Trumpism vs. capitalism

The President's heart is in the right place when he denounces General Motors for announcing the closure of several auto plants, but few people seem willing to give him credit for that. Instead, critics to his right and his left blamed Donald Trump's own tariff policies for the loss of jobs, arguing that they had made materials imported by GM prohibitively expensive. Those critics shake their heads contemptuously when Trump protests against GM closing American plants while keeping foreign facilities running.  All these critics may have valid points, but howevermuch Trump may have himself to blame, it still seems appropriate for an American leader to begrudge the loss of every American job. It's a welcome change of pace from Republican orthodoxy, which on questions of trade is effectively libertarian orthodoxy, according to which the judgments of the Market are true and righteous altogether. Donald Trump's admirable attributes may be few, but one of them is his unwillingness to bow mindlessly before the Market idol. Just as his attempts to buy political influence through campaign donations informed his attitude toward establishment politics, so his experience as a global businessman most likely makes him cynical toward the idolization of the Market by fellow Republicans. His whole argument since entering politics is that the global market as we know it is not the objective entity of free-market idealism. All along he has argued against a self-defeating idealism that requires Americans to play by dogmatic rules even while other nations don't. His desire to maximize employment may be criticized when, in his enthusiasm for coal mining and oil drilling, it shows an indifference to ecological consequences, but merely defying Market orthodoxy is hardly morally equivalent to that. In this, Trump shows his post-Cold War colors. It's no longer necessary to believe that if the U.S. doesn't stand for free markets it stands for nothing. It might have been possible once upon a time for a patriot to argue that the U.S. and the free market were, for all intents and purposes, one and the same, when the great adversary embodied the unfree market. In the absence of that adversary, it becomes easier to imagine a divergence of interests separating the Market and the nation that forces a choice of loyalties. As a nationalist, or at least while he's a politician, Trump will try to put the nation before the market, while people in his own party continue to claim that there's no need to choose. Those same people probably will still wonder how Trump keeps winning primaries in 2020. As for the other party, they have no deep sympathy for capitalism nor any great faith in the Market, but they remain too fearful of Trump's competitive vision of the world to rally too enthusiastically behind his corporation-bashing. They might feel differently if Trump had a more progressive vision of economic competitiveness than prioritized subsidized tech training over reviving moribund industries. His commitment to some sort of government program to that effect could earn him good will from unexpected quarters, and it would go a long way toward proving that he really believes in both full employment and a competitive economy and isn't just pandering to disgruntled Rust Belters to win another term. We can remain doubtful about him, but even at our most doubtful we shouldn't take it for granted, between him and GM, that he's the bad guy.