The Economist, January 21, pay wall
From the gilded age to the golden age : The new American imperialism
Donald Trump is the first president in more than 100 years to call for new American territory—including Mars
Read full article here : https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/21-janvier-3.pdf
Link : https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/01/21/the-new-american-imperialism
The Wall Street Journal, Editorial, 21 janvier, article payant
Trump’s Inaugural of Optimism: He begins his second term with a far better message than in 2017
Full article here: https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/21-janvier-1.pdf
Link: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-inaugural-address-2025-72edaf3e?mod=hp_opin_pos_0
The Economist, 20 janvier, article payant
Trump 2 : The beginning of the end of the Trump era
The new president is more confident, and radical, than ever—and also more accepted
Extraits:
THE MOST jarring difference between Donald Trump’s first and second inaugurations will be the setting. Eight years ago he spoke in front of the Capitol building on a relatively mild January day, but frigid temperatures have pushed the ceremony inside for the first time in 40 years. A closer look at plans for this scaled-back event also offers hints at some of the profound contrasts between 2017 and 2025. (…)
Mr Trump was something of an international oddity in 2016. Some, like the prime minister of Japan, swiftly adapted to the new reality and visited Mr Trump in New York. This time Mr Trump has a broader international fan base. Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, plans to attend, along with Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. The Chinese Communist Party will send the country’s vice-president, and India’s foreign minister will be there as well. Mr Trump had been conducting shadow foreign policy for weeks—with his advisers playing a role in the Gaza ceasefire—so it comes as no surprise to see such a broad guest list from abroad.
The American public’s reaction also has been starkly different. Rather than the palpable sense of dread apparent in January 2017, the streets are filled with tourists and there are parties taking place throughout the city. Organisers of an anti-Trump protest in Washington had hoped some 50,000 people might show up; around 5,000 did. (…)
Mr Trump is at the peak of his power, before he has had to do anything unpopular, or disappoint any of the factions competing for his attention. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk—all open Trump critics during the first term—have struck friendlier notes and are set to attend the inauguration. Even Bill Gates recently said he was “impressed” with the new president. (…)
And while the Republican Party is very much outwardly MAGA—and agrees on cutting taxes, restricting immigration and bolstering energy production—many pre-Trump orthodoxies prevail. As he works with Congress, Mr Trump may find himself giving way to policies that don’t seem particularly revolutionary. “The striking thing about Republicans in Congress now is that they’re pretty recognisable” when compared to their Obama-era predecessors, argues Yuval Levin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, and alumnus of George W. Bush’s administration. “They haven’t changed as much as you would think, given how different Trump is from where Republicans have been before.” (…)
Mr Trump will move rapidly; the question is whether his policy changes stick. The beginning of the end of the Trump era will kick off with large-scale deportations on Tuesday, once the inauguration festivities have come to a close. Once the initial shock and awe have worn off, it will be on Mr Trump to fight tougher battles of persuasion to create a real legacy.■
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/01/19/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-trump-era
Le Figaro, 20 janvier, article payant
L’éditorial de Philippe Gélie : « Trump et la fin de l’Occident »
Les Européens auraient tort de penser qu’ils jouent encore dans la même équipe que les États-Unis.
Extraits:
Ce n’est pas le moindre talent de Donald Trump que de forcer ses interlocuteurs à spéculer sur ce qu’il va faire. On connaît les piliers de son programme, puisqu’il n’en a jamais changé – lutter contre l’immigration, imposer des droits de douane, encourager les forages, dégraisser l’État fédéral, traquer le wokisme –, mais nul ne sait dans quel ordre il va procéder, à quel rythme et sous quel angle d’attaque. Ces incertitudes inquiètent et déstabilisent, c’est le but. (…)
Donald Trump, c’est d’abord une méthode, très simple : celle de « la pression maximale ». Quel que soit le sujet, face à des adversaires ou de supposés alliés, il utilisera tous les moyens disponibles pour obtenir le meilleur « deal ». (…)
Face aux ressorts du trumpisme, vecteurs de son populisme, le monde est prié de s’adapter. Pour les Européens, cela s’annonce particulièrement difficile, parce qu’ils croient encore jouer dans la même équipe. Or, s’il paraît un peu grandiloquent de dire qu’avec Trump c’est la fin de l’Occident, c’est en tout cas la fin annoncée du confortable « club occidental », où l’on défendrait des intérêts communs. Avec Trump plus qu’aucun autre, le seul destin de l’Europe est dans le non-alignement.
The Wall Street Journal, 18 janvier, article payant
Trump Is a Realist on Greenland
In fact, stability depends on the U.S. being ready to act in the places the president-elect keeps talking about.
Extraits :
(…) But it’s easier to make sense of Mr. Trump’s rhetorical gambits, including threatening to control Panama and Greenland by force, than you might think. (…)
Also in the cards: an early Beijing provocation in the South China Sea, aimed just below Mr. Trump’s threshold of irritability, to further erode U.S. deterrence in the region. In enlarging the geopolitical playing field to include areas where the U.S. is more advantageously placed, Mr. Trump not only distracts, he reminds us the playing field is bigger and more favorable than we might have remembered.
• Stating the obvious. He’s saying what more decorous and perhaps wiser presidents don’t feel the need to emphasize. The U.S. stands ready to exert control over the Panama Canal in any conflict with China. It stands ready, in one fashion or another, to assert control over Greenland to protect vital communications between the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. already has large forces based in Europe. They need to be supported. Also Greenland contains rare minerals that aren’t really rare: China’s power comes from controlling the processing, which it uses to favor sourcing that it also controls. The underpopulated Danish territory is one of the West’s best opportunities to flip this table. (…)
The Danes have been responsible stewards. Denmark is a loyal NATO ally. Anathema ought to be handing over its giant, indefensible island hinterland to 56,000 local voters. Notice how the “resource curse” has turned the Mideast into a byword of stability and progress. The gap between present status and expectations is even vaster and more dislocating—on paper, every Greenlander is a multimillionaire given the wealth under their feet.
These are circumstances to undo almost any newly independent nation. In how many years might an outside military have to intervene if demagogues and kleptocrats come to power? (…)
Mr. Trump has dominated the downtime between election and inauguration with his stink-bomb musings on age-old geopolitical questions. He successfully crowded other world leaders and their words off the stage, consolidating his astonishing gift for driving the global discussion. This alone is a useful demonstration. Russia and China would be instant sinkholes without U.S. stability and predictability upholding open markets and secure transit. We forget this but they don’t. Mr. Trump is throwing them curveballs. If he has a good game plan to go with it, it could pay off for America.
The Economist, by invitation, 17 janvier, article payant
The second Trump presidency : Trumpism is becoming more pragmatic, argues Reihan Salam
But not all of the incoming president’s backers buy it
Reihan Salam is president of the Manhattan Institute.
Extraits :
DONALD TRUMP is enjoying a honeymoon. As he wryly observed in December, “[In] the first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend.” The president-elect was referring to the ever-growing list of technology CEOs who had made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home. But he could just as easily have had in mind the #Resistance media luminaries now seeking to mend fences, the swing-state Democratic senators backing immigration-enforcement measures they once deemed anathema, or the anxious foreign emissaries hoping that he can be talked out of walloping their economies with tariffs.
Why do so many of the great and good now want to be Mr Trump’s friend? One explanation is that his victory in 2024 was broader and more convincing than the one in 2016. This time, he won the popular vote by drawing in more working Americans of all racial groups, Hispanics in particular. Moreover, urban areas that were once Democratic strongholds gave him significant support.
This broadened coalition, though, represents a change not just to Trump voters, but to Trumpism. (…)
Thanks to surging inflation and illegal immigration, and with Mr Trump growing more moderate on key social issues, many socially liberal voters found themselves “mugged by reality”, as the conservative intellectual Irving Kristol once put it. Business leaders, investors, Silicon Valley moguls and academics who once considered Mr Trump beyond the pale began to reconsider his virtues. The result is a new Trumpian synthesis—call it Neo-Trumpism.
This is a stark departure from Mr Trump’s first bid for the Republican nomination. (…)
The progressive overreach of the Biden years created an opening for Mr Trump, but an opening that was markedly different from what came before. He could shift his focus from appealing to the traditional Republican base—with whom his alliance was always uneasy—to affirming the centre’s anger over Mr Biden’s overreach. (…)
The spike in inflation that followed the budget-busting American Rescue Plan revealed the limits of fiscal expansion and reminded American voters of the downsides of unlimited welfarism. Swing voters weren’t suddenly clamouring for entitlement reform, but they were more worried about the rising cost of groceries than the need for more transfers.
Finally, Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel served as a vivid reminder of the threat of terrorist barbarism abroad and, closer to home, the extent of anti-Israel, anti-Western sentiment among American leftists and in many immigrant communities.
Paleo-Trumpism has thus had to make room for Neo-Trumpism: a more pragmatic, less ideological tendency that emphasises law and order, pro-growth economic policies, an assertive foreign policy, a more selective approach to immigration and vigorous opposition to the entrenchment of intersectional leftism in schools, workplaces and cultural institutions.
On the campaign trail, these tendencies can coexist. When it comes to governing, however, there will be hard choices ahead, as evidenced by the ferocious row over H-1B visas that recently pitted Elon Musk and his Silicon Valley allies, who embrace skilled immigration, against MAGA social-media influencers, who vehemently disagree.
There will, then, be pressure to abandon Neo-Trumpism, but Mr Trump would be unwise to yield to it. Not only is it what put him back in the White House. By expanding his coalition, and increasing its respectability, Neo-Trumpism gives its namesake an opportunity to forge a lasting ideological legacy. ■
The Economist, 16 janvier, article payant
What do Greenlanders think of being bought?
Donald Trump’s desire for Greenland, and a shabby visit by his son, reignite the independence debate
Extraits :
(…) Panama is part of a bigger piece of real estate that Mr Trump has his eye on. He wants to influence territory and infrastructure close to the United States. He views Mexico as a source of unwanted migration, drugs and Chinese goods, Canada as a liberal dystopia and Greenland as a weak link. Some of his remarks are bluster. The Gulf of Mexico, he says, should be renamed the Gulf of America. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congresswoman, has drawn up legislation for that purpose; Mexico’s leader Claudia Sheinbaum has retorted that a portion of the continent should be renamed Mexican America. He says Canada should become the 51st member of the United States, but among just a few other problems with that, absorbing relatively liberal Canada into the United States would dilute the Republicans’ political clout.
Yet his remarks about the Panama Canal, Greenland and Mexico touch on real sensitivities and have tangible consequences. On January 7th Mr Trump said the canal was “vital to our country” and claimed that it is being “operated by China”. On January 9th Dusty Johnson, a Republican congressman, proposed a bill to authorise the purchase of the canal from the Panamanian government, citing “China’s interest in and presence around the canal”. José Raúl Mulino, Panama’s president, has responded to Mr Trump’s by saying that “every square metre of the canal” belongs to Panama and will continue to do so.
MAGA claims that China operates or owns the canal are false. Nonetheless the Panamanian government has become cosy with China in recent years. “China doesn’t have control of the canal, but it has taken advantage of weak institutions and endemic corruption to increase its influence in national politics and business,” says Alonso Illueca of Santa María La Antigua Catholic University in Panama city. In June 2017 Panama’s government ended diplomatic relations with Taiwan and established them with Beijing. (…)
Mr Trump also says “the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity” for “purposes of national security”. He has refused to rule out using force. Mute Egede, Greenland’s prime minister, says its 57,000 residents do not want to be either Americans or part of Denmark, as they are at present. Mr Trump’s allies point to China’s “Polar Silk Road”, a spree of infrastructure-building in the Arctic, as a threat, but that is old news. The cash-strapped Greenland government did welcome Chinese investment a decade ago, but pressure from the Danish and American governments often blocked Chinese projects. Chinese mines have faced financial obstacles and local opposition. China’s activity is now mostly confined to fisheries. A poll in 2024 showed that 25% of Greenlanders welcome more co-operation with China, down from 47% in 2021. (…)
But it is undeniable that Greenland is important to America’s national security. The shortest route for Russian nuclear missiles to reach America’s east coast goes right over the island: Pituffik Space Base in the territory’s north-west hosts part of America’s missile early-warning system. The so-called Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap plays a central role in the high-stakes submarine contest between nato and Russia. “Frankly, this is our backyard…Actually, it’s our front door,” says Tom Dans, a former Trump appointee at the US Arctic Research Commission.
A majority of Greenlanders want independence from Denmark. Under a 2009 home-rule law they have a roadmap to achieving it, though they remain divided on timing and economic viability. An independent Greenland could be vulnerable to coercion and be an unreliable ally. Greenlanders can have a Panglossian view of geopolitics. The government has advocated non-militarisation. In 2024 2% of Greenlanders considered growing military tension their biggest challenge. (…)
What next? As usual with Mr Trump’s wildest pronouncements, deals are much more likely than extreme outcomes. Greenland becoming part of the United States would do little to improve security. Yet a military and economic reset is looming. (…) In Nuuk on January 13th Mr Egede said he had been “shocked” by Mr Trump’s comments, yet at the same time signalled closer co-operation on defence, and welcomed American investment in mining. “The US doesn’t need to own Greenland in order to support its presence there,” says Kristine Berzina of the German Marshall Fund, a think-tank.
Likewise an American invasion of Panama is not on the cards. Mr Mulino has rejected any negotiation over the canal, which brings in $5bn in annual revenue. Yet it seems likely that Panama will try to deepen commercial and diplomatic links with the United States, and to reduce its China connection. America’s most important immediate neighbour sets an example here. On January 13th Ms Sheinbaum announced a new “Plan Mexico” aimed at reducing its dependence on inputs from China, and reaffirmed the centrality of the usmca trade deal linking the United States, Mexico and Canada. Will it be enough to placate Mr Trump? She also revealed that she had not been invited to the president-elect’s inauguration. Mr Trump is not about to invade his neighbours. But he is unlikely to prioritise building reliable partnerships either. The new doctrine is one of deference. ■
L’Express, 15 janvier, article payant
Donald Trump, le retour du dynamiteur : jusqu’où ira-t-il ?
Etats-Unis. Avec Elon Musk à ses côtés et le contrôle sur tous les pouvoirs, le 47e président dispose d’une puissance inédite. Les Européens peuvent à bon droit s’inquiéter
Extraits :
Sans attendre la passation de pouvoir du 20 janvier, Donald Trump a déjà (re)démarré son show. Moins de deux semaines avant son investiture, celui-ci a commencé par un feu d’artifice de provocations à l’égard de ses alliés, frappés de sidération. Lors d’une conférence de presse improvisée depuis sa résidence de Mar-a-Lago, en Floride, le président élu a asséné qu’il n’excluait rien. Ni d’attaquer le Panama pour reprendre le contrôle du canal interocéanique cédé à ce pays fin 1999. Ni de s’emparer du Groenland – partie intégrante du Danemark depuis deux siècles. Ni de faire pression sur le Canada pour en faire le 51e Etat américain.
Au même moment, le fils du président élu, “Don Jr” débarquait à Nuuk, la capitale du Groenland, en service commandé : envoyé spécial de son père, il était venu faire le buzz en multipliant les selfies avec une poignée d’autochtones coiffés de casquettes MAGA (Make America Great Again) distribués par ses soins.
On croyait le 47e président américain isolationniste, désireux de replier l’Amérique sur elle-même; on le découvre impérialiste. “Il a une vision du monde très XIXe siècle, estime Jacob Heilbrunn qui dirige la revue de géopolitique The National Interest. Dans la lignée de la doctrine du président Monroe [1817-1825], il veut découper le monde en “sphères d’influence” et estime que les Etats-Unis n’ont pas d’alliés, seulement des concurrents ou des adversaires. Il croit obtenir davantage par l’agression que par la coopération : en cela, il ressemble à Vladimir Poutine…” Nous voici prévenus : avec le retour de Trump, les relations internationales se définiront avant tout par la loi du plus fort. (…)
Mais pourquoi Donald Trump se plaît-il tant à déstabiliser ses alliés européens et américains? “Une partie de la réponse relève de la psychologie : sans filtre, il adore effrayer les gens et indigner les journalistes et les commentateurs, réplique Eliot A. Cohen, ex-conseiller du ministère des Affaires étrangères sous George W. Bush.
Mais il faut reconnaître, aussi, que ses propos correspondent à des préoccupations réelles. Le Groenland, où vivent 57 000 habitants, est un territoire à haute valeur stratégique dans l’Arctique, qu’il s’agit de défendre des convoitises chinoises.” Au Panama, c’est également la Chine qui est visée. Les dirigeants américains s’inquiètent de la prise de contrôle par Pékin de plusieurs ports et zones franches aux entrées du canal dont la valeur stratégique, en cas de guerre, serait inestimable.
De là à ordonner une opération militaire? (…)
L’imprévisibilité trumpienne met en tout cas les acteurs européens dans un état de stress qu’ils n’avaient pas connu depuis… le précédent mandat du républicain. Il est vrai que le 20 janvier, le monde pénètre en terra incognita. (…)
Déjà, le plus proche conseiller de Donald Trump multiplie les ingérences dans la vie politique européenne. Au Royaume-Uni, Elon Musk a déterré un scandale de pédocriminalité avec l’objectif de faire tomber le Premier ministre travailliste Keir Starmer, demandant carrément des élections anticipées. En Allemagne, à quelques semaines des élections législatives de février, il appelle à voter pour Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), “dernière lueur d’espoir” dans un pays dirigé par un Olaf Scholz traité d'”imbécile incompétent”. Musk a aussi offert une tribune inespérée à Alice Weidel – cheffe de ce parti antimigrants, prorusse et eurosceptique – et candidate au poste de chancelier, dans une interview en streaming le 9 janvier sur X.
Le statut ambigu d’Elon Musk dans la galaxie Trump représente à lui seul un défi. Non élu et non-membre du cabinet présidentiel – mais à la tête d’une instance non gouvernementale chargée de faire des recommandations pour tailler dans les dépenses de la bureaucratie – l’entrepreneur ne représente pas l’Etat américain. Stricto sensu, ses propos ne relèvent donc pas de l’ingérence. Et il se présente comme un simple individu exerçant sa liberté d’expression. “Le danger qu’il fait peser sur la vie démocratique européenne est pourtant bien réel”, évalue l’expert David Colon, auteur de La guerre de l’information. Les Etats à la conquête de nos esprits (Tallandier). Il a fait modifier l’algorithme qui gère son propre profil sur X afin que la portée de ses tweets soit amplifiée mille fois et qu’ils atteignent tout le monde, bien au-delà de ses followers. Résultat, X est devenue la chambre d’écho mondiale du moindre propos de Musk dont la rafale de posts quotidiens affectent nos débats publics.”
Or Musk comme Trump ont en horreur l’ordre mondial hérité de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Ils abhorrent les institutions onusiennes et méprisent les démocraties européennes. Face à l’offensive lancée par ce tandem infernal, l’Europe a du souci à se faire. (…)
Une question demeure : jusqu’où le prochain locataire de la Maison-Blanche, appuyé par le gourou Musk, abusera-t-il de sa position dominante? “Ayant réussi le plus extraordinaire come-back de l’histoire américaine, il se sent plus fort que jamais, pointe Jacob Heilbrunn, du National Interest. La tentative d’assassinat dont il a miraculeusement réchappé a encore renforcé l’idée messianique qu’il se fait de lui-même. Il se prend désormais pour un génie infaillible, comme Poutine.” Pas vraiment rassurant.
The Wall Street Journal, 15 janvier, article payant
Trump’s Canada and Greenland Threats Imperil China Fight, Says Departing Envoy
Ambassador Nicholas Burns expresses concern about future relations with Beijing
Extraits :
BEIJING—U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns, in a parting interview in which he expressed concern about the future of relations with Beijing, said President-elect Donald Trump’s designs on Canada and Greenland will weaken Washington’s ability to confront adversaries such as China.
In the days leading up to his inauguration next week, Trump has declared it “an absolute necessity” that the U.S. take control of Greenland, a Danish territory, and suggested that Canada be made a 51st U.S. state, citing national-security concerns. Greenland’s prime minister and officials in Canada have pushed back.
Threats to the sovereignty of allies undermine the longstanding U.S. position that nations should respect the territorial integrity of those around them, Burns said in an interview at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
“We’re facing, in Putin, in the Chinese Communist leadership, in Iran, in Venezuela, countries that want to unravel that international order that we have supported,” he said. “The last thing we should do is insult and be disrespectful to the people of Canada or the people of Denmark.” (…)
“One of the greatest achievements in the history of the United States was the order that we helped to put into place following the Second World War…that the borders of the countries are sacrosanct, that the United States recognizes the inviolability of borders of other countries,” Burns said. “Our message to Putin and to the Chinese will be very strong and credible, when we practice that respect for the sovereignty, especially of our allies.” (…)
The Guardian, 15 janvier, libre accès
Timothy Garton Ash: In the new Trumpian era, liberal democracies must hold their noses – and engage with difficult partners
New polling says much of the world will welcome Trump. Europe will need to be more transactional abroad – but less so at home
Read full article here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/15/donald-trump-liberal-democracies-trumpian-europe-politics
The Wall Street Journal, 14 janvier, article payant
Trump’s Talk of Buying Greenland Energizes Island’s Independence Movement
Many in Danish territory don’t want to sell to the U.S., but they are open to the idea of a closer relationship
Extraits :
Jørgen Boassen, a 50-year-old bricklayer and Trump admirer, was at the airport in Greenland’s capital Nuuk this week wearing a MAGA hat to cheer the arrival of Trump Force One.
But Boassen, who helped organize the visit from Donald Trump Jr., says he has no interest in President-elect Donald Trump’s entreaties to buy the icebound island. “We can’t be sold,” he says. Instead, he wants to further Greenland’s push for independence, and to that end, Trump’s interventions are proving unexpectedly useful.
Greenland is a self-ruling part of the Kingdom of Denmark. The Danish government says it is willing to grant Greenland full independence if there is local support, and recent Greenlandic elections and polls indicate there is.
Like many independence movements, the Greenlandic campaign is butting up against uncertainty over what happens next when freedom is secured. The Danish government has said that if Greenland became independent, it would stop around $600 million in annual handouts—about half the island’s budget—raising doubts over how the new nation would fund itself.
Trump’s recent threat of a trade war with Denmark is changing the negotiating dynamic, says Ulrik Pram Gad, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. The Danish government now might be more open to agreeing a divorce deal that includes some continued payments to ease Greenland’s path to independence, he says. “My prognosis is that the Danish government will accept it in the next few years,” he says. An independent Greenland would then be free to forge its own security or economic ties with the U.S., Denmark or anyone else.
“What Trump has said is that we are valued in the U.S., he wants to help us,” says Pele Broberg, the leader of one of Greenland’s pro-independence parties, Naleraq. “We can become independent with the help of other states.” However, Broberg says he has no desire to become part of the U.S.
Trump on Thursday night seemed to double down on his offer. “The people of Greenland would love to become a state of the United States of America,” he said. “Now, Denmark maybe doesn’t like it. But then we can’t be too happy with Denmark and maybe things have to happen with respect to Denmark having to do with tariffs.”
In April, Greenland goes to the polls in a vote that could fire the starter gun on independence for the territory of 57,000 people. The last time elections were held, pro-independence parties got 80% of the vote.
Just days before Donald Trump Jr.’s arrival, the prime minister of Greenland made a New Year’s address to the nation saying that a draft constitution for the country has been prepared and that the independence process should be triggered. “It is now time to take the next step for our country,” Múte Egede said. “Like other countries in the world, we must work to remove the obstacles to cooperation—which we can describe as the shackles of the colonial era—and move on.” (…)
A poll conducted in 2019 showed 68% of Greenlanders want their country to become independent from Denmark sometime in the two decades to come.
Boassen, who welcomed Donald Trump Jr., and enjoyed a buffet lunch with him at a local hotel, says he would like to establish greater security ties with the U.S. to avoid being invaded by Russia. Some Greenlandic politicians, meanwhile, have urged that Greenland should tie itself closely to Denmark and the European Union.
