unemployed or underemployed youth means to American society. Project 2025 was a reactionary apotheosis by the political right against the progressive advances of the 1960’s. But the unforeseen outcome has a reasonably good chance of dwarfing the 1960’s, in spades.
Of course this will be a benefit to Democrats. Republicans, who happily enabled this disaster, have already kissed the House goodbye. They won’t admit it, but they have. They really ought to be thinking the same about the Senate now. But even with a Democratic House and Senate there’s still a big, big problem with a complete fool at the top of the food chain. One who still thinks “tariffs” is a brilliant idea.
Well, it wasn’t in 1930, and it’s not now.
Yes, elections have consequences. But this one is going to take a long, long time to fix.
