A test of US voters even more critical than 2024

On 1 April, polling respondents weren't fooling when they began signaling buckram opposition to Trump's comedy of terrors — in flames, world trade; arsonist and keeper of bellows, the U.S.

In speed, the public's fiery inflation of Trump's disapproving numbers has struck me as rather impressive. I can't say the same about growth in America's population of recovering rationality. Low 50s, below, is fair progress but far from certain victory. Anyway, on to those stats. The following (from RealClearPolling) was published on Tuesday, 8 April. Quinnipiac polled 1,407 registered voters from 3 April to the 7th; YouGov: 1,741 U.S. adults, 5-8 April.

Kicking off the month was Cygnal's survey, published on 7 April, of 1,500 general election voters, conducted 1-3 April.

The swift leap from a low single to double-digit net disapproval is unquestionably attributable to Trump's groundbreaking incompetence — that, matched only by his earth-shattering stupidity. On 9 April, just one day after the above polling completed its field work, Trump again careened through the guardrails of elementary prudence by further coarsening trade relations with China and still sticking it to the rest of the world.

There's a likelihood, a strong one, I should think, that more than mere detectable growth in the rational electorate's headcount will need more time. Post-election I gave Trump three to six months before the body politic turns on him in more than mostly partisan numbers. There remains a week until my presumptous starting gun, after which there's an abundance of time for voters and the public at large to discern the near-economic End Times created by Trump's pantagruelian wrecking ball of unparalleled dumbassery mixed with I meant to do that.

The public's evolving recognition of America's eschatological financial Rapture will not by itself, however, naturally transmute into a knowledgeability capable of inspiring mass movements of resistance. The depths of destruction that Trump is backhoeing with his erratic behavior — a commonplace. of course, but even more incomprehensible of late — must be known widely.

It is, then, essential to add to public discourse whatever higher knowledge those in possession of it are able to add. I am not among them; the intricacies of international trade, currency exchanges and bond markets are just a trifle outside my academic training as a political historian. What I am able to do is what I've done: From finance professionals I've boosted their invaluable assessments of just how grim America's Trumpist reality really is, and now I'm fencing their wares here. (Don't panic, these experts put the esoteric complexities of this humongous "Made in Mar-a-Lago" mess into easily comprehensible English.)

MarketWatch begins by observing that "the mighty dollar, ordinarily a safe haven during times of market-based stress, is falling apart."

This "point[s] to a much bigger problem for all U.S. assets," the publication continue. "That’s because the weakening greenback has been accompanied by a dramatic selloff in U.S. government debt and whipsaw action in all three major stock indexes." To that, researchers at a New York investment banking firm apply their own Hobbesian aphorism: "Such coinciding moves ... are 'rare, ugly and worrying.'"

Marc Chandler, a currency-exchange strategist at another NY firm, believes "the biggest damage right now is to the U.S. brand." He compares Trump's "tariff-driven volatility" to Coca-Cola's still almost unbelievable 1985 switch of Coke to New Coke. Outside of branding harm, though, Coca-Cola forced no one to drink that awful new stuff, while inherent to Trump's volatility is that all Americans have no choice but to suffer.

Chandler goes on to note that "there is talk of a capital strike against the U.S., with many people suggesting there’s pressure from foreign investors selling American assets."

The investment bank's researchers add that "currency lower, bonds lower, and stocks lower spell capital outflows, which interact with hedge-fund deleveraging. There is no global scramble for dollar liquidity, global investors are selling dollar assets instead."

Even scarier are these words from the research team, and scariest yet is the vantage point from which they speak: "This is not about stagflation.... It reflects evaporating U.S. growth exceptionalism — ['the unique elements of the American economy and financial system which make [made] it more attractive than elsewhere in the world'] — and the reduced attraction, at the margin, of dollar assets for reserve purposes amid erratic U.S. decision-making."

Says Deutsche Bank: "The damage to the USD has been done.... [The world] is undergoing a process of rapid dedollarization. Nowhere is this more evident than the continued and combined collapse in the currency and U.S. bond market.”

Shortly after James Carville's involvement with the Clinton administration I heard him remark in a television interview that he hopes when he dies he'll come back as the bond market. That, he said, was more powerfully influential on Clinton's presidency than any other externalities.

As Paul Krugman explains bond yields in connection with Trump's monstrous tariff hikes, the latter led to "soaring interest rates on U.S. government debt." (Because of those rampant selloffs, as noted earlier.)

So today, says Krugman, "the common thread in bond markets [currency trading, too] is that, thanks to Trump, dollar assets — traditionally the foundation of the global financial system — are no longer perceived as safe."

Investors have started treating the United States like a third-world economy, he adds, to which I added bolded italics.

Krugman's penultimate assessment: "Even I didn’t expect him to destroy [U.S.] credibility accumulated over 80 years in less than three months. But he has. And even if Trump were to backtrack on everything he’s done, we wouldn’t get the lost credibility back. The whole world ... now knows that America is run by a mad king."

The real and really unfunny, paradoxic and bone-chilling joker in Trump's deck, as Krugman sees (or unsees?) it would require the thickest pair of blinkers to not see: "I don’t know how this ends. In fact, I don’t know what policy will be next week. But that’s basically the point."

By the end of next week we should have a bit clearer picture into the extent — the regime's permanently crippling extent, one hopes — of the damage Trump has also inflicted on himself, i.e., on his job approval ratings. It would make no difference to me if he's unperturbed by bottoming out and, it appears, that would be the case. The Washington Post quotes a White House official: "He’s at the peak of just not giving a fuck anymore. Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a fuck. He’s going to do what he’s going to do." That's not only unsurprising, it's irrelevant to what really matters.

If around half of all Americans are by then still blind or indifferent to the cretinous evils that constitute the person of Donald J. Trump, if a substantial portion of voters persists in giving him a pass (this time on their own destruction no less), then rational America will at last be left with the unshakable certainty that the once great United States now has the ethics of Al Capone and as a world leader is deader than Jacob Marley.