Some of Trump’s advisers have privately acknowledged a sale of Greenland is unlikely, but an expansion of U.S. military and financial presence on the island is a possibility. A poll in 2021 showed that 69% of Greenlanders favored more cooperation with the U.S., compared with 39% who favored tighter cooperation with China.
Pram Gad, at the Danish Institute for International Studies, says the idea that the U.S. needs to buy Greenland to achieve its geopolitical aims is “crazy.” (…)
Denmark has sold bits of its empire to the U.S. before. In 1916, it sold the Danish West Indies, a group of islands in the Caribbean, to the U.S. for $25 million in gold. Last month, the Danes responded to Trump’s overtures by upping military spending on Greenland, announcing the purchase of two new inspection ships, two additional dog-sled teams and an upgrade for one of Greenland’s three main civilian airports to handle F-35 jet fighters.
The king of Denmark also updated the royal coat of arms to include an enlarged image of a polar bear, a symbol of Greenland, in an attempt to underscore the monarchy’s attachment to the place.
The Economist, 11 janvier, article payant
An American purchase of Greenland could be the deal of the century
The economics of buying new territory
Article complet en PDF: https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/9-janvier.pdf
The Wall Street Journal, 11 janvier, article payant
Denmark May Regret Not Selling Greenland to Trump
How long will the Danes even own it?
Extraits :
Danish politicians may be struggling to understand the art of the deal. Yes, real estate is about location, location and location. But for any kind of negotiation, timing is important too. Voters in Denmark may soon be asking why political leaders didn’t cut a deal with President Donald Trump when they had the chance during his first term. That’s when Mr. Trump broached the idea of the United States purchasing Greenland, a Danish territory and former colony. Mr. Trump recently raised the issue again as he prepares for his second term.
Now the Danes could end up getting bupkis for the chilly islands—no check from Uncle Sam and no control over Greenland. Reuters reports from Copenhagen:
Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede emphasised his desire to pursue independence from Denmark, its former colonial ruler, during his New Year speech, marking a significant change in the rhetoric surrounding the Arctic island’s future.
Egede’s speech, which comes on the heels of comments by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump expressing his wish for “ownership and control” of Greenland, also expressed a desire to strengthen Greenland’s cooperation with other countries.
“It is about time that we ourselves take a step and shape our future, also with regard to who we will cooperate closely with, and who our trading partners will be,” he said…
“It is now time for our country to take the next step. Like other countries in the world, we must work to remove the obstacles to cooperation – which we can describe as the shackles of colonialism – and move forward,” he said.
This doesn’t mean that Mr. Egede welcomes a U.S. acquisition. Kathryn Armstrong reported for the BBC after the most recent Trump declaration of interest last month:
Greenland has once again said it is not for sale after US President-elect Donald Trump said he wanted to take control of the territory.
“Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland,” its prime minister said on Monday, a day after Trump repeated comments about the Arctic island that he first made several years ago.
But if Greenland is rapidly moving toward a split with Denmark, it will likely be seeking a partner to offer security, as well as new commercial opportunities. (…)
Denmark may be in for a bad case of non-seller’s remorse. Sure, “fly me to Ilulissat” is not something you hear every day. But with travel options expanding the sky’s the limit. And recent history suggests Greenland may be in for a Trump bump. (…)
If travel expands, Americans may soon be cherishing memories of exotic getaways and saying, “We’ll always have Qaqortoq.”
New York Times, 26 décembre, article payant
The President’s Arsenal
In the United States, only the president can decide whether to use nuclear weapons. It’s an extraordinary instance in which Mr. Trump’s decision-making power will be absolute.
Extraits:
In the United States, only the president can decide whether to use nuclear weapons. It’s an extraordinary instance in which Mr. Trump’s decision-making power will be absolute. He will not need to consult Congress, the courts or senior advisers on when or how to use them. He will have a free hand to craft our nation’s nuclear posture, policy and diplomacy.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump commented on the peril posed by the rest of the world’s growing nuclear arsenals. His return to the White House offers new opportunities for him to steer America clear of those threats. His administration will need to act urgently and with creativity, all while also demonstrating the understanding that nuclear weapons are too dangerous to be brandished as a cudgel.
The leaders of China, Russia and the United States are in the midst of a new great-power competition, a global struggle for military, economic and geopolitical dominance. But not all aspects of this contest are zero-sum, especially in nuclear weapons matters. There are ample opportunities for all sides to improve their own national security conditions by staving off a costly arms race and dangerous confrontation.
Most Americans have never seen — or perhaps even contemplated — what it takes to be ready for nuclear conflict. Times Opinion gained rare, up-close access this summer to film what this looks like in the United States. Observing the missile launch procedures provided a glimpse at the inner workings of a warfighting machine that should never be set in motion.
The global nuclear balance is more tenuous in 2024 than it has been in decades.
“Tomorrow, we could have a war that will be so devastating that you could never recover from it,” Mr. Trump said in June. “Nobody can. The whole world won’t be able to recover from it.” (…)
President Vladimir Putin of Russia continues to raise the specter of escalating his war on Ukraine to nuclear use. India and Pakistan have an estimated 170 nuclear weapons each but are expanding their arsenals. U.S. intelligence believes China plans to double by 2030 the size of its stockpile of an estimated 500 warheads, as it continues the most ambitious expansion and diversification of its weaponry in its history. North Korea has developed missiles designed to strike America. The war in Gaza threatens to expand into a wider regional conflict; Israel already has nuclear weapons and Iran is moving closer to building a bomb, risking a proliferation cascade throughout the Middle East.
The nuclear risk isn’t found only among America’s adversaries. Allies without nuclear aims are now seriously discussing whether they also need nuclear capability. The recently impeached South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeol, has raised the possibility of building a bomb, and polls have shown that 70 percent of Koreans think the country should. If South Korea proceeds, experts assume Japan will as well. Germany is debating whether it should develop its own nuclear program, and Poland has sought a more active role in NATO’s nuclear sharing. Ukraine’s leader, President Volodymyr Zelensky, has made his nation’s need for a nuclear weapon clear if the country isn’t granted NATO membership. (…)
In the past, Mr. Trump has said that he first appreciated the true danger of nuclear weapons after talking to an unlikely source: his uncle, an M.I.T. professor. In 1986, when he was still principally a New York real estate developer, Mr. Trump reached out to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which had just received a Nobel Peace Prize for its disarmament work. He hoped to arrange negotiations with the Soviets to lower the nuclear threat.
Now it will be the job of President Trump to pull the world back from the brink. It’s time to discuss what he and the United States should prioritize. (…)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/12/17/opinio
New York Times, Guest Essay, 21 décembre, article payant
The Budget Fight and Trump’s Nihilistic Style
Extraits:
In about a month, the inauguration will complete a loop: Donald Trump will become president again, eight years after the initial event.
The Trump era of American life will last about 12 years, including the Biden interregnum, stretching from the summer of 2015 into the winter of 2029. The country has, to understate it, already wildly changed.
None of us are the same people we were eight years ago. Politics definitely isn’t the same as it was — even people’s reactions to Mr. Trump winning the presidency again are different. This time it has played out more like a mix of resignation, alienation and openness than the shock and refusal of late 2016. “EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social on Thursday morning. He is like a magnet who pulls, repels and reshapes what surrounds him. (…)
A major part of the past two years has been Mr. Trump’s promise that radical, dramatic change is coming, undergirded by the broader movement of national conservatives and the more hard-core MAGA universe, from mass deportations to a rethinking of American power abroad. We’re already in an era of deep change, which happens in big and small ways all the time: We’ve now spent half a decade talking about the industrial base, industrial policy, renegotiated trade deals — nationalistic economic policies and an interest in domestic tech manufacturing that were almost impossible to imagine before the Trump era. But the sudden, enormous presence of Mr. Musk in political life, the rapid re-emergence of big spending cuts as a G.O.P. concern this year and the surprise congressional spending standoff are a good reminder of the discordant way big change could be coming in 2025.
At the beginning of the year, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump were considered potential but not yet certain allies. Now they seem to be deeply intertwined in decision-making about all kinds of things. Mr. Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr. barely knew each other a few months ago and there they are now, together, with a real segment of the G.O.P. base deeply attached to Mr. Kennedy’s outlook. (…)
But the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, from its nongovernmental nature to the sheer power of the resources Mr. Musk may possess and his own demonstrated ability to shape events, is one of those things that you couldn’t dream up a year ago. Through Mr. Musk, spending cuts have roared back as a Republican concern over the past couple of months in a way that was not at all a sure thing given the arc of Mr. Trump’s first term, his resistance to cutting entitlements and the broader goals of some of the national conservatives. DOGE seems like an unpredictable outside force that could be nothing or everything next year, as evidenced in a certain way by the events on Capitol Hill this week.
Unpredictability and ideological inconsistency were always part of the first Trump presidency, and a major and chaotic theme of the past decade overall, as we limp toward the end of another year of wild news events. One of the inescapable conclusions of the 2024 election and everything that has transpired is that, generally, it’d be foolish and ignorant to say that systems couldn’t be run better or rethought, or that the public does not want significant changes to American institutions. But one of the most disorienting, uneasy aspects of this transition is knowing that drastic change is coming — and that the people, mechanisms and big-picture decisions can change from one day to the next.
Even the unexpected can be more unexpected than we think.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/20/opinion/trump-shutdown-allegiances.html
Le Point, 18 décembre, article payant
Trump, le faiseur de deals à l’épreuve du nouvel ordre mondial
LA CHRONIQUE DE BRICE COUTURIER. De l’Ukraine à la Syrie, comment le président élu va tenter de s’imposer dans un monde beaucoup plus instable qu’en 2020.
Extraits:
De quel côté la politique étrangère de Donald Trump va-t-elle pencher ? Le futur président de la première puissance mondiale est un politicien imprévisible : il est réputé pour n’être inspiré par aucune doctrine en particulier et se fier à ses intuitions. Son slogan de campagne « La paix par la force » paraît inspiré par le désir de ses communicants de renouer avec la rhétorique reaganienne. (…)
Tout ce dont on est sûr concernant Trump, c’est que, en tant qu’homme d’affaires spécialisé dans l’immobilier, il se vante de savoir « passer des deals ». Ce qui le rapprocherait du « transactionnalisme », préconisé notamment par le sénateur James E. Risch à l’époque récente où ce républicain présidait la commission des Affaires étrangères du Sénat.
Cette doctrine consiste en une série de tentatives destinées à « modifier la base de l’engagement américain et définir une série de contreparties à l’engagement des États-Unis », bref, à faire payer les alliés pour une protection américaine revue à la baisse sans basculer dans l’isolationnisme pur et simple.
Lors de son premier mandat, il a ainsi tenté de négocier un certain nombre de « contrats » au bénéfice des États-Unis. Avec des résultats mitigés : si le dictateur nord-coréen l’a roulé dans la farine, Trump peut cependant se vanter d’avoir obtenu la signature des accords d’Abraham, normalisant les relations entre Israël et quatre États arabes : Bahreïn, les Émirats arabes unis, le Maroc et le Soudan.
À cette époque déjà, comme au cours de la campagne électorale de cette année, il avait promis aux Américains de mettre fin aux guerres lointaines et interminables, comme les aventures afghanes et irakiennes, imputées à l’idéalisme imprudent des néoconservateurs et à leur « wilsonisme botté ». C’est ce que continue de désirer la majorité d’entre eux. (…)
Cela fait un certain temps qu’on a compris que les États-Unis ne voulaient ou ne pouvaient plus jouer le rôle du shérif d’un ordre international libéral dont ils ont été les concepteurs, mais qu’ils estiment à présent contraire à leurs intérêts… (…)
Selon l’essayiste Ross Douthat, il faut s’attendre à ce que Pete Hegseth, le secrétaire à la Défense, s’oppose au vice-président J. D. Vance. Le premier a traité Vladimir Poutine de « criminel de guerre » quand l’autre a déclaré à plusieurs reprises que le sort de l’Ukraine l’indifférait et a recommandé que cesse tout soutien militaire américain à ce pays agressé. Selon Eric Ciaramella, de la Fondation Carnegie pour la paix internationale, ce sont actuellement les isolationnistes qui ont le vent en poupe au sein du cabinet.
Le monde que trouvera le nouveau président américain en prenant ses fonctions le 20 janvier est bien différent de celui au sein duquel il a joué sa partie entre 2017 et 2020. Il est devenu, de l’avis général, plus instable et plus dangereux. La Chine, la Russie et l’Iran se sont coordonnés pour saper l’influence occidentale. Ils rencontrent des auditeurs attentifs dans un « Sud global » dont il est erroné d’imaginer qu’il soit unifié et homogène. Deux guerres majeures ont éclaté, l’une en Ukraine, l’autre au Moyen-Orient. Et Trump ne saurait s’en désintéresser. (…)
Les Américains et leurs alliés de l’époque ont échoué à imposer la démocratie en Irak parce que ce type de régime doit procéder d’une maturation interne et ne saurait faire l’objet d’exportation. Mais, dans le cas de la Syrie, les États-Unis devraient s’impliquer et faire pression en ce sens auprès des nouveaux dirigeants du pays. Comme l’écrit Friedman, les coûts seraient faibles mais les chances de succès, élevées.
The Economist, 18 décembre, article payant
Labour under false pretences : Workers love Donald Trump. Unions should fear him
The president-elect is no friend to organised labour
Extraits:
It has been a banner year for America’s unions. In November 33,000 machinists returned to their stations at Boeing having won a 38% wage increase over four years. Their victory followed a seven-week strike that brought the plane-maker to its knees. A month before, 47,000 dockworkers walked out for three days at some of the country’s busiest ports. Teamsters union members at Amazon warehouses in New York are threatening a strike.
According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, 29 stoppages involving more than 1,000 workers each began between January and November (last year’s total was 33, the most since 2000). The National Labour Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency tasked with resolving labour disputes, says petitions to hold a vote to unionise are up by more than a quarter compared with last year. (…)
What will Mr Trump’s second term mean for this momentum? American conservatism is certainly edging closer to the country’s workers. Mr Trump has promised “historic co-operation between business and labour”. Yet his inauguration is also likely to bring unprecedented cosiness between the White House and billionaires such as Elon Musk. The populists and plutocrats that make up Mr Trump’s uneasy coalition have vastly different ideas about the future of the labour movement. American workers, unions and industry cannot help being caught in the middle. (…)
Other company kept by Mr Trump, however, is cause for picket-line panic. Mr Musk, who has been chosen to run a new Department of Government Efficiency, is a threat to organised labour. He has resisted unionisation at Tesla, his electric-vehicle company, which has helped it best the big Detroit carmakers. Along with Amazon, Mr Musk’s firms have challenged the authority of the NLRB in court.
There are more reasons to expect a decline in union power. The conditions of high inflation and near-full employment that gave leverage to striking workers during Mr Biden’s term have softened. (…)
To secure Mr Trump’s favour, unions may have to adapt. Many have taken to championing views on topics irrelevant to the livelihoods of those they represent. Earlier this year, for example, a coalition of unions demanded cessation of military aid to Israel. They will need to rein in their campaigning.
After all, wooing workers and courting unions are not the same thing. J.D. Vance, the incoming vice-president, and Marco Rubio, the presumptive secretary of state, for now both senators, have introduced a bill that includes provisions for direct worker representation on corporate boards to bypass “big labour”. America’s unions should brace for competition. ■
https://www.economist.com/business/2024/12/17/workers-love-donald-trump-unions-should-fear-him
Wall Street Journal, 14 décembre, article payant
Biden Gets Lost in Trump’s Shadow
The president-elect acts as if he’s already in charge. There’s never been a transition like this before.
Extraits:
Like Donald Trump or dislike him, hate him or love him, doesn’t matter: You have to see that what we are witnessing right now is truly remarkable, with no precedent.
He is essentially functioning as the sitting president. In the past, a man was elected and sat in his house, met with potential cabinet members, and courteously, carefully kept out of the news except to make a statement announcing a new nominee. The incumbent was president until Inauguration Day. That’s the way it was even in 2016; Barack Obama was still seen as president after Mr. Trump was elected. All that has changed.
Mr. Trump is the locus of all eyes. He goes to Europe for the opening of Notre-Dame. “The protocols they put in place for his arrival were those of a sitting president, not an incoming one,” a Trump loyalist and former staffer said by phone. He holds formal meetings with Volodymyr Zelensky and Emmanuel Macron. There he is chatting on a couch with Prince William. (…)
Mr. Trump tells Vladimir Putin that now that he’s abandoned Syria, he should make a deal to end the war in Ukraine. “I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act. China can help. The world is waiting!” (…)
Donald Trump hasn’t overshadowed Joe Biden; he has eclipsed him. A former senior official in Mr. Trump’s first term told NBC News a few days ago that Mr. Trump “is already basically running things, and he’s not even president yet.” (…)
To some degree the status shift is expected. Mr. Trump is the future, Mr. Biden the past; Mr. Trump wide-awake, Mr. Biden sleepy. The 46th president is a worn tire, the tread soft and indistinct. With the pardon of his son he lost stature. Also, Mr. Trump makes other leaders nervous, as he enjoys pointing out. They can neither predict him nor imitate him, so they can’t take their eyes off him. And Mr. Biden’s been rocked by something he knew in the abstract that’s become all too particular: after 50 years at the center of public life he’s been dropped, cast aside, because it was about power all along, and not about him. (…)
Wall Street Journal, 13 décembre, article payant
The Wrong Lessons From the Iraq War
The U.S. has made foolish mistakes, but withdrawing from the world would be the worst of them all.
Extraits:
JD Vance is tired of Washington lawmakers who believe they can “remake the entire world in America’s image.” So he said in an October podcast with Joe Rogan, adding that the Iraq war was America’s “biggest world-historical catastrophe.” This came after insights into issues as diverse as climate and energy, immigration and assimilation, and the clash between the right to autonomy and the right to life. It is to Donald Trump’s credit that he chose a running mate capable of handling such topics so adeptly.
Messrs. Trump and Vance are right that it’s past time for American allies to pay their bills. That’s true of Britain and Australia too, the nations least inclined to shirk their obligations. Americans are also right to feel underappreciated, given that the long Pax Americana has mostly been better for the world than for America itself. Still, thanks to America’s blood and treasure, the world has been freer, fairer, safer and richer for more people than at any time in history.
As a weary titan, America’s reluctance to be the main guardian of the universal decencies of mankind is understandable. But the incoming administration should understand that this would be the worst time for the indispensable nation to step aside. An axis of dictatorships—a militarist one in Moscow, an Islamist one in Tehran and a communist one in Beijing—are united by a hatred of the West and a desire to undo history. Without America’s active engagement, the dictators will create a much bleaker and more dangerous world.
Consider the threats and who is prepared to resist them. Vladimir Putin wants to re-create a greater Russia—an impoverished police state across the Eurasian landmass. Xi Jinping wants a restored Middle Kingdom as the world’s dominant power. Ali Khamenei wants a global caliphate, regardless of the violence and bloodshed needed to create it. Standing in their way are Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel. Yet none of these nations can battle alone. (…)
Mr. Vance served honorably in Iraq, but he misreads that war, and his views have implications for today’s conflicts. It wasn’t wrong to remove the monstrous Saddam regime, which breached several United Nations resolutions. The catastrophe was disbanding the Iraqi army, leaving hundreds of thousands of unemployed men with guns, and sacking the Baathist public service, so that civilian infrastructure largely collapsed.
The folly was failing to restore the monarchy—the only form of government that works in the Arab world—or failing to hand the government to the least bad of Saddam’s generals. The Iraq war was never “all about oil,” as many critics suggested. It was a commendable, if poorly executed, attempt to bring a measure of humanity to a benighted people. I doubt the women of Afghanistan, once more imprisoned behind their veils, regarded the Western efforts as futile effrontery. The fruits of such efforts have been affirmed elsewhere. The people of Germany, Japan and South Korea are the transformed beneficiaries of the first global hegemon ever to use its power to help rather than oppress the weak.
It is a tragedy that so many Americans have perished in recent wars. But the best way to honor their memory is to be smarter about future conflicts, not to surrender the ideals for which they died. Allies can pick up the slack. Australia and others should swiftly move to spend 3% of gross domestic on their armed forces. Britain and Europe should take a stronger lead on Ukraine. The West’s military-industrial base must be rebuilt.
Effectively managing this transition is the great challenge Messrs. Trump and Vance must meet. Much hangs on their success.
Mr. Abbott served as prime minister of Australia, 2013-15.
Wall Street Journal, 6 décembre, article payant
Trump Plans to Appoint Musk Confidant David Sacks as AI, Crypto Czar
Tech investor was one of the most outspoken supporters of Trump in Silicon Valley
Extraits:
President-elect Donald Trump named a Silicon Valley investor close to Elon Musk as the White House’s artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency policy chief, signaling the growing influence of tech leaders and loyalists in the new administration.
David Sacks, a longtime venture capitalist who worked with Musk at PayPal more than two decades ago, will serve as the “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar,” Trump said on his social-media platform Truth Social.
“In this important role, David will guide policy for the Administration in Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency, two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness,” he posted.
Musk, who has spent close to a quarter-billion dollars to help elect Trump, and Vice President-elect JD Vance chimed in with congratulatory messages on X. (…)
Some crypto executives cheered Sacks’ appointment. Emilie Choi, president and chief operating officer of crypto exchange Coinbase Global, wrote on X: “Time to build in the US!” (…)
The appointment further illustrates the growing influence of Musk and his associates in the incoming Trump administration. The Tesla chief has been appointed to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the mandate of which is to streamline government bureaucracy. (…)
Some of Musk’s rivals fear that he and his associates could target them with their newfound power. Artificial intelligence company OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman ranks high on the billionaire’s list of enemies. That didn’t stop Altman from congratulating Sacks. “congrats to czar @DavidSacks!” Altman posted on X after Thursday’s announcement.
Musk responded to Altman’s post with an emoji that is laughing so hard it is crying.
Wall Street Journal, 4 décembre, article payant
The Economic-Policy Contradictions of Donald Trump
The president-elect says he’ll lower prices, but his other promises would raise them.
Extraits:
Many voters supported Donald Trump not as a disrupter of norms and institutions, but for policy reasons. They hired him to accomplish specific tasks, such as reducing prices, cutting taxes and halting illegal immigration. The incoming administration’s success will depend on Mr. Trump’s ability to accomplish these tasks. It won’t be easy—in part because some of his policies contradict each other and could undercut these goals.
Take Social Security as an example. Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social this July: “SENIORS SHOULD NOT PAY TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY!” This statement, which he repeated on the campaign trail, was popular because it seemed intuitive. Workers are taxed on their earnings throughout their working lives to pay for future Social Security benefits. Why should they be taxed again when they receive these benefits?
But it isn’t that simple. (…)
Another bold promise—to cut electricity and other energy costs in half within 18 months of taking office—is at the core of Mr. Trump’s strategy for lowering prices across the board. This pledge helped move millions of working-class voters into his column. But many fossil-fuel industry leaders don’t favor his strategy of significantly boosting domestic production, and many energy experts doubt it will work. (…)
If Mr. Trump gave priority to reducing consumers’ costs for big-ticket items, he would eliminate restrictions on the import of electric vehicles. China sells many such vehicles at substantially less than the average price of Tesla’s U.S.-produced vehicles. But lowering import barriers would sound a death knell for the domestic auto industry.
This example illustrates a larger truth: Reducing prices often contradicts the goal of stabilizing and increasing domestic production. Protecting American industry can come at a substantial cost to the consumer. While Mr. Trump has said that “tariff” is the most beautiful word in the dictionary, many Americans consider “inflation” to be among the ugliest, and they voted for him believing he would rein it in. It’ll be interesting to see how the new administration responds when the tension between two of its core promises—protecting American industries and lowering prices—becomes too great to ignore. (…)
Many other tensions exist within Mr. Trump’s agenda. During his campaign, he promised the largest deportation of illegal immigrants in U.S. history. Doing so, he argued, would result in lower housing prices due to fewer immigrants competing with Americans for scarce housing.
But the result would likely be the opposite: a labor shortage resulting in fewer homes built and thus higher home prices. (…)
Mr. Trump is a mold-breaking leader, but voters will judge him on a traditional measure—his ability to deliver on the promises that propelled him to a second term. Tensions among these promises will complicate his task.
