Thursday, October 1, 2026

The Coming November 3rd U.S. Midterm Elections will be a Referendum on the D. Trump Administration 2.0, about Foreign Wars, Fiscal Deficits and the Cost of Living

By Rodrigue Tremblay

“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.“ Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)

German-American political philosopher, (in ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’, 1951).

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.“

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), German-American political philosopher, (in ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’, 1951).

“The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed?“

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), German-American political philosopher, (in “Hannah Arendt: From an Interview”, Oct. 26, 1978).

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), German-American political philosopher, (in ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’, 1951).

As the history of the 20^th Century shows, a policy by a totalitarian dictator relying on imperialism, on hard military power and on inward-looking nationalism in order to subjugate other sovereign nations, and to impose tyranny, kill democracy and steal their resources, is bound, sooner or later, to backfire. Indeed, such international bullying of other countries has its own built-in limits.

Sooner or later, free and independent countries form a coalition to defeat the rogue nation that oppresses them.

The prime example is the rise to power of dictator Adolf Hitler in Germany, in January 1933, with the support of his paramilitary so-called ‘Brownshirts’.

His Nazi party used the pretext of restoring honor and prestige to Germany, promoting the nationalist German ideology of the "master race", to militarily annex Eastern European countries as vassal states, such as Austria in 1938 and Czechoslovakia, in 1939.

However, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1^st, 1939, other nations, like Britain and France, had had enough, and they declared war on Nazi Germany. That is how World War II started.

That most murderous war only ended in Europe in 1945, but not before it became the deadliest conflict in human history, causing 80 million deaths.

American real estate tycoon Donald Trump appears to have a great admiration for the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, Indeed, his first wife, Ivana Trump, revealed that he kept a copy of a book of a collection of Hitler's speeches, titled ‘My New Order’, by his bedside.

It is also not good for his reputation that a recent United Nations report says that U. S. President Donald Trump could soon be accused of war crimes for having bombed a girls’ school in Iran, killing more than 150 people, most of them children. This should be cause for alarm about his morality.

However, Donald Trump—already a convicted felon by a U.S. court—is taking the offensive and is threatening sanctions against the International Criminal Court, which had the audacity to issue an arrest warrant for his accomplice in the Iran war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of genocide against the Palestinian people.

But the summum of arrogance and perversity occurred when D. Trump, in his rant at the UN General Assembly, on Tuesday, September 22, shamelessly confessed his militaristic vision of permanent wars and global unrest, while directly referring to oil he stole from Venezuela, saying “To the victor belong the spoils“.

In so doing, D. Trump publicly defended a jungle-like militaristic practice of dividing the world into spheres of influence for military empires, and of looting other smaller countries by force, thus throwing the world back hundreds of years. In 1945, the United Nations was established specifically to outlaw such conflicts.

1. Is the world going to repeat the disastrous war of nearly 90 years ago and fall under the yoke of an insane and evil tyrant?

Since January 20, 2025, under the helm of a most dysfunctional, autocratic, corrupt and mentally unfit American President, the United States has fallen to the bottom of trust and credibility as a reliable political and economic partner to other countries. According to Pew Research, in most countries, D. Trump is seen as unreliable and dangerous.

Indeed, American politician D. Trump has been an active trouble-maker and a provocateur by lashing out against people and countries alike. He has committed numerous instances of abuses of power, within the United States and around the world.

At home, D. Trump has instrumentalized a violent, heavily armed and masked ICE political police, an outfit that has killed dozens of people.

He has also launched many wars of aggression abroad, against a host of countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, Nigeria, Iran), even though he had promised “No more wars” during the 2024 political campaign. Many of those Trumpian wars in the Middle East have been carried out under the US-Israel Axis flag and some are forever wars.

In his rant at the United Nations, on September 22, D. Trump called other countries ‘bullies’. He even repeated his threat about “annihilating the Islamic republic” of Iran. And this, after the UN Secretary general, António Guterres, had called on the General Assembly to end conflicts. —What a dishonor for the United States!

A question: To what extent all those rants and wars of choice are a diversion and a form of political cover-up of D. Trump’s involvement in the J. Epstein’s international pedophile trafficking sex ring of more than one thousand teen-aged girls for rich clients?

Even though there is a Congressional law ordering that all the Epstein files must be made public, unredacted. D. Trump has strongly refused to comply, even after he had promised to do so during the 2024 presidential campaign. —Sooner or later the truth will come out.

