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

WithTrump in the White House, big business had direct power in government. Trump stacked his cabinet with former employees of investment banks, Big Oil, andinternational corporations. Once big business had representatives in Trump’s cabinet, it no longer needed to bear the cost of expensive lobbying. Under Trump,corporations could control U.S. policy.
How and why did this happen? What does itmean for the bulk of the population?
T.J. Coles presents the background to Trump’s rise, tracing the history of economicneoliberalism. He shows what a “liberal economy” means in practice―privatizationof public resources, cutting “red tape” for corporations, andinternationalizing volatile money markets. For working people,neoliberalism translates to ongoing lowering of living standards, fewerprotections for workers, spiraling housing costs, and social cutbacks. As aconsequence, many voters turn their backs on mainstream politics, with manyinstead supporting far-right populist parties, including the Trump’s faction of theRepublican Party and UKIP in Britain, despite the fact that those partiessupport the very policies that make most people poorer.
President Trump, Inc.exposes the Trump hoax. He sold himself as amaverick, but in reality Big Business had been lobbying Congress for years todo what he campaigned for―tearing up the international TPP trade agreement,excluding low-skilled immigrants while fast-tracking specific foreignworkers, and helping repatriate corporations to the U.S. Trump’s seeminglypersonal agenda―“Make America Great Again”―was really a wish list of Big Business and global elites.
Colesconcludes on a positive note, offering tangible hope. Real change, he notes,doesn’t happen from the top down. Millions of people around the world areworking at local levels to win power back from centralized elites for theircommunities. The first step in this process of true democratization is tounderstand what’s really happening, and Coles’ essential analysis provides aclear picture of the present and possibly future reality.