The Economist, 3 décembre, article payant
Wessex and the White House : Joe Biden abused a medieval power to pardon his son
The president’s reversal is understandable, humane and wrong
Extraits:
WHEN SETTING up the checks and balances in the American constitution, the document’s authors knew they wanted the judiciary to be independent of the legislative and the executive branches. But who, then, would check the judges? One answer was that the president would be able to pardon criminals. This awesome power—to override a decision taken by the courts—should be used rarely, because it is at odds with democracy and judicial independence. If it seems a bit medieval to let one man dispense (and dispense with) justice in this way, that is because it is. In British law the “prerogative of mercy” can be traced back to the reign of King Ine of Wessex in the seventh century.
In pardoning his son Hunter, Joe Biden has abused it. The Supreme Court once described the president’s pardon power as “an act of grace”. This pardon probably qualifies as that. Which loving father, having lost one child in a car crash and another to cancer, could resist sparing his addiction-prone son prison time if it were within his power to do so? As a private matter the pardon is understandable, humane even. Yet Mr Biden is also the president, so that is not the standard. The court has also said that presidential pardons can be used to further “the public welfare”. This one harms it.
It is an act of hypocrisy. Asked in June about a pardon for Hunter, the president replied: “I said I’d abide by the jury decision, and I will do that. And I will not pardon him.” This was not a slip. Mr Biden has said the same thing several times. The pardon exposes him as the sort of politician who says one thing and does another. (…)
Unfortunately, hypocrisy may be the least damaging thing about the pardon. Mr Biden’s refusal to interfere in the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) investigation into his son was cited by some Democrats as evidence their party was different. Unlike MAGA Republicans, whose respect for the rule of law and norms like DoJ independence was selective, their party acted on principle. That argument has been exposed as meaningless, and at a particularly bad time for the high-minded principles Mr Biden once claimed as his own.
When Donald Trump pardons those convicted in relation to the attack on the Capitol on January 6th 2021, as seems probable, what principle will Democrats appeal to? (…)
The pardon thereby confirms the cynicism many Americans feel about their politicians and institutions. In his speech to the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama warned Americans that Republicans will “tell you that government is corrupt; that sacrifice and generosity are for suckers; and that since the game is rigged, it’s OK to take what you want and look after your own.” What is this pardon, if not the president looking after his own? Mr Biden applies one set of rules to himself and his family members, and another to the people he serves. At least Mr Trump makes no secret of what he is.
One of the many disappointments of Mr Biden is that he talked as if Mr Trump was a threat to the republic, yet never acted as if he believed it. He stayed in the race when his own party’s voters were worried he was too old to run; he presided over a party machinery that interfered in favour of Republican election-deniers in the 2022 mid-terms, because it thought they would lose; he stepped down without giving his party time to find its strongest candidate. And he warned about Mr Trump abusing the machinery of justice, then pardoned his son for convictions on tax and gun charges. It is an ignominious coda. Unfortunately, it is also a prelude.■
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/12/02/joe-biden-abused-a-medieval-power-to-pardon-his-son
New York Times, Guest Essay, 3 décembre, article payant
Biden’s Pardon for His Son Dishonors the Office
By Jeffrey Toobin. His book “The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy” will be published in February.
Extraits:
Pardons are the consummate discretionary acts; presidents are never required to issue even a single one, nor are they limited in the number they issue or to whom. In this way, they reveal their roots in the royal prerogative of mercy. There is only one reason presidents, or kings, issue pardons: because they want to.
On Sunday night as he boarded a plane to Cape Verde, en route to Angola, President Biden revealed himself as an anguished, and furious, father when he pardoned his son Hunter. Mr. Biden said, as recently as June, that he wouldn’t pardon Hunter or commute his sentence, and his press secretary reiterated that he had no plans to pardon Hunter after last month’s election. In June, a jury had found the younger Mr. Biden guilty of three felony counts relating to lies about his drug use on a federal form to apply to own a firearm. Then, in September, he pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges in California. (…)
Mr. Biden sought to define his presidency in counterpoint to the corruption and indecency of the first Trump years. With the pardon of his son, Mr. Biden added his name to the roll call of presidents who dishonored their office by misusing the pardon power. By changing his plan to issue this pardon, Mr. Biden himself seemed to recognize how wrong it was, and is.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/opinion/joe-hunter-biden-pardon-dishonor.html
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 3 décembre, article payant
Begnadigung des Präsidentensohns: Joe Biden entlarvt seine politische Heuchelei
Mit der Begnadigung seines Sohnes Hunter verabschiedet sich Präsident Biden als Heuchler aus dem Weissen Haus. Donald Trump wird dies als Freipass für seinen eigenen Umgang mit der Justiz verstehen.
Extraits:
Bis zu einem gewissen Grad kann man die Argumentation des amerikanischen Präsident Joe Biden sogar nachvollziehen. Natürlich wurde sein Sohn Hunter von den Republikanern im Kongress und in den ihnen nahestehenden Medien jahrelang gejagt, weil er der Sohn des Präsidenten ist. Die beiden Strafverfahren, die schliesslich mit riesiger Medienaufmerksamkeit gegen ihn zustande kamen, wären gegen irgendeine beliebige Person bei ähnlichen Vergehen wahrscheinlich weniger scharf verlaufen. (…)
Doch das ist keine Entschuldigung. Hunter Biden musste nicht nur den Nachteil einer besonders genauen öffentlichen Überprüfung seiner Person erdulden, weil er der Sohn des Präsidenten und früheren Vizepräsidenten ist. Er kam auch in den Genuss riesiger Vorteile, die er schamlos ausgenutzt hatte. Dank seiner familiären Situation ergatterte er für sich Verwaltungsratsmandate und Aufträge bei ausländischen Unternehmen, die dafür auf eine Sonderbehandlung durch den mächtigen Vater hofften. Eine solche Gegenleistung konnte dem Präsidenten zwar nie nachgewiesen werden. Hunter bezog dennoch Millioneneinkommen, die er in erster Linie als Sohn des Vizepräsidenten und nicht als erfahrener Berater oder Manager erhielt. Es sind zwei Seiten derselben Medaille.
Präsident Biden sucht in seiner Mitteilung vom Sonntagabend Verständnis bei den Bürgern zu wecken: Welcher Vater würde sich nicht ähnlich mitfühlend für seinen Sohn einsetzen, wenn er könnte? Doch das trifft die Sache in keiner Weise. Biden ist nicht irgendein Vater. Er ist der Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika. Als solcher unterliegt er ganz anderen moralischen Anforderungen – und daraus folgenden Bürden – als jeder normale Bürger.
Das trifft besonders auf einen Präsidenten zu, der 2020 als angeblicher Gegenpol zu Donald Trump angetreten war: als der moralisch überlegene Mann, der die USA nach vier Jahren unter dem verkommenen Narzissten Trump wieder auf den rechten Weg zurückführen werde. Nun steht derselbe Präsident Biden nackt da, entblösst von seiner eigenen moralischen Heuchelei. (…)
Biden schädigt mit der Schwäche für seinen Sohn nicht nur sein eigenes, sorgfältig poliertes Image als Saubermann. Er liefert ausgerechnet seinem Nachfolger die Vorlage, um sich selbst eigennützig der Justiz zu bedienen. Trump hat im Wahlkampf unverhohlen angekündigt, dass er die Justiz zur Verfolgung seiner politischen Gegner benutzen werde. (…) Sollte es wirklich zu Missbräuchen kommen, werden er und seine Parteigenossen zur Relativierung stets mit dem Finger auf Joe Biden zeigen.
https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/hunter-biden-begnadigt-heuchelei-im-weissen-haus-hat-folgen-ld.1860291
New York Times, 2 décembre, article payant
In Pardoning His Son, Biden Echoes Some of Trump’s Complaints
President Biden complained about selective prosecution and political pressure in a system he has spent his public life defending.
Extraits:
President Biden and President-elect Donald J. Trump now agree on one thing: The Biden Justice Department has been politicized.
In pardoning his son Hunter Biden on Sunday night, the incumbent president sounded a lot like his successor by complaining about selective prosecution and political pressure, questioning the fairness of a system that Mr. Biden had until now long defended.
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” Mr. Biden said in a statement announcing the pardon. “Here’s the truth,” he added. “I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”
Mr. Biden’s decision to use the extraordinary power of executive clemency to wipe out his son’s convictions on gun and tax charges came despite repeated statements by him and his aides that he would not do so. (…)
The pardon and Mr. Biden’s stated rationale for granting it will inevitably muddy the political waters as Mr. Trump prepares to take office with plans to use the Justice Department and F.B.I. to pursue “retribution” against his political adversaries. Mr. Trump has long argued that the justice system has been “weaponized” against him and that he is the victim of selective prosecution, much the way Mr. Biden has now said his son was. (…)
But Mr. Biden’s pardon will make it harder for Democrats to defend the integrity of the Justice Department and stand against Mr. Trump’s unapologetic plans to use it for political purposes even as he seeks to install Kash Patel, an adviser who has vowed to “come after” the president-elect’s enemies, as the next director of the F.B.I. It will also be harder for Democrats to criticize Mr. Trump for his prolific use of the pardon power to absolve friends and allies, some of whom could have been witnesses against him in previous investigations.
“While as a father I certainly understand President @JoeBiden’s natural desire to help his son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country,” Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, a Democrat, wrote on social media. “This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation.” (…)
Mr. Biden’s pardon will also give ammunition to Republicans who have contended that Hunter Biden was guilty of wrongdoing beyond the charges for which he was actually prosecuted. A House Republican investigation made clear that the president’s son traded on his father’s name in business, but never proved that the elder Mr. Biden took action as vice president or president to benefit Hunter. (…)
“This just furthers the cynicism that people have about politics,” he said on MSNBC, “and that cynicism strengthens Trump because Trump can just say: ‘I’m not a unique threat. Everybody does this. If I do something for my kid, my son-in-law, look, Joe Biden does the same thing.’ I get it, but this was a selfish move by Biden which politically only strengthens Trump.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/01/us/politics/biden-hunter-pardon-politics.html
Le Point, 2 décembre, article payant
États-Unis : pourquoi les démocrates ne laisseront pas tomber le wokisme de sitôt
LA CHRONIQUE DE YASCHA MOUNK. Pour la gauche américaine, changer de cap exigera des transformations structurelles qu’elle n’est pas prête à entreprendre.
Extraits:
Tant de raisons expliquent la défaite des démocrates. Ils ont pâti de l’impopularité d’un président sortant, ont été sanctionnés pour l’inflation élevée de ces dernières années et ont placé une candidate terne qui n’est jamais parvenue à exposer un programme clair.
Mais la raison la plus fondamentale pour laquelle tant de groupes d’électeurs supposés maintenir à flot la bonne fortune du camp des bleus ont viré au rouge – et aussi la raison la plus susceptible de mettre en péril les chances des démocrates lors des prochaines échéances électorales, lorsqu’ils ne seront plus embarrassés du fardeau d’un candidat sortant –, c’est qu’ils renvoient l’image d’un groupe évoluant à mille lieues des courants culturels majoritaires.
Les démocrates parlent désormais avec les inflexions et le vocabulaire élitiste de la méritocratie de la côte Est, celle qui est passée par la case université. Cela a un effet repoussoir radical sur un groupe multiracial composé de tous les Américains qui n’ont pas leur place dans cette haute société – plus tous ceux qui s’agacent de l’autosurveillance et de l’autocensure constantes requises si l’on veut ne pas en être exclu.
S’ils veulent faire cesser les dégâts causés par une image de marque de plus en plus toxique, les démocrates doivent changer leur façon de parler et le contenu de leur discours. Cela implique de se débarrasser de certains des éléments de la réflexion identitaire les plus impopulaires, connus sous le qualificatif de « woke », adoptés par la gauche ces dix dernières années – la mise en avant de la DEI (diversité, équité et inclusion), du vocabulaire des Bipoc (noirs, indigènes et personnes de couleur) et des Latinx.
Mais cela ne s’arrête pas là. Il faut que les démocrates convainquent les Américains qu’ils sont prêts à dire la vérité, quand bien même cette vérité choquerait-elle les groupes militants qui constituent une forte proportion de leur base, mais aussi qu’ils compatissent avec les citoyens ordinaires qui en ont ras le bol de la criminalité et du chaos plutôt qu’avec les petits délinquants qui troublent l’ordre public, et enfin qu’ils aient trouvé le moyen de défendre l’inclusion sans que ce soit au détriment du bon sens. (…)
La gauche américaine sera-t-elle capable de se transformer si profondément ? Il est tentant de croire que la gauche est enfin en train de se détourner du wokisme. En septembre dernier par exemple, The Economist a signalé un modeste déclin de la fréquence d’apparition de termes comme « intersectionnalité » et « microagression » dans les médias généralistes ou les articles universitaires. Le magazine en a dûment conclu que nous avions dépassé le cap du « pic woke ». (…)
De nombreux démocrates à qui j’ai parlé ces derniers jours ont bon espoir que ce changement d’ambiance à gauche se concrétise. À en croire Maureen Dowd, éditorialiste du New York Times, « certains démocrates se réveillent enfin et se rendent compte que woke is broke : le wokisme, c’est la ruine ». (…) Mais je doute fort que la tendance se confirme. (…)
Loin d’abonder dans le sens du diagnostic proposé par Gilberto Hinojosa et Seth Moulton, de nombreuses factions du parti sont totalement dans le déni quant à l’étendue des dégâts qu’est susceptible de provoquer, sur leurs perspectives électorales, ce que James Carville a très justement surnommé la « politique de salle des profs ». (…)
Au même moment, d’autres sections du parti ont estimé que les démocrates avaient perdu parce qu’ils n’étaient pas assez radicaux sur les questions culturelles ou parce qu’ils n’ont pas changé de cap au sujet du conflit au Moyen-Orient. Presque tous les démocrates haut placés pensent que le parti doit changer ; il se trouve juste que la plupart d’entre eux estiment qu’il doit s’aligner sur ce qu’ils disent depuis le début. (…)
La difficulté qu’éprouvent les démocrates à se rassembler autour d’un réel changement de cap s’explique en partie par le fait qu’un grand nombre de leurs prises de position impopulaires découlent de leur vision fondamentale du monde. Cela fait plusieurs dizaines d’années que les démocrates conceptualisent le pays avec une méthode profondément empreinte de catégories identitaires.
Plutôt que de s’adresser à des électeurs qui se trouvent être latino-américains, ils pensent devoir mobiliser « la communauté latino ». Plutôt que de reconnaître la fluidité de l’identité américaine, ils croient que le pays est essentiellement divisé entre Blancs et « personnes de couleur ». (…)
Ce qui nous conduit au principal obstacle qui s’oppose à un véritable changement de cap : le groupe des employés, des donateurs et des militants, qui sont les vrais décisionnaires au sein du Parti démocrate. Les démocrates dépendent dans des proportions excessives de jeunes employés frais émoulus d’universités prestigieuses.
Nombre d’entre eux ont fait leur éducation en socialisation au cœur de la stimulante culture activiste des campus, où une remarque supposément offensante peut vous valoir d’être longuement ostracisé. Et comme ils sont en tout début de carrière, signaler leur pureté idéologique leur importe souvent davantage que remporter la prochaine élection. (…)
La bataille des démocrates autour du wokisme va durer encore au moins quatre ans. Leur catastrophique échec de cette année laisse entendre que si elle finit par s’arrêter, ce sera probablement pour une de ces deux raisons : soit un représentant de la petite faction anti-woke du parti réussira à remporter les primaires de 2028 avec une vision nouvelle et plus inclusive pour l’avenir du pays, soit, cet automne-là, un successeur de Donald Trump trié sur le volet infligera une défaite encore plus cuisante au Parti démocrate.
* Yascha Mounk est professeur de politique internationale à l’université Johns-Hopkins, fondateur du site Persuasion et auteur sur Substack. Il est l’auteur du best-seller Le Peuple contre la démocratie (L’Observatoire, 2018 ; Le Livre de poche, 2019, traduit par Jean-Marie Souzeau). Dans son dernier livre publié en français, Le Piège de l’identité (L’Observatoire, 2023, traduit par Benjamin Peylet), il s’attelle à déconstruire le wokisme pour mieux camper la démocratie libérale sur ses appuis.
Wall Street Journal, 28 novembre, article payant
More Oil for Fewer Migrants: Trump Is Urged to Make Deal With Venezuela
Lobbying efforts push for negotiations with strongman Nicolás Maduro instead of seeking regime change
Extraits :
American oil executives and bond investors are urging President-elect Donald Trump to abandon his first-term policy of maximum pressure on Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and instead strike a deal: more oil for fewer migrants.
The quiet lobbying effort comes as Maduro hardens his authoritarian grip on the country with threats to arrest more opposition activists. They still challenge the July elections, in which Maduro’s regime claimed victory without presenting evidence.
Some businessmen such as Harry Sargeant III, a billionaire GOP donor known for playing golf at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club one day and jetting off to Caracas the next, are trying to show the incoming administration what they say are the perks of negotiating with Maduro instead of seeking to dislodge him. (…)
An agreement would also help check adversaries such as China and Russia. Those countries gained ground in Venezuela following U.S. economic sanctions which barred American companies from pumping and transporting Venezuelan crude.
The goal of restoring democracy in Venezuela, a cornerstone of Washington’s carrot-and-stick strategy in recent years, would be less of a priority for now, said people who are promoting what they call a more pragmatic approach. (…)
Maduro himself has floated a reset with Washington. “In his first government, things didn’t go well for us with President-elect Donald Trump,” he said in a recent televised address. “This is a new start, so let’s bet on a win-win.” (…)
The Venezuelans believe that by facilitating oil supply to the U.S. and accepting U.S. deportation flights that had been suspended after negotiations with the Biden administration frayed, Maduro could help fulfill Trump’s major policy objectives of deporting Venezuelan migrants, according to people familiar with the regime’s thinking. (…)
Venezuela presents one of the thorniest regional policy challenges for the incoming U.S. government. Economic mismanagement, corruption and human-rights abuses under Maduro triggered the exodus of nearly eight million migrants, some 700,000 of whom are now in the U.S.
Some economists and former diplomats say economic sanctions meant to financially choke off the regime not only failed to topple Maduro but helped exacerbate the outflow of migrants by further devastating an economy that is largely dependent on oil exports. (…)
Polls show many more Venezuelans will leave if Maduro stays in power. The strongman is set to inaugurate himself for a third, six-year term just 10 days before Trump moves back into the White House. (…)
David Smolansky, a former Venezuelan lawmaker lobbying for pressure against Maduro from exile in Washington, warned that buddying up with Maduro wouldn’t help ease migration flows.
“In the case of Venezuela, it’s a brutal dictatorship,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you produce more oil. People are going to flee because of Maduro.”
Wall Street Journal, Guest Essay, 26 novembre, article payant
The U.S. and Europe May Be Headed for a Divorce
Trump’s re-election has exposed aesthetic and substantive divisions within the alliance.
Extraits :
Among the more childishly enjoyable fruits of Donald Trump’s election victory has been watching the spectacular gymnastic contortions of political leaders in Europe, where I have spent time recently, as they try to reconcile their previously expressed revulsion toward him with the political reality of his renewed status as the most powerful man on the planet. (…)
In fact the next four years will almost certainly see serious and sustained breaches in trans-Atlantic comity, in ways that will irreparably impair the alliance that has, for all its fractious tendencies, been the cornerstone of civilizational progress in the world for a century.
On at least three main fronts, the second Trump administration will strain relations with Europe to the breaking point.
The first is the war in Ukraine. European leaders realize now that U.S. assistance to Kyiv stops next year and that some form of peace deal will be struck; they are convinced it will leave Russia strengthened and emboldened.
The second is trade, where an already fragile European economy could be hammered by tariffs on exports to the U.S. and where broader global economic strife threatens the continent’s creaking stability.
The third is a bucket of global tensions, all likely to worsen: from climate change, where Mr. Trump’s fossil-fuel-driven, go-for-growth strategy is apostasy for the European climate religionists; to the Middle East, where a staunchly pro-Israel Washington will create domestic and international tensions for the Palestinian-sympathetic Europeans; to China where an intensified U.S. effort to decouple the West from Beijing’s economy will deprive Europeans of crucial export markets.
No doubt Mr. Trump’s style will deepen the fissures, but there is no escaping that the Europeans have essentially themselves to blame for their plight.
On Ukraine, the European Union and Britain have gone along with the Biden administration’s increasingly feckless policy of what some wise heads in Europe have called “self-deterrence”—arming Ukraine enough to keep the war going but not enough to have any chance of winning it. (…) On the wider question of their own security within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Europeans are finally acknowledging that the days of free riding on American military spending are at an end.
On trade, Europe has pursued its own protectionism in a number of sectors. It also has severely constrained its economic performance with regulatory measures that have suppressed innovation and dynamism, condemning the EU to fall further and further behind the U.S. Trade wars seldom produce good economic outcomes for anyone. But Europe is in a much worse condition to deal with the consequences than other parts of the world.
On the compendium of global issues, Europe has created its own messes. Its obsession with reducing its carbon footprint at the cost of growth has done little to “save the planet” from warming while dramatically undermining the European economy. In the Middle East, the embrace of the Palestinian cause has led Europe to growing hostility to Israel, the only democracy in the region. (…) On China, reckless European pursuit of economic relations has created a dependency that will prove hard to break and has increasingly negative implications for Europe’s own security.
It was inevitable, given the rise of the Indo-Pacific, that the trans-Atlantic relationship would diminish in significance. It is regrettable too, since that relationship has proved so beneficial to the world for a century or more. The U.S. can survive the fraying of those ties. It isn’t clear Europe can.
Gerard Baker, Editor at Large, The Wall Street Journal
Wall Street Journal, 26 novembre, article payant
Trump’s Economic Plan Has Inflation Written All Over It
Tariffs, tax cuts and deportations could all drive prices higher. So could firing Powell.
Extraits :
Among the many ironies in the recent election is this: One of the main reasons why Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris was the high inflation of 2021-23. Yet almost every economist will tell you—as many did before Nov. 5—that Mr. Trump’s proposed policies are inflationary. (…)
No matter how many times Mr. Trump denies it, tariffs are (discriminatory) sales taxes. Discriminating against imported goods is their purpose. Sales taxes, of course, raise prices for consumers, and research says American consumers have paid for almost 100% of recent tariff hikes.
How much inflation can we expect from another round of tariffs? Well, imports are about 14% of U.S. gross domestic product, though a lot of that is inputs used by American firms, not consumer goods. If the average tariff rate is 10% to 20% (I’m guessing here—tariffs on Chinese goods will be higher) that’s about 1.4% to 2.8% higher prices. Most important, this is likely a one-shot price increase. Not even Mr. Trump would raise tariffs every year. Would he?
What about the tax cuts? Readers with long enough memories will recall that many economists in 2017 worried about the inflationary effect of the tax cuts because fiscal stimulus boosts spending. That inflation never happened. Ironically, however, Republicans successfully blamed the inflationary surge of 2021-23 on President Biden’s American Rescue Plan—a different sort of fiscal stimulus. Probably, only a little inflation stemmed from that law. Likewise, only a little inflation is likely to come from more Trump tax cuts.
Then there is the potential 800-pound gorilla in the room: the threatened mass deportation of illegal immigrants. That will be inflationary by restricting the supply of U.S. labor. But we can only guess the magnitude. (…)
So if you put all this together, the new Trump policies might add 2% to 3% to total inflation over two to three years, a percentage point a year.
This brings me to the Federal Reserve, which Mr. Trump will try to bully—or worse. If the new president eliminates, or even seriously undermines, the Fed’s independence, that could prove more inflationary for much longer. (…)
What could stop this awful scenario from playing out? Good judgment on the part of the president-elect? Please stop laughing and read on. (…)
That brings me to the last—and likely most effective—line of defense: the markets. At the first sign that Mr. Trump will seriously undermine, or even subjugate, the Fed, the stock and bond markets will tank. Thousands of points off the Dow might be what’s needed to dissuade Mr. Trump.