He has also launched repetitive trade wars against several countries, a policy that has destabilized the world economy. In February 2026, even the U.S. Supreme Court, dominated by Republican judges, ruled that most of Trump’s tariffs or import taxes are illegal. Indeed, according to the U.S. Constitution, only the House of Representatives has that power (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1).

2. Since January 2025, President D. Trump has governed by decrees like an autocrat

Between January 20, 2025 and September 2026, Donald Trump has governed by issuing the extraordinarily high number of 281 executive orders or decrees, many of them completely illegal or in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Such overreach and destabilizing, chaotic policies have met with very little resistance—whether from his “MAGA” cabinet of sycophants and accomplices, or from the Republican-controlled Congress.

In a few instances, the resistance came rather from the U.S. Supreme Court, even though six of its nine judges were named by two Republican presidents, (George W. Bush named three and Donald Trump also named three). And this, after D. Trump has often violated the U.S. Constitution and his oath of office.

3. D. Trump uses trade policy as a partisan political tactic

and as an imperialist tool

Since January 2025, and in spite the fact that he had signed a revised trade agreement with the two neighboring countries of Canada and Mexico, in 2020, President Donald Trump launched political and economic attacks against both countries, but especially against Canada.

Badly informed on the complex question of how the balance of payments between countries moves between equilibrium and disequilibrium, Donald Trump raised unjustified trade accusations against Canada.

He even went as far as to threaten Canada’s sovereignty, insulting Canadians with violent rhetoric, and even proposing that Canada, the second largest country in the world, become “the 51st state“.

Indeed, D. Trump has openly attempted to destabilize the economy of Canada, a member of the G7 group, by arbitrarily imposing high on-again, off-again American import taxes on selective Canadian exports. This has resulted in creating uncertainty for businesses and consumers on both sides of the border.

Last August, when a new trade agreement was about to be reached between the two countries after last-ditch negotiations, the Trump administration sabotaged it at the last minute by requesting, among other things, that Canada abdicates its sovereign right to trade freely with other nations.

Trump’s attacks against Canada are less about trade and economics and more about a sickly wish to turn Canada into a political and economic vassal of the United States.

This was followed by Trump relying on an old 1930 American trade law to impose 50% U.S. tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian imports. As should have been expected, the Canadian government moved to protect its economy under attack by matching Trump’s tariffs on Canadian exports with dollar-for-dollar equivalent import taxes on American exports to Canada.

Americans are not duped by Trump’s personal motives, and friendship between both countries remains high. Indeed, polls show that 57 percent of Americans oppose Trump’s insane taxes on Canadian imports, when there has been a mutually profitable U.S.–Canada Free Trade Agreement between both countries since 1988, and even since 1965 for the automobile industry.

His overall approval rating is way down, because he is out of touch with a majority of Americans. For instance, only 9% of Americans support his vanity attempts to put his name on landmarks.

4. Donald Trump’s false electoral promises

During the 2024 presidential campaign, the Maga Republican candidate to the American presidency, Donald Trump, often promised that with him in power, the U.S. would not get involved in new costly and deadly wars abroad.

During his victory speech on November 6, 2024, he said—to be well understood— “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars". To be clear, D. Trump had also previously said that “We more and more are not wanting to be the policemen of the world.”

In fact, not only did candidate D. Trump not intend to follow up on his promises, but he did exactly the reverse of what he had promised. He started and expanded many wars of aggression overseas, against numerous countries. In reality, President D. Trump did not bring peace to his country. Instead, he put it on a path to World War III.

D. Trump also promised many times to stop the ongoing inflation in the U.S., where rising prices have lowered the purchasing power of American workers, retirees and consumers. During a political rally on August 9, 2024, he falsely claimed that “Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.”

Similarly, his promises to stop prices from rising were also shallow. Indeed, the Trump administration 2.0 has worsened American inflation. The yearly inflation rate in the United States reached 2.7% in 2025, but kept rising to 3.4 %, in 2026.

It is easy to understand why.

First, D. Trump has run huge fiscal deficits, partly by lowering taxes on high income individuals and corporations, and partly by waging wars abroad. This has pushed the U.S. national debt to an astronomic $40 trillion, in a mad rush toward a financial abyss.

Second, Trump’s attempts to steal Venezuela and other countries of their oil reserves have pushed world oil and energy prices way up, thus creating a worldwide inflation.

