Project 2025, part 2
Last week I explored the politics of Project 2025, the far right’s plan for dismantling the so-called Deep State and replacing it with a President-centered authoritarian system designed with Donald Trump in mind. In foreign affairs, I evaluated the Project’s policy ideas on China and Russia, two of the five countries it identifies as priorities for the next administration. Iran, Venezuela and North Korea are the others, which I’ll discuss here, as well as military affairs. But I begin with international trade, a key section of the Project 2025 playbook authored by none other than Peter Navarro, one of Trump’s main advisers who recently served time in jail.
The Return of “Tariff Man”
Navarro’s chapter is entirely in line with Trump the “Tariff Man’s” ideas on trade policy. Navarro argues that a US trade policy that matches China’s, India’s, or any other country’s high tariffs is the best way to lower the US trade deficit. High tariff walls, they say, will also force US multinational corporations to build factories in the US, and will be good for American farmers. (Mind you, nothing of the sort happened during Trump’s tenure.)
Navarro also favors trade and financial decoupling from China, which he accuses of no less than fifty forms of “economic aggression.” Well known for his ideologically grounded view of China, Navarro writes that the Chinese “never bargain in good faith.” His proposals would virtually end most trade with China, US investment in China, and Chinese investments in the US. Research and educational exchanges with China would also be greatly restricted.
The costs of these proposals to US consumers and scientific and technological research institutions, the impact on global supply chains, the likely retaliation in the form of a halt to Chinese exports of rare earth and other vital minerals to the US, and China’s raising of tariffs in response to higher US tariffs—all these very likely outcomes are never considered by Navarro any more than they were by Trump as President.
One might read Navarro’s chapter and think that he and Trump are opposed to the interests of multinational corporations and deeply concerned about the interests of working Americans. But we know from experience how Trump has masked his actual aim to curry favor with big capital, as evidenced by his tax cuts that mainly benefited the top one percent of households, and his reliance on huge donations from some of the richest corporate leaders. Now, Trump proposes to cut the corporate tax rate from 21 percent in the 2017 tax bill (it had been 35 percent) to 15 percent. And you can bet Trump will appoint heads of the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve who are fans of corporate America.
Policy: Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Mexico, Weapons
On Iran, Project 2025 says: “the United States can utilize its own and others’ economic and diplomatic tools to ease the path toward a free Iran and a renewed relationship with the Iranian people.” How to do that? Another reversion to previous Trump policies: harsher sanctions, support of Israel to “take what it deems to be appropriate measures to defend itself against the Iranian regime,” and, ultimately, seek regime change. The Middle East otherwise gets scant attention.
On North Korea: “The United States cannot permit the DPRK to remain a de facto nuclear power with the capacity to threaten the United States or its allies. . . . The DPRK must not be permitted to profit from its blatant violations of international commitments or to threaten other nations with nuclear blackmail. Both interests can only be served if the U.S. disallows the DPRK’s rogue regime behavior.” Leaving aside what “disallows” and “not permitted” mean, this proposal follows on Trump’s failure to strike a deal with Kim Jong Un when Trump had the chance. Project 2025 leaves open the chance of another round of nuclear threats between the US and North Korea.
Venezuela is the focus of Project 2025’s Latin America section. It says: “the next Administration must take important steps to put Venezuela’s Communist abusers on notice while making strides to help the Venezuelan people.” That ambiguous advice has been largely overtaken by events. Venezuela’s contested presidential election on July 28 has already led the US to recognize President Nicolas Maduro’s opponent, Edmundo Gonzalez, as the winner, maintain sanctions, and offer Maduro amnesty and a ride out of the country. For the moment, the Biden administration has relied on Venezuela’s one-time friends–the presidents of Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia–to try persuading Maduro to step down. There is no sign, however, that under Biden, the US will put Maduro “on notice.”
Mexico is treated as a “cartel state” that has lost its sovereignty. “The next Administration,” says the Project paper, “must both adopt a posture that calls for a fully sovereign Mexico and take all steps at its disposal to support that result in as rapid a fashion as possible.” Is Mexico’s lack of full sovereignty an argument for more direct US intervention in Mexico? Trump is known to have once expressed the view, while President, that the US should consider invading Mexico on the pretext of disrupting the drug trade.
On nuclear weapons and military spending, Project 2025 proposes to increase production and modernization of nuclear weapons, and resume nuclear weapons testing (in violation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty). These ideas, fully in line with Trump’s infatuation with nuclear weapons, are all tied to proposals for major increases in the US military budget, for strengthening the US defense industrial base, and for increasing US arms sales abroad. As though Biden isn’t already spending enough on the military and nukes, or turning away from arms sales!
Conclusion
In summary, on foreign affairs and national security, Project 2025 upgrades the level of international threats to US interests, with China the central enemy; supports a huge expansion of presidential power, at the expense of diplomacy and intelligence findings; urges greater emphasis than under Biden on military-industrial expansion, including nuclear weapons modernization; leaves to allies the major responsibility for confronting Russia; and seems to advocate regime change in Iran, Venezuela, and even Mexico. As President, Trump would be free to accept or reject any part of Project 2025’s ideas. But whatever he accepts will be no less dangerous than any of the ideas he, as a “stable genius,” has carried with him from the past.
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