We know that the president-elect keeps score by watching the stock market, which isn’t a method I’d normally recommend. But this may be one case in which we’re glad he does.
Mr. Blinder is a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton. He served as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, 1994-96.
Le Figaro, 26 novembre, libre accès
États-Unis : la justice met fin aux poursuites contre Donald Trump pour ingérence électorale
La juge Tanya Chutkan a approuvé lundi la recommandation du procureur Jack Smith, qui a motivé sa demande en se basant sur le retour imminent du 47e président à la Maison-Blanche, après sa victoire lors de l’élection présidentielle le 5 novembre.
L’Express, 25 novembre, article payant
“Un défilé de cinglés…” : la nouvelle administration Trump vue par David Frum, l’ex-plume de Bush
Grand entretien. L’éditorialiste au magazine The Atlantic explique en quoi le casting gouvernemental choisi par le nouveau président américain est une catastrophe pour la sécurité des Etats-Unis et… du reste du monde. Décapant.
Extraits :
Dans un entretien qu’il nous avait accordé en juillet dernier et plébiscité par nos lecteurs, David Frum, ancienne plume du président George W. Bush, et fervent anti-Trump alertait sur le danger d’un éventuel retour du milliardaire à la Maison-Blanche : “En cas de second mandat, il sera toujours aussi paresseux, mais il saura ce qu’il veut faire : se venger. Et il sera entouré de personnes qui voudront l’aider”, prévenait-il. (…)
L’Express : Comment avez-vous réagi à l’annonce des premières nominations de la future administration Trump?
David Frum : Je dois admettre que dans le domaine de la politique internationale, ses toutes premières nominations ont été quelque peu rassurantes : Marco Rubio (futur secrétaire d’Etat) et Michael Waltz (futur conseiller à la sécurité nationale) s’inscrivent en effet dans le courant traditionnel de la politique étrangère américaine. Le problème, c’est que le reste des nominations laissent présager un scénario très sombre pour la suite. Les personnalités nommées ont toutes été choisies en raison de leur hostilité partagée envers l’Ukraine et envers les alliés de l’Otan. Mais la nomination la plus inquiétante de toutes reste celle de Tulsi Gabbard, une ex-élue démocrate, à la tête du Renseignement national. (…) Tulsi Gabbard, si elle est confirmée à ce poste par les sénateurs, sera la seule personne à avoir accès à tous les secrets les plus sensibles des États-Unis. Avoir choisi quelqu’un ayant un parcours aussi douteux et par ailleurs d’une médiocrité rare, est vraiment préoccupant. Même si sa nomination est retoquée, le simple fait que le président envisage une telle possibilité est le signal le plus alarmant de tous.
On connait mal Tulsi Gabbard de ce côté-ci de l’Atlantique. En quoi est-elle dangereuse pour ce poste?
Pour bien comprendre à quel point elle est peu fiable, il faut regarder son parcours. Elle a grandi à Hawaï. Ses parents faisaient partie d’une obscure secte religieuse. Elle a rejoint l’armée américaine après le 11 Septembre et a servi en Irak au sein d’une unité médicale. Elle avait au départ des opinions peu conventionnelles et est revenue d’Irak avec des prises de position plus classiques. Elle a été élue au Congrès en 2013 puis a occupé le poste de vice-présidente du Comité national démocrate. Elle est devenue une fervente partisane de Bernie Sanders pendant les primaires de 2016. Et à partir de là – en réalité, même avant cela – pour une raison mystérieuse, elle est devenue la plus grande supportrice du régime de Bachar el-Assad au Congrès. Elle a diffusé de la désinformation, trouvé des excuses aux crimes commis par le régime de Damas, voire les a niés. Elle ne s’est pas contentée de dire que les États-Unis ne devaient pas s’impliquer, ce qui à l’époque n’avait rien d’une position exceptionnelle, mais elle a activement défendu les crimes du dictateur syrien. Pareil pour le régime de Poutine. (…)
Elon Musk nommé ministre de “l’Efficacité gouvernementale”, va-t-il vraiment démanteler la bureaucratie américaine comme il a promis de le faire?
Non. C’est juste une façon de se faire bien voir auprès des dirigeants chinois. En réalité, je ne pense pas que ce ministère soit réellement pertinent. Presque toutes les dépenses gouvernementales sont définies par la loi. Vous ne pouvez pas vous contenter d’émettre un décret. (…)
De nombreux économistes pensent que si Donald Trump met en oeuvre son programme économique, l’inflation augmentera. L’électeur moyen qui a voté républicain risque-t-il de tomber de haut?
Le plan d’action de Trump en matière de commerce est particulièrement préoccupant. Lorsqu’on impose des tarifs douaniers, les choses deviennent réellement plus coûteuses. Donc, si Trump applique ce qu’il a dit qu’il ferait pendant sa campagne, les vêtements, les couverts, les assiettes, les tasses, les chaussures, tous les produits que consomment les gens au quotidien deviendront plus onéreux. Il mettra également à rude épreuve l’ensemble de l’économie mondiale, car l’une des choses que Trump ne semble jamais prendre en compte, c’est que ses partenaires commerciaux pourraient prendre des mesures de rétorsion. Il affirme souvent que ce sont les pays étrangers qui payent le coût des tarifs douaniers et non le consommateur américain. Cela n’est pas vrai. (…)
Wall Street Journal, 25 novembre, article payant
The Architects of Bidenomics Are in Denial
Democrats still refuse to admit that their policies caused inflation—and cost them the election.
Extraits :
Election defeats are never easy to accept, but the Bidenomics rear-guard action now underway among Democratic economists takes the denial stage of grief to a whole new level. The argument is two-fold: What the Biden Administration did worked fine, and if you didn’t like it, the next Trump Administration will be worse. Voters didn’t believe it, and neither should Democratic politicians.
The political problem Team Biden’s pugnacious rump (and its cheerleaders in academia and on Wall Street) must confront is inflation. The price level rose by more than 20% over President Biden’s term while inflation-adjusted wages lagged. While this crew touts disinflation since 2022—the economics term for a deceleration in price rises—this doesn’t mean prices are returning to their prepandemic level. Far from it: Inflation rates persistently above 2.6% mean prices continue to rise faster than the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
Voters blamed President Biden and Congressional Democrats. A prime culprit is the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP) passed on a party-line vote in March 2021. Even some liberal economists such as Larry Summers warned it would be inflationary, and consumer prices began their rapid ascent soon after passage. (…)
The story of the Biden years is that Democrats pumped up demand via massive spending while sitting on the supply side of the economy with pandemic policies and measures that made it harder for businesses to invest. Voters understood the failure, and Democrats anxious to rebuild trust would be wise to reflect on it
The Economist, 25 novembre, article payant
The spy who purged me : Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard are coming for the spooks
The president-elect’s intelligence picks suggest a radical agenda
Extraits :
OF DONALD TRUMP’s nominees to high office, few are more suspicious of the government they are pegged to join than Tulsi Gabbard. She warns of a “slow-rolling coup” by “the entire permanent Washington machine”, as she describes it in “For Love of Country”, a campaign book published in April. Her list of putschists is long, catholic and spook-heavy: “the Democratic National Committee, propaganda media, Big Tech, the FBI, the CIA, and a whole network of rogue intelligence and law enforcement agents working at the highest levels of our government”. Yet she may soon oversee some of that machinery.
On November 13th Donald Trump chose Ms Gabbard as his nominee for Director of National Intelligence (DNI), a post that co-ordinates the work of the alphabet soup of 18 spy agencies in the country’s intelligence community. The news raised fears in the agencies and among America’s allies that intelligence will be distorted to suit Mr Trump’s preferences. And it heralds rifts within Mr Trump’s administration between hawks like Mike Waltz and Marco Rubio, nominated as national security adviser and secretary of state respectively, and radicals such as Ms Gabbard, who have argued for a softer line on China, Russia and Iran. (…)
One European intelligence official pointed out that intelligence-sharing between his country and America actually improved during Mr Trump’s first term. Within the Five Eyes intelligence pact, made up of America, Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, signals-intelligence gathering is so tightly integrated that it would be impossible to unravel without causing massive disruption to America itself. “The Five Eyes sharing always holds,” soothed the American official.
Others are less sanguine. Many mid-ranking intelligence officers are likely to leave, says one insider, fearful of falling foul of political loyalty tests. Mr Trump’s lax approach to security is another concern. (…)
Ms Gabbard’s Russophile tendencies are particularly jarring. “Democrats”, she complained in her book, “don’t want a peaceful relationship with Russia at all…How would their friends in the military-industrial complex make trillions of dollars from the fear they fomented in America and Europe by stoking the fires of the new cold war?” Some in the intelligence world believe that European agencies might start holding back human-intelligence reports or “sanitising” them of information that would previously have been shared. For her part, Ms Gabbard is clear about the ongoing threats she sees emanating from the intelligence agencies which, she warns, “are so dangerous that even our elected officials are afraid to cross them”. The spies are on notice. ■
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, tribune, 23 novembre, article payant
«Er tat, was dem Herrn gefiel» – Amerikas Konservative diagnostizieren ein Scheitern des Liberalismus und propagieren eine neokatholische Wende
Katholische Präsidenten im Weissen Haus sind rar. John F. Kennedy war der erste, Joe Biden der zweite – beide konnten das Misstrauen zerstreuen, dass in und mit ihnen der Papst regiere. Der Katholizismus des konvertierten Vizepräsidenten J. D. Vance ist von anderer Prägung.
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Die Medien verfallen gerade über jede neue Kabinettsentscheidung von Donald J. Trump in Schnappatmung und vergessen darob die geschichtsträchtigste Personalentscheidung des designierten Präsidenten: Mit J. D. Vance zieht erst zum dritten Mal ein Katholik ins Weisse Haus ein, und zwar einer von anderem Schlag, als es die Nummern eins und zwei waren. Die Präsidenten John F. Kennedy und Joe Biden entsprechen als irischstämmige Demokraten schon fast klischeehaft dem Bild politisch erfolgreicher Katholiken ihrer jeweiligen Generation. Vance dagegen steht für einen neuen katholischen Konservatismus, den Postliberalismus. (…)
Der Katholizismus von J. D. Vance grenzt sich davon ab: Anders als John F. Kennedy und Joe Biden, anders auch als die sechs Katholiken im Supreme Court ist Vance Konvertit. Durch seinen Vater war er als Jugendlicher zwar in einer evangelikalen Kirche aktiv, wurde aber im Laufe seiner Studienzeit zum Atheisten. Erst 2019 liess sich Vance in einer Dominikanerkirche in Ohio taufen und wählte den heiligen Augustinus zu seinem Schutzpatron.
Vance reiht sich damit in eine Liste einflussreicher Konservativer, die just in einer Zeit, in der die katholische Kirche in den USA Gläubige in Massen verliert, den Weg nach Rom eingeschlagen haben. (…) Auch einer der wenigen konservativen Kolumnisten der «New York Times», Ross Douthat, ist kein «Wiegenkatholik», diskutiert aber (vielleicht gerade deshalb) immer wieder Glaubens- und kirchenpolitische Fragen. Katholische Konvertiten prägten die konservative Bewegung in den USA von jeher, doch Vance’ Taufe markiert einen ideologischen Wandel, der ihn mit einer aufstrebenden konservativen Strömung verbindet. (…)
Durch seinen Eintritt in die katholische Kirche fand Vance nicht nur zu seinem Glauben zurück, sondern auch zu einer Institution, die für ihn einen Gegenpol zur schnelllebigen Moderne darstellt. Der Mensch brauche Werte, und zwar solche, die auch in zehn Jahren noch gälten. Zudem bezieht er seine politischen Ideen auf die katholische Soziallehre, von der er meint, sie spiegle seine Vorstellungen vom idealen Staat. Spätestens wenn Vance die Atomisierung der Gesellschaft dem modernen Liberalismus anlastet, spricht nicht mehr der Konvertit, sondern der Postliberale. (…)
Einen so geraden Pfad wird J. D. Vance nicht einschlagen. Zwar bekennt er sich zum Postliberalismus, hat schon Veranstaltungen mit Integralisten beigewohnt und zählt führende Köpfe beider Bewegungen zu seinen Freunden. Gleichzeitig hat Vance wiederholt anerkannt, dass viele Ansichten der katholischen Kirche in den USA nicht mehrheitsfähig sind.
Dennoch wird er Wege suchen, postliberale Ideen zu verwirklichen, sofern ihm seine eigentlich machtlose Rolle als Vizepräsident dafür Raum lässt. Denn im Gegensatz zu Präsident Trump, der kein Ideologe und im Grunde apolitisch ist, hat Vance mit seinem Glauben auch seine politischen Überzeugungen gefunden. Wie jeder (erfolgreiche) Politiker bleibt er dabei pragmatischer Opportunist, ohne aber seinen Kompass verlieren zu wollen.
Claudia Franziska Brühwiler ist Titularprofessorin für amerikanisches politisches Denken und Kultur an der Universität St. Gallen.
The Economist, 22 novembre, article payant
Donkey Rashomon : Democrats are still processing their defeat
Three factions are competing to explain the party to itself
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THESE ARE NOT the reports Democrats were hoping to prepare. Instead of transition plans for the incoming Kamala Harris administration, draft executive orders and legislative outlines, Democrats are producing post-mortem analyses of how their campaign came apart in 2024. Those Democrats who are honest with themselves are recognising an uncomfortable truth: as awful, immoral and weird as they consider the Republican Party, the American people considered it to be the better option for governing America.
Dissect the emerging election data and the diagnosis looks even worse than it first seemed. The Democratic Party’s idea of itself as a party of the young, ethnic minorities and the working class has been punctured. The best available data suggest that, compared with Barack Obama’s performance in 2012, Ms Harris did 16 percentage points worse among voters without a college degree, 19 points worse with young voters, 26 points worse with African-Americans and 27 points worse with Hispanics. “We have only begun to internalise the ways in which all the basic tenets of the emerging Democratic majority have now been completely reversed. There is not a leg standing of it any more,” says Patrick Ruffini, who wrote a prescient book on growing Republican strength among the multiracial working class.
Among Democrats brave enough to believe in their own agency, a much knottier debate has emerged over identity politics. Throughout the first Trump presidency, elite institutions embraced previously radical ideas of equity over equality, the tyranny of objectivity and the violence of speech. Democratic politics were downstream of this cultural shift, leading to an embrace of ideas (including by Ms Harris) such as defunding the police, paying for gender-affirming care for illegal immigrants and banning fracking. Whole ethnic groups were rebranded by those who knew better: Hispanics were now Latinxs; Asian-Americans were now AAPI; the collective lumping of non-whites as POC (“people of colour”) was upgraded to “BIPOC”. By 2022, Democrats realised that such talk, voguish in 2020, was a political liability and began to edge away from it. (…)
With that attitude, many voters do not even bother to consider policy. “I felt this was a cultural election. I think that people don’t trust us on the economy and on immigration, not because they’re analysing our policy, but they just feel that Democrats are preachy, arrogant and out of touch,” says Mr Moulton. (…)
In Rashomon style, political actors will all tell different stories about why parties lose. But the one that dominates is powerful. It structures how the party remakes itself in its wilderness years. Fresh elections for the leadership in the coming months will be important because the victors will write the definitive post-mortem of the 2024 election. After their loss to Mr Trump in 2016, Democrats chose not to conduct a formal autopsy, and drifted into a movement of mass resistance. With hindsight, this backfired. No comparable resistance movement appears to be mounting towards Trump II. But ruling out one strategy that didn’t work before is not the same as alighting on a new one. ■
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/11/21/how-donald-trump-could-win-the-future
Wall Street Journal, tribune, 21 novembre, article payant
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: The DOGE Plan to Reform Government
Following the Supreme Court’s guidance, we’ll reverse a decadeslong executive power grab.
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Our nation was founded on the basic idea that the people we elect run the government. That isn’t how America functions today. Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress but “rules and regulations” promulgated by unelected bureaucrats—tens of thousands of them each year. Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections.
This is antidemocratic and antithetical to the Founders’ vision. It imposes massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers. Thankfully, we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem. On Nov. 5, voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it.
President Trump has asked the two of us to lead a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to cut the federal government down to size. The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long. That’s why we’re doing things differently. We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees. Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs. (…)
When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics will allege executive overreach. In fact, it will be correcting the executive overreach of thousands of regulations promulgated by administrative fiat that were never authorized by Congress. The president owes lawmaking deference to Congress, not to bureaucrats deep within federal agencies. The use of executive orders to substitute for lawmaking by adding burdensome new rules is a constitutional affront, but the use of executive orders to roll back regulations that wrongly bypassed Congress is legitimate and necessary to comply with the Supreme Court’s recent mandates. And after those regulations are fully rescinded, a future president couldn’t simply flip the switch and revive them but would instead have to ask Congress to do so. (…)
With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government. We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail. Now is the moment for decisive action. Our top goal for DOGE is to eliminate the need for its existence by July 4, 2026—the expiration date we have set for our project. There is no better birthday gift to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud.
Mr. Musk is CEO of SpaceX and Tesla. Mr. Ramaswamy, a businessman, is author, most recently, of “Truths: The Future of America First” and was a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. President-elect Trump has named them co-heads of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Wall Street Journal, Opinion, 21 novembre, article payant
Trump Sends Clowns to Cabinet Confirmation Circus
He has mishandled his nominations, and not only by picking Gaetz, Hegseth and Gabbard.
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It started so quickly and so promisingly.
President-elect Donald Trump began announcing his team Nov. 7 by naming America’s first female White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles. After a three-day break, Mr. Trump renewed staffing his administration the following Sunday by proposing an ambassador to the United Nations and a border czar. The next day he announced his pick for Environmental Protection Agency administrator.
That Tuesday Mr. Trump revealed his choices for national security adviser, Central Intelligence Agency director, homeland security secretary, ambassador to Israel and co-chairmen of a new commission called the Department of Government Efficiency. Though his nomination that day of Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary raised questions, all these other picks were defensible. Overall, the president-elect was coming across as purposeful, focused and energetic.
Then came Wednesday. On Nov. 13, the future president picked for his attorney general Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz. It is a catastrophically bad selection.
The nomination can’t be defended by referring to Mr. Gaetz’s record as an attorney. He has barely practiced law. (…) Nor can the pick be justified because of his outstanding legislative record. He doesn’t have one. (…)
Rather than for any particular skill or competency, Mr. Gaetz was selected because he promised he would smite Mr. Trump’s enemies within the Justice Department and hound his opponents outside it. Vengeance is a powerful motive but not a sound foundation for public confidence in the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer.
It’s likely that the only way Mr. Gaetz can be approved is if Mr. Trump expends enormous political capital to browbeat Senate Republicans into backing him. But no president has infinite sway, no matter how remarkable his electoral victory. Second-term chief executives tend to have even less.
Mr. Trump now faces the likelihood of contentious hearings featuring sensational charges that will distract from the good things his administration does. And Mr. Gaetz’s hearings won’t be the only circus act in town.
The confirmation proceedings for Mr. Trump’s director of national intelligence nominee, Tulsi Gabbard, and Mr. Hegseth could also be messy and full of bad press. (…)
The former president made one other mistake with his nominations. By revealing his early choices through posts on Truth Social, Mr. Trump missed opportunities to deliver powerful messages to the American people about what he intends to do and why. (…)
These introductions could have let Americans hear what was important to Mr. Trump and learn more about the people he is putting in charge of key agencies. The campaign exploited social media brilliantly during the election. By contrast, the cabinet rollout seems pedestrian.
Inadequate vetting, impatience, disregard for qualifications and a thirst for revenge have created chaos and controversy for Mr. Trump before he’s even in office. The price for all this will be missed opportunities to shore up popular support for the incoming president. But at least it’ll make great TV.
Mr. Rove helped organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is author of “The Triumph of William McKinley” (Simon & Schuster, 2015).
Der Spiegel, English Edition, 19 novembre, libre accès
Editorial by Dirk Kurbjuweit : Donald Trump and the New World OrderThe End of the West
Donald Trump’s return to the White House shows that liberal democracy has failed. It proved unable to provide a coherent structure to the post postwar era.
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One era is coming to an end and a new one is beginning. Nothing marks this shift as clearly as the election of Donald Trump to a second term as president of the United States. The West has lost its dominance and the shared foundation of values, which has been crumbling for some time, is now collapsing. There are tensions everywhere – between countries and within societies. The right wing is on the rise in Italy, France and Germany. The West as a block of liberal democracies no longer exists. (…)
The system’s strength was its concern for people, for the individual. Prosperity for all through social equality, more rights for women and homosexuals, the absence of authoritarian impositions by the state: All of this made the West attractive in the decades that followed World War II. Those who lived in the West enjoyed their freedoms and their high standard of living. A broad center developed, the pillar of liberal democracy.
The age of totalitarian ideologies, which were essentially political religions, was followed by a phase of rationality, of scientifically based reason. Politics was pursued with the utmost solemnity, because so much was at stake: preventing the return of fascism and standing up to the Soviet Union. (…)
How could that which began so promisingly now end with Donald Trump, a man who disrupts the system and whose policies are rooted in lunacy?
The initial steps forward in liberal democracies were social advances. But at some point, the social questions were considered to have been largely resolved and the era of social democracy came to an end. The majority of society, after all, was doing well. Progressive politics shifted to fresh challenges: doing away with patriarchy and establishing new freedoms for minorities – important projects to be sure.
But this shift was not managed well. Center-left politicians in particular – the Democrats in the U.S. and the Greens in Germany, for example – paid too little attention to the fact that the issue of equity, that concerns of social decline, don’t simply vanish when the general level of prosperity is high. The resulting impression was that center-left parties did too little for workers, for the center of society. The high cost of living is now seen as one of the most important reasons for Trump’s victory. (…)
Beyond that, governments were unable to establish the fight against climate change early on as a sensible, self-evident project. Hesitation, equivocation and dawdling continued for so long that the challenge grew too large, to the point that many people began fearing for the lives they had grown used to. Trump was able to profit from that as well, by denying the facts. (…)
The fear of war and authoritarian rule initially made it easy for those in government to hold societies in Western countries together. When this bond dissolved, liberal democrats failed to provide a coherent structure to the post postwar era. Some simply lacked the requisite earnestness, as exemplified by the embarrassing disintegration of Germany’s governing coalition in these difficult times. They lost a large part of society, to the point that many voters feel better represented by authoritarian voices. What a tragedy.
The resuscitation of the West can only be successful if we finally understand that almost all issues are also social issues, whether it be economic policy, migration policy or climate policy. Rational politics remains the correct course of action. But it absolutely must have a heart.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/donald-trump-and-the-ne
Le Figaro, 19 novembre, article payant
Rod Dreher: «Même s’il est toujours impossible de contrôler Trump, JD Vance pourrait le canaliser»
GRAND ENTRETIEN – Le journaliste et écrivain américain* fut parmi les premiers à faire connaître le livre de JD Vance, Hillbilly Elegy, en 2016. Pour lui, le nouveau vice-président américain fait souffler un vent de renouveau sur le Parti républicain et laisse augurer un second mandat de Trump très différent du premier.
*Éditorialiste à « The European Conservative », Rod Dreher a notamment publié « Résister au mensonge. Vivre en chrétiens dissidents » (Artège, 2021).
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(…) Pensez-vous que les opinions de Vance sur l’importance de la famille et de la responsabilité peuvent changer l’Amérique d’aujourd’hui ? Partagez-vous son optimisme quant à l’évolution du pays et à l’amélioration des conditions de vie de la classe ouvrière ?
Je l’espère. Je dois espérer, car quelle est l’alternative ? L’avenir n’est pas écrit. Je n’aurais jamais imaginé que Donald Trump soit réélu, et pourtant nous y sommes. Ce qui me rend pessimiste, c’est que je ne crois pas que la politique puisse faire une grande différence dans ces domaines. Viktor Orban a dit un jour quelque chose d’intéressant : il a déclaré qu’en tant qu’homme politique, il peut donner aux gens des choses — des lois, de l’argent public — mais qu’il ne peut pas leur fournir du sens.