Third, Trump has pressured the Federal Reserve central bank to follow an expansionist monetary policy, which is exacerbating demand inflation in the United States.

Forth, Donald Trump’s obsession to raise heavy tariffs or import taxes have been an important factor in rising prices for producers and consumers alike.

It does not help to know that President Donald Trump has disregarded outright the moral and risk issues about how a rogue and automated Artificial Intelligence (AI) could one day lead to human extinction, as many experts have warned, and he rejects the very thought of regulation on this issue. And possibly even worse, he wants to ‘militarize’ Artificial Intelligence!

Moreover, D. Trump is also pushing for an unfettered growth of energy hungry data centers.

Conclusion

Since January 2025, the Trump administration 2.0 has been a factor of chaos, disorder, extorsion, predation, and wars, in the United States and in the world. He is also a super corrupt politician.

Moreover, American tycoon Donald Trump often speaks with exaggeration, very often with lies, and he is acting as if he were an absolute and autocratic president. He is dismissing of the fundamental principles of the U.S. Constitution, i.e. the political division of powers and the system of checks and balances

All considered, MAGA President Trump poses an enormous challenge to the United States’ political, moral and spiritual foundation. He is an extremely dangerous politician.

His administration is a disaster in many areas, due to a whole series of broken promises, and of bad and incompetent economic, fiscal and financial policies at home, while launching the dumbest military wars and trade wars abroad. The end result is going to be a severe financial crisis to come, and possibly something much worse.

However, there could be some hope.

Americans of all ages, who have been betrayed by such an unfit politician as Donald Trump, who see their standards of living falling, their constitutional rights denied and their liberty reduced, will soon have a chance to express their discontent and disappointment with his broken promises, his senseless military and trade wars against other countries, and his overall political mismanagement.

November 3^rd won’t come too soon. Enough with the craziness!

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International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book about morals "The code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles" of the book about geopolitics "The New American Empire", and of his recent book, in French, "La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018".He holds a Ph.D. in international finance from Stanford University.

Please visit Dr. Tremblay's site or email to a friend here.

Posted Thursday, October 1, 2026, updated October 2, 2026.

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Tuesday, September 1, 2026

Donald Trump’s Wars and Trade Aggressions Slow Down Economic Growth and Feed Inflation

By Professor Rodrigue Tremblay

“Democracy and plutocracy are the same thing.… He who pays the piper calls the tune.” Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), German historian, philosopher and political writer, author of ‘The Decline of the West’, 1918).

“When the government runs a budget deficit, it pumps more money into the pocketbooks of people than it withdraws from their pocketbooks — the demand for goods and services therefore tends to increase all around. That is why inflation has been raging since the mid-1960s.”

Arthur F. Burns (1904-1987), American economist and Federal Reserve Chairman (1970-1978), in a speech, on Sunday September 30, 1979.

"All financial crises involve debts that, in one way or another, become dangerously out of sync with available means of payment." John K. Galbraith (1908-2006), American economist, born in Canada, 1994.

“The new world economic order will be built from Europe. Canada is the most European of non-European countries, and we are transforming our cooperation with the European Union (EU).” Mark Carney (1965- ), Canadian Prime Minister, an economist and a central banker, (during a speech in Dublin Ireland, on Saturday June 12, 2026).

Donald Trump’s one-man administration is launching improvised wars of aggression abroad and trade wars against other countries, thus creating stagflation, i.e. a situation of rising prices, slow economic growth and lower employment. (And this, after D. Trump himself had promised to end ruinous American wars abroad!)

Wars are usually a source of inflation and a decline of purchasing power for most people, except for the minority who profit from them, as it is the case with the military industrial complex and stock market speculators.

Besides being immoral when they kill men, women and children and destroy countries, military wars of aggression abroad are costly. That was one of the reasons why governments imposed general food rationing and price and wage controls, on people of countries engaged in World War II (1939-1945).

• Trade wars are disruptive to all economies

Donald Trump has not only de facto privatized the U.S. government. He also behaves and acts as if he had bought the White House and considers it his private property. Also, he has weaponized U.S. trade with neighboring countries to his own domestic political advantage.

Indeed, the D. Trump administration 2.0 has used trade policies and financial sanctions against other countries to achieve an obscure mixture of political, economic and noneconomic objectives. As a self-centered political demagogue, D. Trump seems to want to project an image of ‘winner’ against other countries to his domestic political base. It is difficult to determine when politics takes precedence over economics, or when the reverse is true.

For instance, on Friday March 2, 2018, one day after having announced sweeping tariffs on imports from some countries,

Donald Trump said that “trade wars are good, and easy to win”! In fact, according to most economists, such trade wars are disruptive to the launching country as well as to the targeted countries.

• D. Trump’s gratuitous insults and disruptive trade taxes on imports from Canada

Canada is the second largest country in the world in territory, and it has large natural resources in various minerals, oil and gas, and strong financial and manufacturing sectors.

Canada supplies 99 percent of American natural‑gas imports, 87 percent of potash imports, 85 percent of its electricity imports, 75 percent of primary aluminum imports, and 60 percent of its crude‑oil imports. Canada is also an important source of critical minerals to the United States, such as uranium, nickel, rare earth elements, cobalt, iron, copper, etc. In addition, Canada holds 20 percent of the world’s freshwater reserves.

Canada is a sovereign country that plays an important international role within the United Nations, as one of its founding countries and one of the main participants in its peace missions. It is a founding member of NATO, a member of NORAD, and is a member of the British Commonwealth.

It is no surprise that trade in goods and services between the two neighboring countries, Canada and the Unites States, has traditionally been very important. Nevertheless, politician D. Trump keeps repeating the BIG lie that “the U.S. does not need Canada”!

In 2025, for instance, the United States exported $333.62 billion USD of merchandise to Canada while Canada exported $381.92 billion USD of goods to the U. S., mainly because of large U.S. imports of electricity and crude oil through pipelines from Canada, resulting in a net U. S. trade goods Canadian surplus of $48.30 billion USD.

However, the net trade in services between the two economies is the reverse, since Canada imports yearly more financial, commercial, transport, entertainment and travel services from the United States than it exports.

For the total balance of payments of goods and services, between the United States and Canada in 2025, according to the US Congressional Research Service, the net total U.S. deficit was only $25 billion US, because Canada had a net $23.3 billion service deficit with the United States.

That is why the imbalance in the total balance of payments of trade in goods and services between Canada and the United States is much smaller than the D. Trump administration 2.0 wants us to believe.

[N. B.: It is not explicitly clear if US data take into consideration the yearly net profits that US companies in Canada (Walmart, Costco, Alcoa, GMC, Ford, Exxon, etc.) send to the United States. If not, there could be no overall goods and services Canadian trade surplus between both countries.]

It would appear that D. Trump is exploiting the Canada-U.S. trade relationship for three reasons: first, for his own narrow electoral motives, in order to please his shrinking MAGA base; second, because of his insane and fascist dream of making Canada a political and economic colony of the American empire; third, probably the most compelling reason is to create a cover-up of Trump’s criminal involvement in the sexual crimes still hidden in the Epstein files that he refuses to release, even if a congressnal law makes that obligatory.

On Friday August 21, 2026, D. Trump used the pretext of an old 1930 law to unilaterally impose a 50% import tax on hundreds of

Canadian goods—probably illegally— ranging from wine

and hockey sticks to cement, electronics, and dairy products. Such a reckless move has launched a trade war between the two neighboring countries, with untold economic and political consequences.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board has qualified D. Trump’ trade wars against Canada “the dumbest” that could be, because they “make no economic or political sense.”

• D. Trump’s incompetent public management

Moreover, the United States, (and a few other advanced economies), also find themselves in a situation of public over-indebtedness, and are on the verge of a debt spiral and a debt trap.

In particular, the budget deficits and public debt levels of the Trump administration 2.0 continue to grow.

As a result, annual U.S. total output is lower than overall spending, and the gap stems primarily from the enormous annual U.S. government budget deficit, which is approximately $1.7 trillion.

U.S. public debt has now reached $40 trillion and it represents 122.35 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), which is $32.634 trillion. Such fiscal instability translates into domestic inflationary pressure and rising interest rates, as well as external trade deficits when the Treasury borrows abroad and strengthens the U.S. dollar on the foreign exchange market.

However, President Trump and his entourage seem unable to grasp that their country is living beyond its means and is spending recklessly abroad, maintaining hundreds of military bases in other countries and launching costly wars of choice abroad, which inflates its federal fiscal deficit and its external trade deficit, partly financed by selling U.S. dollar-denominated bonds to other countries.