Seules les institutions privées — comme les écoles, les églises, les associations et les familles — peuvent donner du sens. Si ces institutions ne profitent pas des conditions matérielles créées par les efforts politiques et ne travaillent pas dur pour apporter les changements que nous voulons voir, alors le travail politique sera vain.
J’aimerais pouvoir dire que je vois des institutions fortes à l’œuvre en Amérique, mais nombre d’entre elles ont été conquises par le wokisme des dirigeants. Il y a d’autres problèmes ; par exemple le scandale des abus sexuels au sein de l’Église catholique américaine a détruit toute la crédibilité morale de l’Église auprès de la population. En fin de compte, la plupart des Américains ne font plus confiance à nos institutions, quelles qu’elles soient. Et nous ne savons pas comment régler ce problème.
Vance est désormais présenté comme l’héritier naturel de Donald Trump. Pensez-vous que le Parti républicain va définitivement abandonner sa ligne plus libérale sur l’économie et la mondialisation ?
Les conservateurs « philosophiques » savent désormais qu’il ne faut jamais être optimiste au sujet du Parti républicain. Il vous brisera toujours le cœur. Il y aura toujours un nombre important de fondamentalistes du libre-échange chez les républicains, en particulier parmi les donateurs du parti. Cela dit, la vieille garde du parti a été complètement rejetée par les électeurs. Et cette fois-ci, Trump devra faire preuve d’une extrême prudence pour tenir les néoconservateurs à l’écart de son gouvernement.
JD Vance, en tant que sénateur américain, a su conclure des alliances avec des sénateurs de gauche sur certains sujets économiques. J’espère qu’avec Vance si haut placé dans l’Administration Trump, il y aura une réelle chance de développer des politiques économiques plus sociales-démocrates au cours des quatre prochaines années. Le problème, comme je l’ai dit, c’est que la classe des donateurs républicains soit si puissante au sein du parti. (…)
Vance est aussi un ancien marine qui a servi en Irak et s’oppose aujourd’hui à la guerre en Ukraine. Que pense-t-il de la guerre au Moyen-Orient ? Son isolationnisme est-il partagé chez les républicains ?
Je pense que c’est une erreur de qualifier Vance d’isolationniste. Aucun homme politique américain de haut rang ne peut être un véritable isolationniste à l’ère de l’empire américain. Je pense qu’il vaut mieux considérer Vance comme un réaliste en matière de politique étrangère. Cela veut dire qu’il voit des limites réalistes à la puissance américaine et qu’il souhaite que le gouvernement américain s’adapte à ces réalités, pour notre propre bien. (…)
Il ne fait aucun doute que sous Trump, l’Europe devra payer davantage pour sa propre défense. C’est une bonne chose et c’est nécessaire. Même Emmanuel Macron a parlé de la nécessité d’une « autonomie stratégique » européenne. Le fait est que les États-Unis ne sont plus l’hyperpuissance qu’ils étaient autrefois. Ils sont en déclin par rapport à la Chine et à d’autres pays. L’Amérique doit s’adapter à cette réalité si elle veut être intelligente et efficace dans la promotion et la défense de ses propres intérêts fondamentaux.
Je ne sais pas ce que Vance pense de la situation au Moyen-Orient, mais je serais extrêmement surpris qu’il ne soutienne pas fermement Israël. Certaines choses dans la vie politique américaine ne changeront pas, pour le meilleur et pour le pire. Trump pense la même chose. Mais je m’attends à ce que le réalisme de la prochaine Administration Trump se traduise par de nouvelles approches intéressantes.
Wall Street Journal, 17 novembre, article payant
The New Driving Force of Identity Politics Is Class, Not Race
The nation is increasingly voting along class lines, not racial ones. That could upend how we have thought about politics for decades.
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New fault lines are emerging in American society based more on class than race.
The shift helped deliver the White House to Donald Trump and could continue to alter the political landscape if more Americans identify themselves less in the context of race and gender and more as belonging to a certain economic class.
“Race is not an issue for me,” said Aaron Waters, a Black unionized construction worker in Chicago who voted for Trump after voting for President Biden and Barack Obama in past elections. “It’s about what you can do for each and every one of us as a whole, as a U.S. citizen.”
Trump made gains with most demographic groups in this month’s election. But one of the biggest swings was among voters of all races who don’t have a four-year college degree. (…)
Black and to a greater extent Latino Americans, meanwhile, ceded some of their longtime allegiance to Democrats. Trump gained with nonwhite voters of all education levels, but he made bigger gains with those who don’t have degrees than with those who do.
Overall voting patterns still clearly reflect racial division. Black voters overwhelmingly backed Harris, and a slim majority of Latino voters did, too. William Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer, said the voting shifts could be a “blip” related to sharp inflation, and that it is too soon “to predict a multiracial transformation of the GOP.” (…)
The shift toward class-based sorting also comes as some of the nation’s longtime racial categories—white, Black and Hispanic—are dissolving fast into more fluid and complex identities. As those categories blur, other factors, like education levels and class, are playing larger roles in Americans’ quality-of-life and are increasingly driving voters’ choices. (…)
Voting patterns among those without a college degree reflect the new fault lines, from white women in suburban Atlanta to Black construction workers and Latino retail employees in Chicago. These voters seem to have little in common on paper, but last week they coalesced around Trump.
That outcome reflected a shift in the decades-old orientation of the two-party political system. It marked just how successful the Republican Party has been at refashioning its image as the champion for the working class, and served as a warning sign for Democratic Party leadership. This week, Democratic Party veterans Rahm Emanuel and Maine Gov. Janet Mills argued that it was time to stamp out identity politics. (…)
Nicole Wiltz, a 52-year-old Black unionized worker in a hard hat and bright yellow vest, said she usually votes for Democrats but was dismayed to see how many resources the government devoted to the migrant crisis when many longtime Chicagoans were still homeless.
Wiltz said she didn’t feel pressure from her union or friends and family to vote for Harris. Nor did she feel she should because Harris is a Black woman.
“I mean, it’s not about that. It’s about right now,” Wiltz said. She respects the Black community’s tradition of voting for Democrats but said she is fed up with politicians who “don’t deliver what they promised.”
Hispanic and Black voters throughout the country echoed this idea, that notions of fealty to the Democratic Party based on race were outdated—and that economic concerns drove the shift to Republicans and Trump. (…)
Le Figaro, 15 novembre, article payant
Julie Girard: «Elon Musk est le symbole d’un “American dream” revitalisé»
TRIBUNE. – En incarnant à la fois la figure du self-made-man, que le peuple américain valorise, et celui qui ravive le patriotisme en multipliant les exploits technologiques, le patron de SpaceX a apporté une nouvelle dimension au « trumpisme », analyse la philosophe.
Extraits :
Donald Trump crie victoire, Elon Musk jubile. Ravi du triomphe du candidat dans lequel il a investi près de 132 millions de dollars, le milliardaire américain laisse éclater sa joie sur son réseau X. Quelques heures après la réélection historique de Donald Trump, Musk apparaît sur un mème, debout dans le Bureau ovale, les mains solidement agrippées à un évier en céramique. Un seul message accompagne la photographie photoshopée : « Let that sink in. »
Cette expression idiomatique anglaise, qui ne trouve aucune équivalence littérale en français, sous-tend l’idée de prendre le temps de réfléchir ou de digérer une information importante ; c’est aussi un clin d’œil de Musk à son acquisition de Twitter, en 2022. Alors qu’il prend le contrôle de la plateforme digitale, l’entrepreneur pénètre dans les locaux de Twitter un évier dans les mains.
Le geste, aussi drolatique soit-il, symbolise l’humour, la hardiesse et, surtout, l’ambition d’un homme que rien ne semble pouvoir arrêter. Musk est un géant de la tech, mais c’est avant tout un parieur avisé, un homme prêt à tout mettre au tapis une fois son jeu minutieusement analysé.
Dans son essai On the Edge. The Art of Risking Everything (Penguin Press, 2024), Nate Silver, l’un des meilleurs statisticiens politiques américains, propose une brillante analyse du rapport au risque de ceux qui façonnent et dominent le monde contemporain. Ces hommes sont avant tout des joueurs, mais leur prise de risque n’est pas inconsidérée ; elle est solidement ancrée dans une vision stochastique, analytique et probabiliste de la réalité. Tous partagent une grande appétence pour l’incertitude ainsi qu’une méfiance instinctive pour les conventions.
Leur mantra : penser à contre-courant du plus grand nombre, oser avoir raison contre tous. Ils appartiennent à ce que Silver appelle « la rivière ». À l’opposé se trouve « le village », c’est-à-dire l’establishment libéral progressiste, autrement dit l’élite de Washington issue des prestigieuses universités de l’Ivy League, les médias, tels que le New York Times, et, bien entendu, le monde universitaire. À l’approche disruptive de la « rivière » s’oppose l’approche conformiste du « village ». (…)
Le camp républicain a mené une campagne de terrain qui a parlé à tous les Américains. Elon Musk a été le symbole d’un « American dream » revitalisé, qui a permis de fédérer une grande partie de la population. Non seulement l’entrepreneur est un self-made-man, ce que le peuple américain valorise énormément, mais il est aussi celui qui, lancé dans une conquête de l’espace, emmagasine les exploits technologiques et ravive le patriotisme états-unien.
Que l’on apprécie ou non le style Musk, son succès force le respect. Pourtant, Musk reste l’antithèse d’une élite déconnectée et arrogante : il s’exprime sans ambages, assume ses aspérités comme ses extravagances et, en cela, rejoint Donald Trump. À ses côtés, il a sillonné la Pennsylvanie pour aller chercher les électeurs là où ils se trouvaient.
La force du Parti républicain aura été de parler au plus grand nombre en s’installant dans leur espace de conversation ; autrement dit, de percer la bulle élitaire de Washington. (…)
Trump l’a compris, les Américains attendent, avant tout, des résultats en matière économique. Musk, génie à l’esprit analytique, apparaît comme la personne la plus qualifiée pour mener à bien ce que Trump appelle « le projet Manhattan de notre époque ». L’annonce est habile. Certes, le bilan économique du président sortant semble en apparence glorieux – 16 millions d’emplois créés, 10,6 % de croissance cumulée sur la période allant de 2021 à 2023 -, mais cela s’est fait au prix d’une inflation record, nourrie par un déficit budgétaire qui n’avait aucune justification en période de croissance.
Si la classe la plus défavorisée a bénéficié de la hausse du salaire minimum et la plus privilégiée, de rendements du capital supérieurs à l’inflation, la classe moyenne a vu son pouvoir d’achat se réduire à peau de chagrin.
Quelle que soit la durée de la « romance » entre Donald Trump et Elon Musk, le roi de la « rivière » aura activement participé au changement de trajectoire de la politique américaine. N’oublions pas que le candidat le plus naturel à la présidence des États-Unis en 2028 sera le vice-président JD Vance, un pur produit de la « Paypal Mafia » ; son mentor n’est autre que Peter Thiel, cofondateur de Paypal et de Palantir Technologies. Une nouvelle page s’ouvre pour l’Amérique. La seconde mandature de Trump sera très différente de la première. Une chose est sûre : près de 75 millions d’électeurs ont accepté d’embrasser cette incertitude.
The Economist, 15 novembre, article payant
The loyalty test : Matt Gaetz’s nomination to be attorney-general is an ill omen
It shows how far Donald Trump is willing to go to dominate the machinery of government
Extraits :
ONE LESSON Donald Trump took from his first term is that personnel are everything. That could explain the blistering pace of nominations to his administration in the week since he won re-election. Unfortunately, that same insight could also explain Mr Trump’s choices to become his most important lieutenants, including the nomination for attorney-general of Matt Gaetz, a cartoonishly divisive Florida congressman, who is despised even by many in his own party. Too many of them seem to have been selected mainly because their personal loyalty to Mr Trump will be unbound by any scruple.
As this was published, Mr Trump had made around 20 nominations and appointments. Some of his picks are amply qualified—Susie Wiles, his no-nonsense chief of staff, say; or Mike Waltz, a former Green Beret, who will become his national security adviser. You do not have to share Marco Rubio’s hawkishness to recognise that the senator from Florida could make a good secretary of state. Others, such as Elon Musk, are unorthodox and risky—and fraught with potential conflicts of interest—but, who knows, could turn out to be inspired.
However, other nominations are an ill omen for Mr Trump’s second term. If he has his way, the Pentagon will be run by Pete Hegseth, a National Guard veteran and host on Fox News, who has made a career decrying “woke” officers. The director of national intelligence will be Tulsi Gabbard, who has taken an apocalyptic and faintly conspiratorial view of America’s mission of spreading democracy.
And then there is Mr Gaetz. Attorneys-general owe their first loyalty to the law, but Mr Gaetz has been the subject of endless Congressional ethics inquiries. He was investigated, though never prosecuted, over allegations of sex-trafficking a minor by the FBI, an agency he would oversee. Given Mr Trump’s campaign talk of retribution, the independence of the Department of Justice is more important than ever. Yet after Jeff Sessions, as attorney-general, recused himself in an investigation into Mr Trump’s alleged links with Russia, Mr Gaetz accused him of having Stockholm syndrome. (…)
Mr Trump’s choices amount to another loyalty test, this time for the Senate, where moderate Republicans must now set limits on the next president. Mr Thune should start as he means to go on, by ensuring that the Senate exercises its right to vet appointments—and that a clear majority rejects those who, like Ms Gabbard, Mr Hegseth and especially Mr Gaetz, are manifestly unsuitable. ■
Wall Street Journal, 14 novembre, article payant
Trump Might Have Won the First Postracial Election
Black and Hispanic voters defect from Democrats, who have long relied on identity-politics appeals.
Extraits :
(…) Much is rightly being made of Mr. Trump’s appeal to nonwhite voters and his ability to diversify the GOP coalition. According to NBC News, since 2012 there has been a 15-point shift toward Republicans among black voters, a 32-point shift among Asians, and a 38-point shift among Latinos. That this trend continued in a presidential election with a woman of black and Indian heritage at the top of the Democratic ticket is even more remarkable. Mr. Trump won more than 20% of black men and more than half of Hispanic men, according to exit polls. If this wasn’t the country’s first postracial election, voters took a big step in that direction.
For liberals this is a terrifying thought, because so much of the Democratic Party’s infrastructure is built around appeals to racial and ethnic identity. Have you noticed how the left is trying to turn “colorblind” into a dirty word? If economic status and cultural sensibilities are replacing race and ethnicity as the more reliable lens for discerning voter preferences, the left has its work cut out. What Mr. Trump understood and Democrats didn’t is that what distinguishes black and Hispanic voters in 2024 is their working-class status more so than their skin color. And what determined their vote is their economic well-being, not fear that Mr. Trump is a raging bigot who threatens democracy.
The Biden administration’s biggest mistake with minority voters was almost certainly the neglect of the border, which it assumed voters would write off as a Fox News obsession. Those who study the economics of immigration, however, know that migrants are far more likely to compete with one another than with the native population for jobs, wages and housing. Millions of unvetted foreign nationals flooded the country in the past four years, and the lion’s share settled in migrant communities, where they caused the most disruption.
It’s no surprise that Latinos responded in frustration. (…)
It’s no surprise that Latinos responded in frustration. When Eastern European Jews began migrating to the U.S. in large numbers in the 1800s, they met resistance from German Jews who had come decades earlier and put down roots. And when rural blacks began migrating out of the South by the millions in the first part of the 20th century and transforming Northern cities both economically and culturally, Northern blacks resented the newcomers. Mr. Trump turned Hispanics into swing voters for the first time in decades, but he got a lot of help from Democrats. If black voters are headed in the same direction, it’s another welcome political trend.
The Economist, 14 novembre, article payant
Hat trick : Republicans finally win the coveted trifecta
Yet the party’s grip on power could be less reliable than it appears
Extraits :
After eight days of counting votes, the Republicans have won the House of Representatives. This means the party will have the coveted trifecta—control of the presidency, House and Senate—for at least the next two years. Republican control of Congress will give Donald Trump far more scope to implement his agenda, with a more unified party than when it last held the three branches, during his first term.
The Republican victory was not absolute, however. In key races, the party lagged behind its presidential nominee, meaning majorities in both chambers of Congress are slimmer than they might otherwise be. This is cold comfort for Democrats, whose impressive results in certain seats did not save them from an unfavourable national environment. But it could moderate the first two years of Mr Trump’s second term. With the outcome of some important House races still unknown, the party’s grip on power could be less reliable than it appears. (…)
The final Republican majority in the House is still unknown. Seven races have not been called, most of them in western states, which count ballots notoriously slowly. A razor-thin majority, combined with a disorderly House Republican caucus, could make governing tricky. (…)
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/11/13/republicans-finally-win-the-coveted-trifecta
New York Times, 10 novembre, quelques articles gratuits / semaine
The Elites Had It Coming
Extraits :
Everyone has a moment when they first realized that Donald Trump might well return, and here is mine. It was back in March, during a visit to the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, when I happened to read the explanatory text beside an old painting. This note described the westward advance of the United States in the 19th century as “settler colonialism.” I read it and I knew instantly where this nation was going.
My problem with this bit of academic jargon was not that it was wrong, per se, or that President Biden was somehow responsible for putting it there, but rather that it offered a glimpse of our poisoned class relations. Some curator at one of our most exalted institutions of public instruction had decided to use a currently fashionable, morally loaded academic keyword to address a visitor to the museum — say, a family from the Midwest, doing the round of national shrines — and teach them a lesson about American wickedness.
Twenty years ago I published a book about politics in my home state of Kansas where white, working-class voters seemed to be drifting into the arms of right-wing movements. I attributed this, in large part, to the culture wars, which the right framed in terms of working-class agony. Look at how these powerful people insult our values!, went the plaint, whether they were talking about the theory of evolution or the war on Christmas.
This was worth pointing out because working people were once the heart and soul of left-wing parties all over the world. It may seem like a distant memory, but not long ago, the left was not a movement of college professors, bankers or high-ranking officers at Uber or Amazon. Working people: That’s what parties of the left were very largely about. The same folks who just expressed such remarkable support for Donald Trump.
My Kansas story was mainly about Republicans, but I also wrote about the way the Democrats were gradually turning away from working people and their concerns. (…)
Well, those tech-minded Democrats got exactly what they set out to get, and now here we are. (…) Today Mr. Vance is the vice president-elect, and what I hope you will understand, what I want you to mull over and take to heart and remember for the rest of your life, is that he got there by mimicking the language that Americans used to associate with labor, with liberals, with Democrats. (…)
Mr. Trump, meanwhile, put together a remarkable coalition of the disgruntled. He reached out to everyone with a beef, from Robert Kennedy Jr. to Elon Musk. From free-speech guys to book-banners. From Muslims in Michigan to anti-immigration zealots everywhere. “Trump Will Fix It,” declared the signs they waved at his rallies, regardless of which “It” you had in mind. (…)
Liberals had nine years to decipher Mr. Trump’s appeal — and they failed. The Democrats are a party of college graduates, as the whole world understands by now, of Ph.D.s and genius-grant winners and the best consultants money can buy. Mr. Trump is a con man straight out of Mark Twain; he will say anything, promise anything, do nothing. But his movement baffled the party of education and innovation. Their most brilliant minds couldn’t figure him out.
I have been writing about these things for 20 years, and I have begun to doubt that any combination of financial disaster or electoral chastisement will ever turn on the lightbulb for the liberals. (…)
Can anything reverse it? Only a resolute determination by the Democratic Party to rededicate itself to the majoritarian vision of old: a Great Society of broad, inclusive prosperity. This means universal health care and a higher minimum wage. It means robust financial regulation and antitrust enforcement. It means unions and a welfare state and higher taxes on billionaires, even the cool ones. It means, above all, liberalism as a social movement, as a coming-together of ordinary people — not a series of top-down reforms by well-meaning professionals.
That seems a long way away today. But the alternative is — what? To blame the voters? To scold the world for failing to see how noble we are? No. It will take the opposite sentiment — solidarity — to turn the world right-side up again.
Thomas Frank is the author, most recently, of “The People, No.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/09/opinion/democrats-trump-elites-centrism.html
New York Times, 10 novembre, quelques articles gratuits / semaine
Democrats and the Case of Mistaken Identity Politics
Extraits :
Some Democrats are finally waking up and realizing that woke is broke.
Donald Trump won a majority of white women and remarkable numbers of Black and Latino voters and young men.
Democratic insiders thought people would vote for Kamala Harris, even if they didn’t like her, to get rid of Trump. But more people ended up voting for Trump, even though many didn’t like him, because they liked the Democratic Party less. (…)
Democratic candidates have often been avatars of elitism — Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and second-term Barack Obama. The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctness, condescension and cancellation, and it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like “Latinx,” and “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).
This alienated half the country, or more. And the chaos and antisemitism at many college campuses certainly didn’t help.
“When the woke police come at you,” Rahm Emanuel told me, “you don’t even get your Miranda rights read to you.” (…)
One thing that makes Democrats great is that they unabashedly support groups that have suffered from inequality. But they have to begin avoiding extreme policies that alienate many Americans who would otherwise be drawn to the party. (…)
A revealing chart that ran in The Financial Times showed that white progressives hold views far to the left of the minorities they champion. White progressives think at higher rates than Hispanic and Black Americans that “racism is built into our society.” Many more Black and Hispanic Americans surveyed, compared with white progressives, responded that “America is the greatest country in the world.” (…)
On CNN, the Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky said that Democrats did not know how to talk to normal Americans.
Addressing Latinos as “Latinx” to be politically correct “makes them think that we don’t even live on the same planet as they do,” she said. “When we are too afraid to say that ‘Hey, college kids, if you’re trashing a campus of Columbia University because you aren’t happy about some sort of policy and you’re taking over a university and you’re trashing it and preventing other students from learning, that that is unacceptable.’ But we’re so worried about alienating one or another cohort in our coalition that we don’t know what to say.”
Kamala, a Democratic lawmaker told me, made the “colossal mistake” of running a billion-dollar campaign with celebrities like Beyoncé when many of the struggling working-class voters she wanted couldn’t even afford a ticket to a Beyoncé concert, much less a down payment on a home.
James Carville gave Kamala credit for not leaning into her gender and ethnicity. But he said the party had become enamored of “identitarianism” — a word he uses because he won’t say “woke” — radiating the repellent idea that “identity is more important than humanity.”
“We could never wash off the stench of it,” he said, calling “defund the police” “the three stupidest words in the English language.”
“It’s like when you get smoke on your clothes and you have to wash them again and again. Now people are running away from it like the devil runs away from holy water.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/09/opinion/democrats-identity-politics.html
Le Figaro, 10 novembre, article payant
Francis Fukuyama, Donald Trump et la fin suspendue de l’histoire
ANALYSE – Dans une longue tribune au Financial Times, le célèbre politiste américain perçoit la réélection de Donald Trump comme l’entrée dans une «nouvelle ère» de «rejet décisif» du «libéralisme» dont il avait pourtant prophétisé le triomphe idéologique dès 1989.
Extraits :
La force de certains mots dépend parfois de celui qui les prononce. Ainsi, quand Francis Fukuyama, le penseur de «la fin de l’histoire», se fait derechef prophète en annonçant que la réélection de Donald Trump à la Maison-Blanche pourrait ouvrir une «ère nouvelle politique» de «rejet décisif» du «libéralisme», l’on ne peut que redoubler d’attention et de vigilance. Dans une longue tribune parue ce jeudi dans le Financial Times, le célèbre politiste américain semble vaciller sur ses propres fondements, sans le reconnaître expressément. Il y a 35 ans, à l’été 1989 – quelques mois avant la chute du mur de Berlin -, il prophétisait dans un article de la revue The National Interest «l’universalisation de la démocratie libérale occidentale comme forme finale de tout gouvernement humain».
De prophète de bonheur, Francis Fukuyama se mue aujourd’hui en prophète de malheur. «Lorsque Trump a été élu pour la première fois en 2016, il était facile de croire que cet événement était une aberration. Quatre ans plus tard, tout semblait être revenu à la normale», commence le professeur de l’Université John-Hopkins, qui se corrige aussitôt : «Il semble désormais que ce soit la présidence Biden qui soit l’anomalie, et que Trump inaugure une nouvelle ère dans la politique américaine et peut-être dans le monde entier». De quelle ère s’agirait-il ? Francis Fukuyama la décrit en négatif, par le «rejet décisif» du «libéralisme classique lui-même», et pas seulement de ses deux avatars plus récents que sont le «néolibéralisme» et le «libéralisme éveillé».