Foreign central banks are increasingly reluctant to buy U.S. dollar-denominated Treasury bonds. In reality, that system, which has allowed the U.S. military state to easily finance enormous spending abroad, without dire consequences, is nearing its end.

Not only the U.S. dollar became officially a fiat dollar, on August 15, 1971, but the international monetary system based on that fiat dollar is declining. The rise to power of a politician as unprepared as Donald Trump is unprecedented in 250 years of American political history, and this is accelerating the international demise of the U.S. currency.

In fact, Donald Trump has single-handedly wrecked the rules-based international economic order, an 80-year-old system of international economic cooperation. He is even preparing to repeat the mistakes of the 1930s, under the presidency of Herbert Hoover, by imposing high import taxes. Indeed, the Smoot-Hawley Act, of June 17, 1930, placed 20 percent duties on imports from foreign countries, thus helping to transform an economic recession into a worldwide economic depression.

• Income and wealth disparities in the United States are higher than in almost any other developed economies

Indeed, income and wealth disparities in the United States have risen over the last 60 years, and especially since 1971, when the U.S. fiat dollar began losing purchasing power and inflation gained ground.

Americans living on monetary incomes or on monetary pension savings and renting their lodging, lost the most in real terms.

According to the American Urban Institute’s calculations, persistent inflation and government policies greatly favored owners of stock market shares and real estate. The result has been a massive transfer of wealth from the American middle class and the poorest families to the wealthiest families.

For Instance, in 1963, the wealthiest American families owned 36 times the wealth of the average American families. By 2022, however, wealth inequality had nearly doubled, and they owned 71 times the wealth of middleclass families. The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and stock market bubbles are bound to intensify such disparities and to worsen the so-called K-shaped American economy.

This has gotten worse under the dictatorial Trumpian regime:

Many American families have seen their standards of living decline, with a persistent high inflation level, declining employment and a drop in the purchasing power of their monetary incomes and savings, except for Trump’s very rich allies who have benefited from lower taxes and financial schemes.

D. Trump even boasted publicly: “I love the inflation“, even though inflation favors stock market speculators and the minority who own capital, but lowers the standards of living of most other Americans.

This is a most unhealthy economic and social situation.

Conclusions

Since January 20, 2025, politician Donald Trump has developed a reputation as a corrupt grifter-in-chief and as an agent of chaos and destruction, domestically and internationally. He has launched numerous wars of aggression, aggressive trade wars against allied nations, inhuman ICE caged prisons at home and abroad, etc.

D. Trump is flying blindfolded and he relies on the words he heard from the last person he talked to!

In fact, the Trump administration 2.0 will be remembered as being autocratic, impulsive, erratic, lacking in general professional knowledge and competence, and for a high level of corruption, not to mention Trump’s own criminal record.

By now, most thinking people should have deciphered why D. Trump is such an agent of chaos and conflicts. This is related to his complex mental views about interpersonal relations and international relations: in his mind, there must be an 'absolute winner' and an 'absolute loser’ in all human relationships. —There is hardly any place for mutually beneficial relations or for profitable ‘win-win’ cooperation and exchanges.

That maybe why, with such a frame of mind, Trump’s violent and predatory tactics in any contractual negotiation are to insult, threaten, punish, sanction and bully the other side, individuals or countries, in order to extract the maximum immediate benefits for himself and for his family, or resources for his country.

However, such a self-centered attitude could dangerously backfire and lead to isolationism and negative consequences. Indeed, most ordinary people dislike to be governed by a vile bully, while other countries leaders do not trust a warmonger who does not respect international law or any alliance.

The chaos and destruction the D. Trump administration has imposed on the United States is a consequence of his violent approach to international relations.

Indeed, his improvised and imperialist wars to threaten, intimidate and to steal other countries territory and oil by force, have brought the 80-year-old international political, economic and trade system to the brink of collapse. So far, the main victims have been Venezuela and Cuba, and their citizens.

Consequently, the United States' reputation for honesty and morality among the nations of the world is plummeting and has reached its lowest point. It will take years, perhaps decades, to rebuild an international political and economic system based on political cooperation and economic dynamism.

For the sake of humanity and world peace, it is to be hoped that such a moral and civilizational regression will not be permanent and that more enlightened leaders will rise up to repair the damage.

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He holds a Ph.D. in international finance from Stanford University.