Plongeant ses racines dans les Lumières tant françaises qu’anglo-saxonnes, mais forgé surtout au 19e siècle, le libéralisme classique est une «doctrine fondée sur le respect de l’égale dignité des individus» : l’État est là pour y veiller en même temps que des «contrôles constitutionnels» garantissent que ce même État n’aille pas trop loin. C’est toute l’idée de l’«État de droit» à travers laquelle l’État pose lui-même les bornes de son propre pouvoir pour ne pas en abuser. En somme, c’est le rejet de l’arbitraire. Mais le libéralisme a connu deux «distorsions» dans la seconde moitié du 20e siècle, précise Fukuyama. D’un côté, le «néolibéralisme», cette doctrine économique qui a «sanctifié les marchés et réduit la capacité des gouvernements à protéger ceux qui étaient touchés par le changement économique». De l’autre, le «libéralisme éveillé», ce désormais fameux «wokisme» à travers lequel «l’intérêt progressiste pour la classe ouvrière a été remplacé par des mesures de protection ciblées» vers des «groupes marginalisés : minorités raciales, immigrés, minorités sexuelles, etc.».
Le «trumpisme» a évidemment fait son miel du rejet croissant de ces deux enfants du libéralisme classique. (…)
Exit, donc, le néolibéralisme et le libéralisme éveillé. Mais, pour l’auteur de La Fin de l’histoire et le Dernier Homme – l’essai de 1992 qui a suivi l’article de 1989 -, Trump va plus loin. Il représenterait aussi une «menace majeure» contre le «libéralisme classique» lui-même. (…)
Donald Trump n’est pas un «fasciste» car il n’a pas «l’intention d’instaurer un régime totalitaire aux États-Unis», nuance certes Francis Fukuyama, en infirmant le mot de Kamala Harris. Donald Trump serait simplement le visage du «déclin progressif des institutions libérales» : «il se peut que la situation doive empirer bien avant de s’améliorer». Ce pronostic, en soi, n’a rien d’exceptionnel : combien de commentateurs l’ont dit avant lui ? Le plus singulier, dans ce long article du «FT», est que Francis Fukuyama semble suspendre «la fin de l’histoire» et ajouter une note de bas de page supplémentaire aux nombreux addendum qu’il a été obligé d’ajouter périodiquement à sa théorie depuis sa première formulation en 1989. (…)
Mais il reste une ultime question : le vent de colère contre le système politique qui porte Donald Trump est-il un «rejet décisif» de la démocratie et du libéralisme eux-mêmes ou est-il le surgissement brutal d’une nouvelle formule libérale encore informe ? La première hypothèse est celle que pose aujourd’hui Francis Fukuyama. L’expérience de ces trois décennies montre heureusement que le prophète n’a pas toujours su prédire la fin de l’histoire.
That Mr Trump may not be able to realise his most extreme ambitions should offer some solace to an anxious world. But he will probably be able to push further in his second term than he did in his first. He is better prepared for governing this time, with a larger team of loyalists and a more detailed plan of action. It is going to be a turbulent economic ride, for America and the world. Buckle up. ■
The Economist, 10 novembre, article payant
Taxes down, walls up : The return of Trumponomics excites markets but frightens the world
It may bring stronger growth, higher inflation and a global trade war
Extraits :
THE TRUMP trade is already in full swing. As it became clear that Donald Trump would win the presidential election, American stocks soared, the dollar strengthened and Treasury yields jumped higher. The price movements contain two messages about the direction of Mr Trump’s economic policies. The promise of big tax cuts, combined with his zeal for deregulation, will boost growth, especially in the short term. But the spectre of tariffs and a crackdown on immigration may drive up inflation and, eventually, undercut America’s economic strengths.
Gauging the potential impact of Mr Trump’s policies is, however, no easy task. As ever with him, there is uncertainty about whether he means all that he says. He is, for instance, obviously fond of tariffs but he may also, sometimes, treat them as leverage with other countries rather than as end goals. There is also uncertainty about how much he will be able to achieve. Mr Trump’s team has evolved from the chaos of his first term into what appears to be a more finely oiled operation. And Republicans are on track for a trifecta, as Mr Trump’s resounding victory is likely to come alongside a solid majority in the Senate and a narrower one in the House of Representatives. Still, moderates in the party will have the clout to whittle down some of his agenda.
Mr Trump’s economic programme can be divided into three main categories: lower taxes, sweeping deregulation and higher tariffs. He also has some broader policies—in particular, a looming crackdown on immigration—that could have a profound effect on the economy. (…)
The danger of an exploding deficit may end up limiting how far Republicans in Congress go on tax cuts as negotiations start early next year. Much will also depend on how markets react: a rise in Treasury yields in response to Mr Trump’s triumph is already a warning about America’s fiscal frailty. (…)
Whereas tax negotiations will stretch though much of 2025, Mr Trump will get to work right away on deregulation when he returns to the White House. In his rallies he promised the “most aggressive regulatory reduction” in American history. He may tap Elon Musk, the Tesla boss who became his chief campaigning sidekick, to lead a “government efficiency commission” that eliminates ten existing rules for every new one But businesses are excited less by the razzle-dazzle of such a commission than by the coming U-turn on rules drawn up by Democrats. (…)
Tariffs will be Mr Trump’s most controversial set of policies, especially in foreign capital cities. Central to his programme for nearly a decade has been a belief that protectionism is essential to American prosperity. His first term in the White House, which featured tariffs on steel from around the world and on a range of Chinese products, is probably just a prelude to what he will attempt now (see chart 3). He has talked about slapping levies of 10-20% on everything that America imports, of 60% on all goods from China and even higher duties—perhaps 500%—on cars from Mexico.
Almost universally, economists say such hefty tariffs would lead to higher consumer prices and act as drags on investment and growth. That is a potentially cruel irony for American voters given that anger about inflation under Mr Biden helped fuel support for Mr Trump’s re-election. Many Republicans in Congress are also less enthusiastic about tariffs; a traditional free-trade strain remains alive, if hardly thriving, in the party. But any opposition from them may not amount to much. (…)
Tariffs are also sure to invite retaliation. In Europe officials have already drawn up lists of levies that they may impose on American goods. China will probably go after farm products, from soyabeans to corn. Other countries will be tempted to follow suit but will also try to carve out exemptions from Mr Trump’s tariffs. (…)
Given the size and diversity of its economy, America may be better insulated than most from a global trade war—that, along with the higher Treasury yields, helps to account for the dollar’s rise after Mr Trump’s victory. The very real danger for the world is weaker growth, higher prices and more brittle supply chains. (…)
There are other threats, too. Worries about inflation are likely to weigh heavily in the Federal Reserve’s calculations. The rise in Treasury yields shows that many investors believe the central bank will end up leaving interest rates higher next year than previously assumed—though they still expect a quarter-point cut at its meeting on November 7th, after we published this. (…)
That Mr Trump may not be able to realise his most extreme ambitions should offer some solace to an anxious world. But he will probably be able to push further in his second term than he did in his first. He is better prepared for governing this time, with a larger team of loyalists and a more detailed plan of action. It is going to be a turbulent economic ride, for America and the world. Buckle up. ■
Le Point, édito, 10 novembre, article payant
Trump : la gauche américaine est-elle encore plus bête que la nôtre ?
L’ÉDITO DE FOG. En dehors de ses talents de bateleur politique, Donald Trump a construit sa victoire sur la campagne hors-sol de sa rivale Kamala Harris.
Extraits :
Entre vulgarités et saillies foutraques, Donald Trump a fait l’effort de parler à l’Amérique éternelle, guettée elle aussi par la fragmentation, comme si elle existait toujours. D’où, sans doute, la progression du candidat républicain dans toutes les couches de la population, notamment chez les Hispaniques et les Afro-Américains. Sans parler de ses retrouvailles avec la classe ouvrière qui, il y a quatre ans, avait cédé aux sirènes de Joe Biden, démocrate à l’ancienne. (…)
L’hystérie des médias et des « élites » américaines contre Trump est le fioul auquel le président réélu carbure. Comme on l’a souvent écrit ici, le stupide acharnement judiciaire dont il a été victime, ces derniers temps, lui a grandement profité, comme profiterait à Marine Le Pen, sans jeu de mots, une peine d’inéligibilité dans l’affaire de ses assistants au Parlement européen. Les populistes sortent toujours grandis, aux yeux de leurs électeurs, des épreuves que leur fait subir l’« établissement ». S’il avait la reconnaissance du ventre, Trump se devrait donc de remercier la presse et la justice pour leur aide involontaire. Sans oublier celle de la candidate démocrate.
Trump a pu capitaliser sur la campagne de Kamala Harris, qui avait tout d’un suicide politique. On aurait dit une candidate de notre NFP. Il fallait, par exemple, qu’elle fût bien hors-sol pour oser se déclarer woke, en le répétant à plusieurs reprises, entre deux rires qui plus est, sur une vidéo qui a fait des ravages dans le pays. Il faut être totalement déconnecté pour s’imaginer que le peuple d’en bas, au fin fond de la Pennsylvanie, apprécie le wokisme ou la « gazaouisation » des universités. Le soutien des bobos friqués de Hollywood n’a rien arrangé. (…)
S’il y a une leçon à tirer de ce scrutin, c’est que Trump, le vainqueur, est celui qui a su réveiller le patriotisme, mieux que dans ses campagnes précédentes. La France est un pays de plus en plus américanisé et qui se communautarise, hélas, à grande vitesse, comme on l’a vu aux dernières législatives. Nos gouvernants et leurs opposants seraient bien inspirés de méditer les résultats de cette présidentielle avant d’être un jour sanctionnés par les urnes, pour avoir, comme la candidate démocrate, fait une campagne ethnique, groupe par groupe. (…)
Ce n’est pas parce que nos peuples sont traversés par des forces centrifuges qu’il ne faut pas s’adresser à eux comme à une entité unique. Ne forment-ils pas, avec leurs différences, ce miracle permanent qu’on appelle une nation ?
The Economist, 9 novembre, article payant
Direction unknown : Will Donald Trump “stop the wars” in the Middle East?
What he does may depend on which son-in-law spoke to him last
Extraits :
ON HIS first day as president-elect, Donald Trump united the Middle East. Everyone agrees his second term in office will transform American policy in the region. But no one agrees on what that policy will be. Though his election probably heralds a dramatic shift, the direction he will take depends on who has his ear.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was quick to curry favour. He was among the first world leaders to congratulate the president-elect on what he called “history’s greatest comeback”.
He reckons that a Trump administration would give him free rein to continue Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon: there would be no more nettlesome American calls for a ceasefire (not that Joe Biden’s cajoling amounted to much). He has good reason to believe that. In his first term, Mr Trump showed little concern for the plight of the Palestinians. He supported the growth of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, drafted a peace plan that was deeply skewed in Israel’s favour.
But Mr Trump ran for office on a pledge to calm the region. “I’m going to stop the wars,” he said in his election-night victory speech. America has sent Israel $18bn in military aid since October 2023, and at least four American soldiers have died in connection with the fighting. Some in Israel wonder if Mr Trump will balk at the cost and demand that Mr Netanyahu end the war before he takes office. “Do you really think Trump wants this hanging over the first year of his presidency?” a Western diplomat in the region asks rhetorically. (…)
He has promised not to allow Iran to build a bomb. At the same time, he seems unenthusiastic about a conflict. “I don’t want to do damage to Iran,” he said on November 5th, adding that he wanted it to be a “successful country”. Some Iranians joke that the regime should offer him a property deal: the best way to clinch a new nuclear accord would be to throw in a contract for a Trump Tower in Tehran.
The people around him have mixed opinions. His first cabinet had close ties to the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, a bellicose Washington think-tank that advocates regime change in Iran. Some of its members may find roles in a second Trump administration.
At the other end of the spectrum is J.D. Vance, the vice-president-elect, who does not seem keen on a new war in the Middle East. In an interview last month he said that America and Israel would sometimes have diverging interests, “and our interest very much is in not going to war with Iran”. (…)
No one is sure how Mr Trump will govern this time. Last month he promised to bring peace to Lebanon. He did not say how. Will he demand that Israel withdraw its troops and agree to a ceasefire? Or will he back a wider ground invasion in the hope of uprooting Hizbullah for good? (…)
The Economist, 9 novembre, article payant
Global disorder : America’s allies brace for brinkmanship, deals—and betrayal
From Ukraine to Israel there is a frantic scramble to flatter and sway Donald Trump
Extraits :
LIKE QUIZ-SHOW contestants trying to bash the buzzer first, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, and Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, raced to congratulate Donald Trump on his victory—though each for very different reasons. The rush by these and other leaders around the world, such as Emmanuel Macron of France and Lai Ching-te of Taiwan, to ingratiate themselves with America’s next president reveals much about the perils and opportunities they foresee under Mr Trump, whose only constancy in foreign policy is his unpredictability.
Mr Zelensky praised Mr Trump’s “decisive leadership” and commitment to “peace through strength”, perhaps hoping that flattery might do better than an appeal to principle. He moved quickly to try to win the incoming president’s favour ahead of any prospective deal that Mr Trump might try to impose on Ukraine to end the war it has been fighting since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Mr Netanyahu’s message was also fawning as he hailed “history’s greatest comeback”, quite a compliment from the original comeback king. Mr Netanyahu may hope that Mr Trump will give him even more of a free hand in the wars Israel is fighting in Gaza, Lebanon and against Iran, but he must also worry whether Mr Trump’s pledge to “stop the wars” might be achieved by squeezing support for Israel.
Mr Trump’s election comes as America and its allies face their most daunting threats since at least the end of the cold war. These include “the potential for near-term major war”, a bipartisan commission mandated by Congress warned earlier this year. And the risks are mounting, as adversaries such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea increasingly make common cause. A further escalation in the conflict between Israel and Iran, for instance, could well draw American troops directly into another war in the Middle East. Yet at this moment of heightened peril, America’s friends and foes alike are preparing for the possibility that Mr Trump may upend its foreign policy and weaken the network of alliances that have been the pillars of Western security. (…)
In the uncertain period before the next administration takes over, America’s allies are scrambling to mitigate some of the risks that may arise from the election of a president who regards allies as a burden and approaches mutual defence with the calculus of a gangster. “They want protection, they don’t pay us money for the protection,” Mr Trump has said. “The mob makes you pay money.” Mr Trump boasts that he coerced NATO countries to spend more on defence during his first term, with some justification. Many expect the pressure to intensify in his second. (…)
The trouble for America’s allies, though, is that nobody knows for sure what Mr Trump’s foreign policy will be. Some things seem certain, such as trade wars with friends and foes alike . He will probably again accommodate some autocrats and threaten to abandon allies or renegotiate terms with them. Tensions with Mexico will probably rise over trade, migrants and drug-trafficking. (…)
Given Mr Trump’s repeated criticism of aid to Ukraine and his refusal to say whether he wants Ukraine to win the war, many worry that one of his first moves in office would be to capitulate to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. Yet people in his entourage—or at least people who hope to be in it—suggest that Mr Trump would not be such a soft touch). Republican insiders argue that he knows that defeat in Ukraine would be a political liability, just as the withdrawal from Afghanistan was for Mr Biden. (…)
A diplomatic deal crafted on decent terms may yet be welcomed by Ukraine, whose position on the battlefield is weakening. Ukraine would, however, want membership of NATO to guarantee its security. Mr Pompeo is an advocate of that but other advisers may resist it, as would Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor. (…)
Mr Trump was a disruptive force during his first term but the international scene was relatively calm. He returns to power at a time of rising great-power rivalry and destructive wars in Europe and the Middle East. Instead of building on the alliances and institutions that have enhanced American power, Mr Trump seems intent on undermining them. That would not only make America less secure, but also accelerate the disintegration of the post-war order that kept the peace for 80 years. ■
Wall Street Journal, 9 novembre, article payant
How Barron Trump Connected His Father to the Manosphere
The 18-year-old persuaded Donald Trump that the world of bros, dudes, online pranksters and ultimate fighters could be a potent political asset
Extraits :
One day in the midst of a vicious election campaign whose outcome, Donald Trump had warned, could threaten America’s very survival, the former president spent 90 minutes with a foul-mouthed 24-year-old who has achieved a certain kind of stardom by playing videogames for an online audience.
In meeting Adin Ross in August for a livestreamed chat, Trump was entering the manosphere.
It is an online universe of YouTubers, podcasters, live-streamers, online pranksters and more. They vary wildly in their tone, substance and obsessions. Some are jokey; some are vile. Running through them all is a certain unreformed notion of “Bro-dom.”
Trump may have been a pilgrim in this strange land. But he had a native to guide him: his 18-year-old, 6-foot-9-inch son Barron, a freshman at New York University.
“My son Barron says hello,” Trump told Ross at the outset of their chat. “He’s a big fan of yours.”
“What’s up, Barron?” Ross chirped. “Yeah, Barron’s awesome. Amazing. Great kid. He’s tall. Very tall.”
This week, the manosphere, the kind of secret that young men tend to hide on their laptops or at the bottom of a sock drawer, was dragged into the spotlight when Trump won a commanding election victory. It was fueled, in part, by vigorous support from the kind of young men more typically concerned with videogames than voting. (…)
“The strategy is reaching an audience that maybe isn’t being recognized. Or an audience that loves Trump, and they’re just not being acknowledged,” Bo Loudon, Barron’s best friend, told journalist Piers Morgan, explaining Trump’s outreach. Loudon was the subject of a recent Vanity Fair piece that described him as the force shaping the candidate’s “podcast offensive.”
Asked about Barron’s role in his father’s strategy, Loudon told Morgan: “He’s definitely playing a hand…He’s in my age group, he knows who’s popular at this time.” (…)
The Economist, 9 novembre, article payant
Campaign calculus: fool me thrice : Opinion polls underestimated Donald Trump again
A small but stubborn error affected polls across the board
Extraits :
FOR THE third presidential election in a row Donald Trump has stumped America’s pollsters. As results came in on election night it became clear that polls had again underestimated enthusiasm for Mr Trump in many states. In Iowa, days before the election a well-regarded poll by Ann Selzer had caused a stir by showing Kamala Harris ahead by three percentage points. In the end, Mr Trump won the state by 13 points.
Overall, the polling miss was far smaller. Polls accurately captured a close contest in the national popular vote and correctly forecast tight races in each of the battleground states. National polls erred by less than they did in 2020, and state polls improved on their dismal performances in 2020 and 2016. Yet this will be little comfort to pollsters who have been grappling with Mr Trump’s elusive supporters for years.
The Economist’s nationwide polling average found Kamala Harris leading by 1.5 percentage points, overestimating her advantage by around three points (many votes have yet to be counted), compared with an average error of 2.7 points in past cycles. State polling averages from FiveThirtyEight, a data-journalism outfit, had an average error of 3.0, smaller than the average of 4.2 points since 1976. (…)
If there is a lesson from this year’s election, it could be that there is a limit to what weighting can solve. Although pollsters may artificially make a sample “representative” on the surface, if they do not address the root causes of differential response rates, they will not solve the underlying problem. They also introduce many subjective decisions, which can be worth almost eight points of margin in any given poll.
A pollster which gets those decisions right appears to be prophetic. But with limited transparency before the election, it is hard to know which set of assumptions each has made, and whether they are the correct ones. To their credit, the pollsters get together to conduct comprehensive post-election reviews. This year’s may be revealing. Still, without a breakthrough technology that can boost the representativeness of survey samples, weighting alone is unlikely to solve pollsters’ difficulty in getting a reliable read on what Trump voters are thinking.■
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/11/07/opinion-polls-underestimated-donald-trump-again
The Economist, 8 novembre, article payant
Democrats need to understand: Americans think they’re worse
Blaming America for Donald Trump’s success only guarantees more of it
Extraits :
Voir “Article du Jour”
New York Times, 8 novembre, article payant
Trump’s Strange Bedfellows: Arab Americans and Right-Leaning Jews
Donald J. Trump won votes from Arab Americans and conservative pro-Israel Jews. Someone is likely to be disappointed.
Extraits :
(…) It is an extraordinary new coalition. Along the way to his decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump drew at least some Arab American and Muslim voters who are outraged by the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza. He managed to do so without alienating the right-leaning American Jews who see Mr. Trump as Israel’s strongest champion.
Even in an election marked by a reordering of the country’s traditional political teams, these strange bedfellows stand out.
The two groups hold sharply divergent expectations for the president-elect. And both strongly pro-Israel Trump voters and some of Mr. Trump’s Arab American backers are skeptical that his ascent this week is the start of a durable cross-ideological, interfaith coalition.
For Mr. Trump, the question is whether he can keep both happy — or if he will even try.
“This was not even a shotgun wedding — it was a blind-date wedding,” James Zogby, a founder of the Arab American Institute in Washington and a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee, said of Mr. Trump’s new support from Arab Americans and Muslims. Mr. Zogby said many of those voters backed the former president to protest the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza, not to affirm his campaign. He anticipated that Mr. Trump would “pursue policies that will make them more furious.”
“The more they see what’s going to happen, the less enchanted they’ll be,” he said of Arab Americans. “I don’t expect the right wing in the Jewish community to be disappointed at all, unfortunately.” (…)
“Whatever he did on his campaign trail in last two months, I think he won the hearts and minds of many Muslims,” said Rabiul Chowdhury, a founder of Muslims for Trump who is based in Pennsylvania. “This guy is a Muslim-friendly guy.”
Mr. Trump is, of course, the same guy who blocked citizens of predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States during his last presidency, and who spent years demonizing and insulting Muslim Americans.
As president, he repeatedly made clear he supported the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, taking several steps that Muslim and Arab voters found inflammatory, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
And he is so beloved among right-wing Israelis that some named a settlement after him in the Golan Heights. He also has strong support among Orthodox Jews in the United States, who tend to be more conservative. (…)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/us/politics/trump-arab-american-jews.html
Le Point, 8 novembre, article payant
« Cette sidération relève du déni » : l’Europe mise K.O par l’élection de Trump
ENTRETIEN. Pour Cécile Maisonneuve, spécialiste des questions énergétiques et géopolitiques, l’élection américaine bouleverse les stratégies industrielles et énergétiques pensées par la nouvelle Commission européenne, aujourd’hui obsolètes.
Extraits :
L’Europe est-elle prête à faire face au retour de Donald Trump à la Maison-Blanche ? Pour Cécile Maisonneuve, fondatrice de Decysive et spécialiste des questions énergétiques et géopolitiques, la réponse est sans appel : l’Union européenne, focalisée sur ses objectifs climatiques, semble en état de « sidération » et dangereusement mal préparée. (…)
Le Point : L’Europe, ce 6 novembre, avec l’élection de Trump, a paru sidérée…
Cécile Maisonneuve : Cette forme de sidération relève du déni, principalement parce que nous n’avons aucun plan. Les institutions européennes avaient fait le pari d’une élection de Kamala Harris et n’ont, semble-t-il, pas anticipé le scénario inverse. Les auditions des nouveaux commissaires européens ont commencé lundi à Bruxelles, et il est surréaliste de les voir se poursuivre comme si de rien n’était. Car, en réalité, les lettres de mission que leur a envoyées la présidente de la Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, sont déjà obsolètes. L’élection de Donald Trump représente un changement de donne géopolitique considérable, qui va impacter tous les sujets importants : les politiques climatique, énergétique, industrielle, nos relations commerciales internationales, nos relations avec la Chine…
L’Europe est un gigantesque marché de consommateurs, avec une forte dépendance énergétique, notamment au gaz naturel liquéfié (GNL) américain, qui a remplacé le gaz russe. De nombreuses entreprises européennes investissent aux États-Unis dans le cadre de l’Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). L’élection américaine aura un impact majeur sur le cœur de ce que devait être le nouveau mandat de la Commission, notamment le Clean Industrial Deal, qui est la nouvelle phase de son pacte vert. Or nous n’avons pas évalué ce changement. Ajoutez à cela l’impact qu’aura l’élection sur les sujets de sécurité et de défense… Une question budgétaire massive va se poser, à la fois collectivement et dans chaque pays : comment finance-t-on simultanément une augmentation forte des dépenses militaires, notre modèle social et nos investissements industriels climatiques ? C’est la question que Mario Draghi avait posée dans son dernier rapport. La Commission l’a ignorée.
Le commissaire désigné à l’Énergie, le Danois Dan Jorgensen, un antinucléaire convaincu, a d’ailleurs été confirmé ce 6 novembre. Un symbole ?
Lors de son audition, il a notamment déclaré qu’il ne voyait pas l’intérêt, pour l’Europe, de financer la relance de l’énergie nucléaire… Je suis frappée, en écoutant cette Commission, de voir qu’on fait comme si rien ne s’était passé. Chaque crise semble confirmer nos positions antérieures. Après la crise qui a suivi la guerre en Ukraine, nous avons poursuivi exactement la même politique énergétique. Notre stratégie concernant le nucléaire, les objectifs de renouvelables ou en termes d’efficacité énergétique n’a pas changé.
Nous avons perdu l’accès à une ressource de gaz peu chère (le gaz russe), nous faisons face à une Chine hyperagressive sur l’exportation de technologies et de produits bas carbone, qui inondent notre marché. Et nous bougeons à peine.
Finalement, l’Europe n’a-t-elle pas fait le choix de se désindustrialiser sans le dire ?
Il y a une décorrélation complète entre les déclarations et la réalité des politiques conduites. Dans les paroles, Ursula von der Leyen met en avant l’industrie, et le Clean Industrial Act fait l’objet d’un marketing soigné. Mais, dans les faits, l’agenda législatif ne correspond pas. Pire, on ajoute encore des contraintes ! Et les fermetures d’usines se multiplient. Michelin en France, d’autres en Allemagne… Tous les industriels qui mettent la clé sous la porte dénoncent en premier lieu le coût de l’énergie. Mais personne ne les écoute et rien n’est fait pour le réduire. C’est une fuite en avant.
De quelle manière l’élection de Donald Trump peut-elle peser sur les prix de l’énergie en Europe ?
Sur les fossiles, il peut décider d’ouvrir toutes les vannes avec de nouveaux forages pétroliers. Mais concernant le gaz, ce n’est pas clair. (…)
De quoi doit-on s’inquiéter le plus aujourd’hui, de Donald Trump ou de nos propres faiblesses ?
Je ne mets pas l’Amérique de Trump sur le même plan que la Chine. Les États-Unis sont un allié, notamment au sein de l’Otan, même s’il y a de nombreux sujets dont nous devrons discuter. La Chine, elle, n’est pas un allié. Elle travaille avec la Russie et fait partie de ces nouvelles puissances impériales qui œuvrent contre les intérêts européens. (…)
Quelle devrait être la stratégie européenne face à cette nouvelle donne ?
Trump est un fait qui s’impose à l’Europe. Elle n’a pas voulu l’anticiper, soit. Aujourd’hui, elle n’a d’autre choix que de faire avec. Dans le domaine énergétique, peut-elle faire sans ? Non : son approvisionnement en gaz dépend des États-Unis. Elle doit sécuriser son approvisionnement, et le faire collectivement par des contrats à long terme. L’Europe n’a pas les moyens de s’offrir une nouvelle crise énergétique : c’est l’autre réalité qui s’impose à elle.
De même, dans l’énergie nucléaire, l’Europe doit accélérer. Le concept de neutralité technologique est dépassé, l’heure est à l’offensive technologique, comme en matière de défense. Si l’Europe veut rester dans la course, il faut qu’elle soutienne massivement le développement du nucléaire et qu’elle utilise le levier que représente l’importance du marché européen pour les entreprises américaines. Car le nucléaire est aussi russo-chinois et que les États-Unis comme l’Europe connaissent un redémarrage laborieux de leur filière. Nous pouvons peser sur eux en leur parlant intérêt, marché et sécurité mutuelle. Cela passe aussi sans doute par une coordination dans le domaine minier, où l’un et l’autre sont désarmés face au quasi-monopole chinois. Les États-Unis ont besoin de l’Europe. (…)
New York Times, 7 novembre, article payant
How Trump Connected With So Many Americans
Donald Trump’s campaign was a blend of comedy, fury, optimism, darkness and cynicism. “He gets us,” some voters concluded.
Extraits :
The forces that propelled President-elect Donald J. Trump to victory will be endlessly analyzed. Many Americans woke up on Wednesday morning shocked that he could win again. But there is no doubt about one thing: Mr. Trump was a ferociously effective campaigner.
To watch him up close on this third run for president was to see him blend comedy, fury, optimism, darkness and cynicism like never before. He was an expert communicator, able to transmute legal and mortal peril to build upon his self mythology. He won new supporters and kept old ones in thrall.
At dozens of events, I watched as he connected with all sorts of people in all sorts of places. Suburban mothers in Washington, D.C. Military personnel in Detroit. Evangelicals in South Florida. Bitcoiners in Nashville. College football fans in Alabama. Firemen in Lower Manhattan. At rallies in Charlotte and Atlanta and Bozeman and Virginia Beach and the Bronx and beyond, I had countless conversations with people who were quick to dismiss or rationalize whatever controversy happened to be swirling around him at any moment. People saw in him whatever they wanted to see. And they believed that, after so many years, they knew him, and that he knew them, too.
“He gets us,” a hay and beef cattle farmer told me one afternoon in September in Smithton, Pa. It seemed a head-spinning assessment, but one I heard constantly and in the most unlikely of places. How could the man with the silver spoon and the golden triplex above Fifth Avenue understand anything about this woman’s life? “He just knows where we’re coming from,” she shrugged. (…)
The bond with Mr. Trump deepened for many people after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., in July. Mark Zuckerberg, a co-founder of Facebook, said that the way Mr. Trump had popped back up and yelled “Fight!” was “one of the most badass things” he had ever seen — and many people seemed to agree. It was an interesting inversion: Before that point, Mr. Trump had only ever played a tough guy on television, palling around with wrestlers and practicing his Clint Eastwood squint. Now he had behaved in an undeniably tough way on TV. People across the country began to regard him as a cross between Rambo and John Gotti. (…)
But beyond the merchandise and the high-octane stunts, the shooting provided Mr. Trump a new way to connect with certain people on a spiritual level. Until that point, some religious types had embraced Mr. Trump with reluctance, seeing him as an imperfect vessel at best. Now there were some who saw evidence of the divine in his survival — the way he had just happened to turn his head at the last moment, dodging a literal bullet. A school bus driver told me in Butler that she was now “1,000 percent” sure that Mr. Trump had been chosen by God to vanquish evil and that his victory was preordained. It was an idea I heard over and over in the crowd. Again, Mr. Trump leaned in. He began communicating in new ways. (…)
But hatred, and fear, are powerful forces, too, and Mr. Trump’s scaremongering tactics reached new levels in this campaign. By the end, he was using imagery generated by artificial intelligence depicting brown-skinned people marching on hospitals and preying on women. His messaging had become so dehumanizing, he wasn’t even showing actual human beings anymore. Even some of his supporters found this to be overly “provocative,” as one young woman said to me in Atlanta in October.
Fear kept people hooked, though. (…)
And yet, for all the dark language, there was often a sunny optimism for those who wanted to hear it. In the Bronx, in May, residents of the poorest congressional district in the country found it inspiring when he talked about all the success he had achieved, and they believed him when he said he wanted some of it to rub off on them, too.
“Think to the future, not to the past, but learn from the past,” he told them. “Wherever I go, I know that if I could build a skyscraper in Manhattan, I could do anything.” Hispanic and Black people cheered when he said that “it doesn’t matter whether you’re Black or brown or white, or whatever the hell color you are, it doesn’t matter. We are all Americans, and we’re going to pull together as Americans. We all want better opportunity.”
(…)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/06/us/elections/donald-trump-supporters.html
Wall Street Journal, 7 novembre, article payant
Harris’s Loss Triggers Soul-Searching, Recriminations Within Democratic Party
Failure to defeat Trump for second time in three elections will prompt calls for party to shift directions
Voir « Article du Jour »
The Economist, Leader, 7 novembre, article payant
Welcome to Trump’s world: His sweeping victory will shake up everything
Full article: https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/7-novembre.pdf
Link: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/11/06/welcome-to-trumps-world
Le Monde, 7 novembre, article payant
Défaite de Kamala Harris : autopsie d’une débâcle politique
Reconnaissant sa défaite, la candidate démocrate laisse ouverte la question des raisons de la déroute sans appel de son parti face à Donald Trump.
Extraits :
Exemplaire et émue, Kamala Harris a offert à Donald Trump ce qu’il avait refusé à Joe Biden quatre ans plus tôt : la reconnaissance de la défaite. Mercredi 6 novembre, la candidate démocrate s’est adressée à ses partisans, réunis à l’université Howard, à Washington, pour reconnaître le résultat de l’élection présidentielle. Reconnaissant sa défaite, la candidate démocrate laisse ouverte la question des raisons de la déroute sans appel de son parti face à Donald Trump. « Ce principe, plus que tout autre, distingue la démocratie de la monarchie ou de la tyrannie », a-t-elle dit. (…)
Jen O’Malley Dillon, sa directrice de campagne, avait exprimé une tonalité identique dans la note de remerciements à l’attention des volontaires. « Vous avez fait face à des vents contraires sans précédent et à des obstacles qui étaient largement hors de votre contrôle », écrivait-elle. Puis est venu le grand déni. « Nous savions que ce serait une course dans la marge d’erreur, et ce le fut. » Non. Ce fut une déroute. Aucune distance, ni autocritique sur la stratégie suivie. Peut-être n’était-ce pas le moment.
Pendant des mois, un puissant biais de confirmation a dominé dans le camp démocrate et parmi la plupart des commentateurs. Il consistait à trouver dans chaque outrance, chaque incohérence de Donald Trump la confirmation de son extrémisme, auquel les Américains ne pouvaient décemment acquiescer.
Lorsque Kamala Harris parlait de la nécessité de réconcilier le pays, fatigué par le chaos de l’ère trumpiste, elle passait à côté d’une autre priorité pour une majorité de la population : manifester son insatisfaction par rapport à l’orientation choisie. Perte violente de pouvoir d’achat, modification des marqueurs identitaires, question migratoire, rejet des aventures militaires coûteuses et sans fin à l’étranger, même par procuration : tout cela a coagulé pour former un désir d’alternance. (…)
L’autopsie du désastre politique prendra du temps, côté démocrate. Elle commence par une évidence politique. A 81 ans, Joe Biden n’aurait pas dû être de nouveau candidat à l’élection présidentielle. (…) Mais le président misait sur un rejet massif de Donald Trump. L’appareil démocrate, légitimiste et peureux, n’a pas osé contester sa décision. (…)
Les démocrates disposaient alors d’une ouverture étroite pour faire une démonstration de vitalité démocratique. Ils pouvaient organiser une compétition entre prétendants à leur investiture, retransmise à la télévision. Mais là encore, le parti a choisi la voie la plus conventionnelle, en donnant les clés à la vice-présidente, Kamala Harris. Donald Trump put ainsi la dépeindre en figure illégitime, désignée par personne, ayant profité d’un putsch contre le président en exercice.
Enfin, Kamala Harris était une candidate trop faible pour relever le défi d’une opération commando sans précédent, en quatre-vingt-dix jours. Ce constat relève à la fois de ses limites personnelles, de son impopularité antérieure aussi forte que celle de Joe Biden (sous les 40 % d’opinions favorables) et, enfin, d’une stratégie qui sera débattue dans les cercles démocrates. Kamala Harris et ses conseillers ont choisi de mener une campagne centriste aseptisée, entièrement focalisée sur les sept Etats pivots ; tous en passe d’être remportés par Donald Trump. (…)
La vice-présidente a considéré aussi, à tort, le vote des jeunes comme acquis, en raison de son propre âge – dix-huit ans de moins que Trump –, de la diversité qu’elle représentait, de sa position sur l’avortement et sur les armes. (…)
La question fondamentale qu’adressait Donald Trump aux Américains était simple : viviez-vous mieux il y a quatre ans ? La candidate n’a jamais su contrer cette formulation. Ses discours et ses interviews sonnaient souvent comme une dissertation produite par un programme d’intelligence artificielle. « Lorsqu’on se bat, on gagne », « travailler dur, c’est du bon travail »… De l’autre côté, les divagations extrémistes de Donald Trump, en meeting, suscitaient le mépris des grands médias et des commentateurs, mais elles étaient compréhensibles et bien souvent divertissantes pour ses fans.
Ce dernier mot n’est pas négligeable, lorsqu’on envisage de mobiliser des millions d’électeurs désintéressés par la politique, peu au fait des programmes et des complexités du monde. Kamala Harris avait le soutien de la chanteuse Taylor Swift, du Tout-Hollywood, d’une grande partie de la Silicon Valley. Elle a eu à ses côtés Beyoncé et Bruce Springsteen. Mais les stars n’ont rien de prescripteur, pas plus que les grands médias, dont cette campagne scelle le déclassement au profit des podcasts. (…)
Il faut enfin souligner l’inefficacité de la dénonciation des penchants autoritaires de Donald Trump, de son goût pour les généraux nazis obéissants, de son désir de devenir dictateur, de ses multiples inculpations dans quatre dossiers judiciaires. Le machisme, le racisme, la tentation illibérale existent bien dans une partie de l’électorat trumpiste. Mais il n’y a pas 72 millions de fascistes américains. Ici se dessine la ligne de fracture de la société. (…)
Le Point, 7 novembre, article payant
L’élection de Trump ou la revanche de l’Amérique profonde, délaissée par Obama et les démocrates
Le 47e président des États-Unis tient en grande partie sa victoire au sursaut d’une Amérique déclassée que les démocrates ont oublié d’accompagner dans ses craintes de l’avenir.
Extraits :
(…) Barack Obama a été le premier président de l’histoire américaine élu sans obtenir la majorité du vote de la communauté blanche. Il a accédé à la présidence des États-Unis en obtenant 43 % du vote des Blancs en 2008 et seulement 39 % en 2012. Et parmi celle-ci, une large majorité d’électeurs des classes moyennes supérieures, passés par les universités et vivant dans de grandes villes.
En effet, comme en France, où une partie de la gauche a oublié les classes populaires, aux États-Unis, le Parti démocrate, en tendant la main aux classes minoritaires et aux thèses racialistes, a laissé sur le bord de la route l’Amérique profonde. Celle des fermiers des grandes plaines, touchés par la mondialisation et des ouvriers de la « Rust Belt » qui ont vu leurs usines fermer ou être délocalisées.
Le talent de Trump a été de comprendre leurs angoisses, de parler leur langage, de partager la déception qu’ils éprouvent de ne pas profiter dans leur vie de tous les jours des résultats économiques globaux dont on leur répétait qu’ils étaient excellents. Et aussi, bien sûr, de leur faire espérer le retour d’une Amérique prospère et blanche dans laquelle ils retrouveraient leur place. (…)
Comme l’écrit Guillaume Debré dans son livre La Nouvelle Guerre de sécession, Trump est l’antithèse d’Obama. Il incarne une anxiété raciale – mais aussi sociale et économique – dans une proposition électorale articulée autour de ce que l’auteur appelle la « blanchitude ». Un concept dont il dit qu’« il ne s’oppose pas à la négritude, mais au multiculturalisme, au politiquement correct, à la discrimination positive, au progressisme inclusif ». En somme à l’Amérique woke.
Kamala Harris a eu le défaut, pour une majorité d’électeurs, même si elle a timidement essayé de s’en distancer, d’incarner ce pays-là. (…)
New York Times, 7 novembre, article payant
‘Trump’s America’: Comeback Victory Signals a Different Kind of Country
In the end, Donald J. Trump is not the historical aberration some thought he was, but instead a transformational force reshaping the modern United States in his own image.
Extraits :
In her closing rally on the Ellipse last week, Kamala Harris scorned Donald J. Trump as an outlier who did not represent America. “That is not who we are,” she declared.
In fact, it turns out, that may be exactly who we are. At least most of us.
The assumption that Mr. Trump represented an anomaly who would at last be consigned to the ash heap of history was washed away on Tuesday night by a red current that swept through battleground states — and swept away the understanding of America long nurtured by its ruling elite of both parties.
No longer can the political establishment write off Mr. Trump as a temporary break from the long march of progress, a fluke who somehow sneaked into the White House in a quirky, one-off Electoral College win eight years ago. With his comeback victory to reclaim the presidency, Mr. Trump has now established himself as a transformational force reshaping the United States in his own image.
Populist disenchantment with the nation’s direction and resentment against elites proved to be deeper and more profound than many in both parties had recognized. Mr. Trump’s testosterone-driven campaign capitalized on resistance to electing the first woman president. (…)
To Mr. Trump’s allies, the election vindicates his argument that Washington has grown out of touch, that America is a country weary of overseas wars, excessive immigration and “woke” political correctness. (…)
Rather than be turned off by Mr. Trump’s flagrant, anger-based appeals along lines of race, gender, religion, national origin and especially transgender identity, many Americans found them bracing. Rather than be offended by his brazen lies and wild conspiracy theories, many found him authentic. Rather than dismiss him as a felon found by various courts to be a fraudster, cheater, sexual abuser and defamer, many embraced his assertion that he has been the victim of persecution. (…)
The fact that Mr. Trump was able to bounce back from so many legal and political defeats over the past four years, any one of which would have been enough to wreck the career of any other politician, was a testament to his remarkable resilience and defiance. He is unbowed and, this time at least, undefeated.
It also owed in part to failures of President Biden and Ms. Harris, his vice president. Mr. Trump’s victory was a repudiation of an administration that passed sweeping pandemic relief, social spending and climate change programs but was hobbled by sky-high inflation and illegal immigration, both of which were brought under control too late. (…)
Mr. Trump’s political resurrection also highlighted an often underestimated aspect of the 248-year-old American democratic experiment.
For all of its commitment to constitutionalism, the United States has seen moments before when the public hungered for a strongman and exhibited a willingness to empower such a figure with outsized authority. That has often come during times of war or national peril, but Mr. Trump frames the current struggle for America as a war of sorts. (…)
The Trump era, it turns out, was not a four-year interregnum. Assuming he finishes his new term, it now looks to be a 12-year era that puts him at the center of the political stage as long as Franklin D. Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan were.
It is Mr. Trump’s America after all.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/06/us/politics/trump-america-election-victory.html
The Guardian, 7 novembre, libre accès
JD Vance’s critics thought he was a joke. His political ruthlessness was serious
The Ohio senator is the real deal in Trump world and is now only a heartbeat away from the presidency
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/06/jd-vance-trump-vp?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Le Point, 7 novembre, article payant
Donald Trump réélu, l’Iran retrouve son « pire cauchemar »
Le retour à la Maison-Blanche du milliardaire républicain, résolument pro-israélien et anti-République islamique, ouvre la voie à une escalade militaire dans la région.
Extraits :
(…) Les efforts déployés par la République islamique pour se débarrasser de Donald Trump sont à la hauteur du contentieux qu’elle a avec lui. Au-delà du cas de Qassem Soleimani, l’ancien pensionnaire de la Maison-Blanche est l’homme qui a torpillé le rapprochement entre Téhéran et le reste du monde au milieu des années 2010.
Son principal fait d’armes est d’avoir, en mai 2018, retiré les États-Unis de l’accord sur le nucléaire iranien (JCPOA), que respectait pourtant l’Iran, selon l’Agence internationale de l’énergie atomique, avant de prononcer contre Téhéran plus de 1 500 sanctions dans le but de le contraindre à accepter un texte à ses conditions.
Cette politique de « pression maximale » contre la République islamique n’a pas eu l’effet escompté. Loin de ramener Téhéran à la table des négociations, elle l’a, au contraire, encouragé à relancer tambour battant son programme atomique controversé. En parallèle, l’Iran a aiguisé le glaive de l’« axe de la résistance », l’alliance anti-israélienne et anti-américaine qu’il parraine, en accentuant son soutien militaire et économique aux milices chiites d’Irak et de Syrie, au Hezbollah au Liban, au Hamas et au Jihad islamique dans les territoires palestiniens et aux rebelles houthis au Yémen.
Autrefois secrète et indirecte, la guerre à laquelle se livrent l’Iran et Israël a éclaté au grand jour. Depuis le mois d’avril, les gardiens de la Révolution islamique frappent directement le territoire israélien avec leurs missiles et leurs drones, entraînant des représailles de Tsahal sur le sol iranien. Et seules les pressions exercées par Joe Biden sur Benyamin Netanyahou ont, pour l’heure, permis d’éviter un embrasement régional. Dans ce contexte explosif, le retour à la Maison-Blanche de Donald Trump pourrait mettre le feu aux poudres.
« Il faut attendre de voir si Donald Trump changera ou pas ses politiques hostiles à l’égard de l’Iran », tempère depuis Téhéran une source diplomatique iranienne. « Du point de vue de l’Iran, il n’existe, de toute façon, pas de réelle différence entre les démocrates et les républicains dans le sens où le président des États-Unis suit la même politique étrangère à notre égard, quelle que soit la couleur de son parti. » Officiellement, les Iraniens se veulent plutôt rassurants. Mais ces réactions de circonstance peinent à masquer une réelle inquiétude.
« L’élection de Donald Trump n’est pas une bonne nouvelle en Iran, car celui-ci est perçu comme étant très proche du Premier ministre israélien Benyamin Netanyahou et développant à l’égard d’Israël un soutien sans faille ni limite », souligne Hamidreza Azizi, chercheur au German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), à Berlin. (…)
Pendant ce temps, les centrifugeuses iraniennes continuent de tourner à plein régime, si bien que la République islamique n’a jamais été aussi près de l’obtention de la bombe atomique (…).
La dernière attaque israélienne a laissé des traces en Iran en détruisant au moins trois batteries antimissiles de fabrication russe S-300 ainsi que deux systèmes de radar longue distance Ghadir, garantissant à l’aviation de Tsahal une plus grande liberté d’action sur le territoire iranien en cas de futures opérations. Considérant la perspective d’une bombe iranienne comme une « menace existentielle », le Premier ministre israélien, qui n’a jamais caché son souhait de frapper à terme les installations nucléaires iraniennes, s’était toujours heurté au veto de l’administration Biden, déterminée à laisser une chance à la diplomatie avec Téhéran. Avec le retour de Donald Trump à la Maison-Blanche, le verrou américain vient de sauter.
Le Figaro, 6 novembre, article payant
Pourquoi l’élection de Donald Trump n’est «pas une bonne nouvelle» pour l’économie française et européenne
DÉCRYPTAGE – Durant sa campagne, le milliardaire a martelé son intention d’imposer des droits de douane «terribles» en cas de retour à la Maison Blanche. De quoi faire craindre un «choc significatif» pour l’Europe.
Extraits :
(…) «Pour l’Union européenne, dont les États-Unis sont le premier marché à l’exportation avec 20% des flux sortants, le choc serait significatif, en particulier pour l’Allemagne », très dépendante du marché américain, corrobore l’économiste Éric Chaney, expert associé à l’Institut Montaigne, dans un billet de blog publié sur le site Telos. «Côté allemand, le secteur automobile, mais aussi celui de la chimie et celui des machines-outils sont particulièrement vulnérables, quand en France ce serait plutôt les spiritueux , l’agroalimentaire et la pharmacie», précise Anne-Sophie Alsif. Le pays de l’Oncle Sam représente aujourd’hui le quatrième client des exportations tricolores (45,2 milliards d’euros en 2023), selon les données de la Direction générale du Trésor. Des échanges commerciaux dominés par trois secteurs, en première ligne en cas d’instauration de droits de douane : l’aéronautique (7,9 milliards d’euros, soit 17,6% du total), les produits pharmaceutiques (4,1 milliards, 9%) et les boissons (3,9 milliards, 8,7%), vins et spiritueux en tête. Toutefois, «la France est moins exposée que l’Allemagne au marché américain et va moins souffrir», affirme auprès de BFMTV Antoine Bouët, directeur du Centre d’études prospectives et d’informations internationales (CEPII).
Ce «protectionnisme agressif, “confrontationnel”», comme le baptise Antoine Bouët dans un billet paru sur Telos, pourrait fragiliser la croissance économique européenne. La célèbre banque d’affaires américaine Goldman Sachs a calculé que des droits de douane généralisés de 10% réduiraient le PIB de la zone euro de 1%, «avec des effets plus négatifs en Allemagne qu’ailleurs dans la zone euro» (1,6%), «compte tenu de sa plus grande ouverture et de sa dépendance à l’égard de l’activité industrielle». Toutefois, d’autres experts jugent que l’impact serait beaucoup plus minime, de l’ordre de 0,1 à 0,5%. Le cabinet d’études économiques Asterès juge que «le coût des droits de douane américains serait limité pour l’Europe s’il n’y a pas de hausse similaire des droits de douane européens», étant donné que «l’évolution du taux de change compenserait vraisemblablement la perte de compétitivité induite par les droits de douane pour l’économie européenne».
Au-delà de cet effet direct des surtaxes américaines, l’Europe pourrait indirectement pâtir des droits de douane que Donald Trump compte imposer sur les importations en provenance du rival chinois. Et celles-ci ne se limiteraient pas à 10 ou 20%, mais pourraient atteindre 60%, à en croire les déclarations du candidat. «En répercussion, la Chine pourrait avoir la volonté de perforer le marché européen, pour trouver d’autres débouchés à ses produits», indique Anne-Sophie Alsif. De quoi provoquer des mesures de rétorsion de la part de Bruxelles. «On voit mal comment l’application de ses propositions (de Donald Trump, NDLR) ne déclencherait pas une guerre commerciale mondiale à une époque où la coopération internationale n’a jamais été aussi nécessaire», pointe Antoine Bouët. Un tel scénario serait désastreux pour les blocs impliqués. (…)
En parallèle des droits de douane, les industriels européens ont des raisons de s’inquiéter du programme de Donald Trump en matière de politique énergétique. «Il veut aller à fond sur les énergies fossiles, ce qui pourrait avoir des conséquences sur les prix de l’énergie», relève Christian de Boissieu. Pro-gaz et pétrole de schiste, le milliardaire républicain a promis de «forer à tout-va» s’il était élu. De quoi «faire baisser les prix de l’énergie aux États-Unis, ce qui serait mauvais pour la compétitivité de l’Europe», souligne Anne-Sophie Alsif, alors que les prix du gaz et de l’électricité sont déjà sensiblement moins chers outre-Atlantique. (…)
Au-delà de ces considérations économiques, les positions climatosceptiques de Donald Trump, prêt à sortir à nouveau de l’accord de Paris, risquent de «casser tout effort de coordination autour des questions énergétiques et de politique climatique, et casser aussi les efforts pour réduire nos émissions et pour maîtriser ensemble le changement climatique», a alerté mardi sur Franceinfo Sébastien Jean, professeur au Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (Cnam) et directeur associé à l’Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI). (…)
Le Figaro, 6 novembre, article payant
Accord de Paris, pétrole, renouvelables : ce que le retour de Donald Trump pourrait changer pour le climat
DÉCRYPTAGE – Comme en 2016, la victoire du républicain marque un tournant dans la politique environnementale et climatique du deuxième plus gros émetteur de gaz à effet de serre, à moins d’une semaine de l’ouverture de la COP29.
Extraits :
« Le changement climatique ne se soucie pas vraiment de savoir qui est à la tête des États-Unis. » « Donald Trump ou pas, les pays continueront à avancer. » Ces dernières semaines, experts et négociateurs ont martelé que les négociations mondiales sur le climat se poursuivraient avec autant d’ardeur quel que soit le résultat de la présidentielle américaine. Mais à moins d’une semaine de la COP29, qui démarre lundi à Bakou, en Azerbaïdjan, le retour du républicain à la tête du deuxième plus gros émetteur de gaz à effet de serre de la planète n’est clairement pas un bon signal. (…)
Le climat n’a en tout cas pas été un thème de campagne majeur du candidat républicain – c’est un euphémisme. Par le passé, Donald Trump a d’ailleurs plusieurs fois qualifié le réchauffement de « canular coûteux ». Aujourd’hui, les États-Unis produisent plus de pétrole que n’importe quel autre pays selon Bloomberg, et le républicain défend les énergies fossiles avec ferveur. « Mon plan pour l’emploi, c’est “fore, chéri, fore !” (“Drill, baby, drill !”) », lançait-il en début d’année sur Fox News. (…)
Pour Dan Lashof, du groupe de réflexion américain World Resources Institute, le retour de Donald Trump « ne sonnera pas le glas de la transition vers les énergies propres qui s’est accélérée ces quatre dernières années. Les États, qu’ils soient dirigés par des républicains comme des démocrates, constatent les avantages de la fabrication et du déploiement d’éoliennes, de panneaux solaires et de batteries grâce aux milliards de dollars d’investissements » débloqués par cette loi IRA. Trump se heurtera selon lui « à un mur d’opposition bipartisan ».
Il est encore trop tôt pour connaître le calendrier et le degré réel de désengagement du prochain président américain en matière de climat. Le site spécialisé Carbon Brief estime toutefois que sa politique « pourrait entraîner une hausse de 4 milliards de tonnes des émissions américaines d’ici à 2030 ». Les États-Unis se sont engagés à les baisser de moitié d’ici là (par rapport à 2005), en vertu de l’accord de Paris.
New York Times, 6 novembre, article payant
How Trump Won, Again
He made gains in every corner of the country and with nearly every demographic group.
Extraits :
When Donald J. Trump won the presidency eight years ago, it was easy to cast his victory as a narrow one — or even dismiss it as a fluke.
Not this time.
Despite Jan. 6, the end of Roe v. Wade and a felony conviction, Mr. Trump won a clear victory. He is on track to win all seven battleground states. He made gains in every corner of the country and with nearly every demographic group: If you look at The Times’s map of what has changed since 2020, you’ll see a sea of red.
According to our estimates, Mr. Trump is also on track to become the first Republican to win the national popular vote in 20 years. (…)
After all, on paper, Democrats weren’t in a sound position to win this election. No party has ever retained the White House when the president’s approval rating was as low as it is today and when so many Americans thought the country was on the wrong track.
The signs that voters had soured on Democrats were everywhere. Most obviously, there was President Biden’s failed re-election campaign, which was predicated on the idea that voters found Mr. Trump so distasteful they would look past any misgivings about the incumbent. This assumption publicly collapsed with the first presidential debate, even though voters had been telling pollsters well before then how dissatisfied they were with Mr. Biden.
And the signs of building Republican strength were everywhere. Not only did Mr. Trump lead Mr. Biden in the polls even as the felony indictments piled up, but the polls also showed Republicans overtaking Democrats on party identification for the first time in two decades. Republican registration numbers surged. Mr. Trump was even gaining among young, Black and Hispanic voters — groups historically assumed to be vehemently anti-Trump.
All of this occurred against the backdrop of political upheaval across the industrial world. In the wake of the pandemic and surging prices, voters in country after country in election after election have voted against the party in power. More broadly, the past two decades have featured the rise of right-wing populist parties and a corresponding decline in the strength of the center-left among working-class voters. (…)
Kamala Harris herself probably helped give Democrats a chance. She was not a perfect candidate — she brought major liabilities from her time in the Biden administration and her campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination — but she revitalized her party, won the debate against Mr. Trump in September and avoided major missteps.
Nonetheless, election night ended in a stinging rebuke of Democrats. This was not like 2016, when Mr. Trump made gains among a single demographic group, working-class white voters, who happened to be disproportionately concentrated in the key battleground states. Instead, Mr. Trump gained across the board — including among the voters who seemed most skeptical of him eight years ago, from Hispanic voters in New York City to technology workers in San Francisco. (…)
In the end, there just weren’t many parts of the country where Ms. Harris fared better than Mr. Biden did in 2020. (…)
None of this is what Democrats would have imagined a decade ago, when many of them assumed that demographic and generational change would bring a new Democratic majority. Instead, many of the voters whom Democrats viewed as the bedrock of their coalition grew so frustrated with the status quo that they decided to back Mr. Trump instead.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/06/upshot/trump-election-victory.html
The Economist, 6 novembre, article payant
Flipped : The Republicans gain control of the Senate
Expect big effects on policy and power in Washington next year
Extraits :
REPUBLICANS HAVE won control of the Senate, which means that Donald Trump, who is almost certain to be president, will have at least one house of Congress on his side. (…)
Republicans will find their win particularly satisfying after failing to retake the Senate in two consecutive close elections. Four years ago the contest came down to a pair of run-off races in Georgia, where Democratic candidates won close victories. That allowed Mr Biden to govern with his party in narrow control of the chamber, relying on Ms Harris, as the vice-president, to cast tie-breaking votes. (…)
Republican control could be a moderating force on Mr Trump. The Senate has welcomed more right-populist Republican members like Mr Moreno in recent years, but still remains a bastion of pre-Trump conservatism. A narrow Republican majority in the Senate could empower moderates to reject Trump nominees outside the political mainstream. (…)
There are other looming fights where a Republican-controlled Senate could be decisive. Amidst recurring fights over America’s debt limit, the lame-duck Congress could pass another in a succession of short-term government funding bills, but at some point in 2025 Congress will be responsible for a proper budget. Republicans agonised over these fiscal matters for much of 2023 and 2024. And the Senate Armed Services Committee will now be led by a Republican who wants to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP—a desire that Mr Trump does not necessarily share.
A sizeable Senate majority and control of the House of Representatives, which looks probable, would endow Mr Trump with plenty of political capital. How to spend it would be a subject of factional arguments. But the direction of travel would be clear.■
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/11/06/the-republicans-gain-control-of-the-senate
Le Monde, éditorial, 6 novembre, article payant
La fin d’un monde américain
La réélection de Donald Trump pour un second mandat à la Maison Blanche, qu’il a revendiquée mercredi 6 novembre, et le succès du Parti républicain, dont il a pris le contrôle total, constituent un tournant majeur pour les Etats-Unis.
Extraits :
Cette fois, ils ont choisi en toute connaissance de cause. En 2016, lorsqu’ils lui ont confié la Maison Blanche pour la première fois, les électeurs américains ignoraient à quoi ressemblerait une présidence Donald Trump, et tentaient un saut dans l’inconnu. En 2024, la situation est différente : non seulement les électeurs républicains connaissent parfaitement leur candidat, jusque dans ses comportements les moins glorieux, mais il est plus radical encore qu’il y a huit ans. L’électorat de Donald Trump sait où ce président va les emmener, et en redemande.
C’est un constat qu’il faut examiner les yeux grands ouverts. La voie sur laquelle Donald Trump, renforcé pour ce deuxième mandat par le succès de son parti au Sénat, va engager son pays diverge fondamentalement du chemin dessiné par les Etats-Unis depuis la fin de la deuxième guerre mondiale. C’est la fin d’un cycle américain, celui d’une superpuissance ouverte et engagée dans le monde, désireuse de s’ériger en modèle démocratique − la fameuse « cité qui brille sur la colline » vantée par le président Ronald Reagan. Le modèle avait déjà été mis à mal au cours des deux dernières décennies. Le retour de Donald Trump enfonce un clou dans son cercueil.
Le monde selon Donald Trump est un monde qu’il regarde à travers le seul prisme des intérêts nationaux américains. Un monde de rapports de force et de guerres commerciales, qui méprise le multilatéralisme. Un monde où la diplomatie transactionnelle se substitue aux alliances fondées sur les valeurs. Un monde, enfin, où le président des Etats-Unis réserve ses mots les plus durs à ses alliés mais ménage les autocrates, considérés comme des partenaires plutôt que comme des adversaires.
Les Européens ont, à juste titre, un mauvais souvenir du premier mandat Trump. Le second sera plus périlleux encore, dans un contexte où la guerre fait rage sur leur continent, livrée par une puissance russe qui fait fi de toutes ses obligations internationales et déploie une agressivité croissante. Si, comme il en a agité la menace pendant la campagne, Donald Trump cesse l’aide militaire à l’Ukraine et négocie avec Vladimir Poutine une paix favorable à l’envahisseur, les conséquences d’un tel dénouement iront bien au-delà du sort de la seule Ukraine : elles porteront sur l’ensemble de la sécurité du continent.
Le risque de division, voire de fracture de l’Europe face à une telle perspective est réel. Ce danger est existentiel pour l’Union européenne ; ses dirigeants doivent en prendre conscience et se préparer à y faire face, sans attendre l’entrée en fonctions de Donald Trump − ils n’ont que trop tardé. (…)
https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2024/11/06/la-fin-d-un-monde-americain_6379283_3232.html
Le Point, 6 novembre, article payant
Sous Trump II, cinq séismes géopolitiques à prévoir
ANALYSE. Avis de tempête sur la politique mondiale après la victoire triomphale du candidat républicain à la présidentielle américaine.
Extraits :
(…) L’impact international sera d’autant plus fort que le champion de « l’Amérique d’abord » aura les mains libres pour mener sa politique : il sera manifestement en mesure de contrôler les deux chambres du Congrès des États-Unis, après que les républicains ont conquis la majorité des sièges au Sénat.
Voici un passage en revue des principaux bouleversements à attendre, dans un monde déjà déstabilisé par l’essor des puissances autocratiques et les guerres qui font rage en Ukraine et au Proche-Orient.
Premièrement, le triomphe annoncé de Trump déclenche un avis de tempête sur l’économie mondiale. Lors de sa campagne, Trump a esquissé le lancement d’une guerre commerciale de grande ampleur avec les principaux partenaires des États-Unis, notamment l’Union européenne et la Chine. Son objectif affiché est de réindustrialiser l’Amérique à marche forcée, en érigeant des barrières commerciales, supposées favoriser la production aux États-Unis. (…)
Deuxièmement, les Européens qui avaient tout misé sur Kamala Harris se retrouvent le bec dans l’eau. (…) Les Européens ont gâché les quatre ans dont ils disposaient grâce à Joe Biden pour se préparer à un nouveau mandat Trump. Ils n’ont pas renforcé le pilier européen de l’Otan, ou si peu. Ils n’ont pas pris la direction des opérations dans le soutien à l’Ukraine, laissant trop souvent Washington en première ligne. Ils n’ont pas construit l’autonomie stratégique dont l’Union européenne a tellement besoin. Ils n’ont même pas progressé dans l’élaboration d’une politique étrangère commune, comme le montre leur zizanie persistante sur le Proche-Orient. Ce n’est pas dans les deux mois qui restent avant l’investiture du nouveau président qu’ils pourront le faire. (…)
Troisièmement, la Russie se retrouve en position de force face à l’Ukraine pour conserver les territoires qu’elle a conquis depuis 2014. Donald Trump a promis de mettre un terme à leur conflit « en 24 heures », ce qui laisse entendre qu’il serait prêt à offrir un « deal » à Vladimir Poutine incluant un partage territorial. (…)
Quatrièmement, la Chine. À ce stade, c’est surtout un immense point d’interrogation. Il est fort possible que les dirigeants communistes voient la victoire de Trump comme un nouvel élément étayant leur analyse d’un déclin accéléré de la superpuissance américaine. Ils risquent, en conséquence, d’accélérer leurs préparatifs militaires autour de Taïwan et leurs manœuvres d’intimidation des alliés des États-Unis (Japon, Corée du Sud, Philippines). (…)
Cinquièmement, le Proche-Orient. Trump n’a pas d’appétit pour la poursuite des conflits en cours. Selon des sources israéliennes, son équipe a fait savoir pendant la campagne au Premier ministre israélien Benyamin Netanyahou que le candidat républicain entendait que les guerres à Gaza et au Liban soient terminées lorsqu’il entrera à la Maison-Blanche, le 20 janvier.
Reste que sur l’Iran, Trump et Netanyahou sont alignés sur une opposition radicale au programme nucléaire militaire iranien, alors que Joe Biden a tenté, en vain, de renouer des négociations fructueuses à ce sujet avec Téhéran pendant son mandat. Le Premier ministre israélien tentera-t-il de convaincre le nouveau président américain que l’heure est venue de mettre fin à la dictature des mollahs et d’accélérer l’avènement d’un nouveau régime en Iran ? Cela irait à l’encontre des tendances isolationnistes de Trump. Mais sur l’Iran, le républicain a montré à plusieurs reprises sa détermination. Pendant la campagne, il avait même été averti par la CIA que les dirigeants iraniens cherchaient à le faire assassiner « afin de semer le chaos aux États-Unis ». Il saura s’en souvenir.
Wall Street Journal, 6 novembre, article payant
How Donald Trump Won—by Being Donald Trump
He promised to fix the economy and the border, but credit for Trump’s victory also goes to an unbroken habit of speaking whatever is on his mind
Extraits :
Former President Donald Trump cleared a path to the White House by doubling down on the very things that Democrats said made him unfit to return to the Oval Office.
Throughout Trump’s campaign, the Republican Party candidate was bombastic, profane and frequently untruthful, claiming the 2020 race was stolen from him, that he held no responsibility for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress and that President Biden had orchestrated his criminal indictments and felony convictions.
Trump also did what he does best: he connected with crowds, went on the attack and offered a clear vision for the nation.
The push by the Democratic Party and Vice President Kamala Harris to highlight Trump’s words and actions, to portray him as a danger to the country, failed to loosen the former president’s grip on the electorate. Trump’s legal troubles, instead of hobbling his candidacy, fueled donations. He denied wrongdoing in all of his cases.
American voters seeking a change in fortune bet on Trump’s promises to boost the U.S. economy, lower prices and taxes, settle foreign conflicts and put a stop to illegal immigration. The Republican Party leader successfully cast himself as a fighter, dodging by a whisker an assassin’s bullet, and as a victim—of political opponents, the media and so-called deep-state adversaries. He broadened his support from Black and Latino voters, as well as young men, building a coalition that will strengthen the party in the future. (…)
The Harris campaign raised more than $1 billion, ahead of Trump’s haul, and fielded a larger voter operation in battleground states. Trump overcame those advantages by running less as a traditional candidate and more like the leader of a movement.
His aggressive and freewheeling style struck a contrast with Harris, a more cautious and scripted politician. (…)
In the campaign’s closing days, Trump continued to veer into controversy, saying at one appearance that he would be a “protector” of women, “whether the women like it or not.” In another, he called former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney—who backed Harris—a warmonger and asked how she might feel if she had guns “trained on her face.”
During a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania, Trump said that because of the protective glass surrounding him, an assassin would have to shoot through the news media to get him. “I don’t mind that so much,” he said.
Trump’s advisers cringed, as they had through a long campaign marked by off-color remarks. Trump, basking in the cheers of supporters, returned to his plane and headed to the next rally.
New York Times, 6 novembre, article payant
Donald Trump Returns to Power, Ushering in New Era of Uncertainty
He played on fears of immigrants and economic worries to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris. His victory signaled the advent of isolationism, sweeping tariffs and score settling.
Extraits :
Donald J. Trump rode a promise to smash the American status quo to win the presidency for a second time on Wednesday, surviving a criminal conviction, indictments, an assassin’s bullet, accusations of authoritarianism and an unprecedented switch of his opponent to complete a remarkable return to power.
Mr. Trump’s victory caps the astonishing political comeback of a man who was charged with plotting to overturn the last election but who tapped into frustrations and fears about the economy and illegal immigration to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris.
His defiant plans to upend the country’s political system held appeal to tens of millions of voters who feared that the American dream was drifting further from reach and who turned to Mr. Trump as a battering ram against the ruling establishment and the expert class of elites.
In a deeply divided nation, voters embraced Mr. Trump’s pledge to seal the southern border by almost any means, to revive the economy with 19th-century-style tariffs that would restore American manufacturing and to lead a retreat from international entanglements and global conflict.
Now, Mr. Trump will serve as the 47th president four years after reluctantly leaving office as the 45th, the first politician since Grover Cleveland in the late 1800s to lose re-election to the White House and later mount a successful run. At the age of 78, Mr. Trump has become the oldest man ever elected president, breaking a record held by President Biden, whose mental competence Mr. Trump has savaged.
His win ushers in an era of uncertainty for the nation. (…)
The 2024 election is the second time Mr. Trump has defeated a woman trying to break through the nation’s highest gender barrier — the presidency — after he prevailed over Hillary Clinton eight years ago. His history of sexual misconduct, along with his three appointees to the Supreme Court and their role in ending the constitutional right to an abortion in 2022, transformed the race into a referendum on gender and women’s rights.
But abortion may not have been as salient an issue as it was in the 2022 midterm elections. Florida on Tuesday became the first state since Roe v. Wade was overturned to reject an abortion-rights ballot measure. (…)
Mr. Trump’s enduring appeal helped him navigate a bitter final phase that included his former White House chief of staff saying that Mr. Trump met the definition of a “fascist.”
The label did not stick for many voters. Instead, come January, he will again take office as commander in chief.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/06/us/politics/trump-wins-presidency.html
The Economist, 6 novembre, article payant
Election calculus : Hispanic men helped propel Donald Trump back to the White House
Democrats can no longer rely on the Hispanic vote
Extraits :
(…) In 2016 Hillary Clinton won Hispanic voters by a margin of 38 percentage points, according to exit polls. By 2020 Joe Biden’s margin had shrunk to 33 points. This year early exit polling conducted by CNN suggests that Ms Harris’s margin of victory among Hispanic voters is just eight percentage points—a remarkable collapse if right. This is reflected in county-level analysis, which shows her winning a substantially lower share of the vote than Mr Biden in heavily Hispanic counties, especially those in Florida (see chart). There are a number of possible explanations for the shift.
One is a long-term trend of racial depolarisation. American politics has realigned along social and cultural lines, making religion and education crucial demographic variables. These characteristics divide Hispanic voters just as they do the rest of the country. Another explanation is that Hispanic voters are more likely than other groups to say the economy is their most important issue, favourable territory for Mr Trump.
These explanations can also account for the fact that Hispanic voters are not moving towards the Republican Party at one pace. CNN’s exit poll finds a dramatic widening of the gender gap among Hispanic voters. Hispanic men have swung from voting for Mr Biden by 23 percentage points in 2020 to voting for Mr Trump by ten points this year. Hispanic women, by contrast, voted for Ms Harris by 24 points. While men of all ethnicities were more likely to vote for Mr Trump, the widening gender gap among Hispanic voters may indicate divides over issues such as abortion. (…)
As votes continue to be counted in the west, we will see further data from states, such as Arizona, California, and Nevada, that have large Hispanic populations. In Arizona and Nevada—important battlegrounds in this year’s election—a shift among Hispanic voters could be the difference between Mr Trump or Ms Harris winning the state. But the result of the presidential election is not in doubt. This year has cemented Hispanic voters’ position as a crucial swing constituency. For Democrats looking to what comes next, rebuilding their Hispanic coalition will be a difficult task.■
L’Express, 6 novembre, article payant
Kamala Harris : son impressionnante déroute chez les Latinos et les jeunes en chiffres
Infographie. Pour l’emporter, la candidate démocrate devait faire au moins aussi bien que Joe Biden lors de l’élection présidentielle de 2020. Sur certains segments démographiques, elle fait beaucoup moins bien.
Extraits :
Ala fin du mois de septembre, la publication d’un sondage commandé par NBC News et la chaîne hispanophone Telemundo donnait des sueurs froides à l’état-major démocrate. Kamala Harris y obtenait 54 % des voix contre 40 % pour son adversaire Donald Trump, soit une avance de 14 points. Une bonne nouvelle ? Pas vraiment… Quatre ans auparavant, l’avance de Joe Biden était de plus de 36 points. Aux Etats-Unis, le dépouillement n’est pas tout à fait terminé mais déjà, les enseignements de ce sondage ont des allures de prophétie : la candidate démocrate semble avoir réalisé une contre-performance au sein de l’électorat latino.
Les enquêtes d’opinion réalisées à la sortie des urnes et largement relayées par les principaux sites d’information américains confirment cette tendance. Harris aurait obtenu 61 % du vote des femmes latinas (contre 69 % pour Joe Biden en 2020) et seulement 44 % du vote des hommes latinos (15 points de moins que Biden en 2020). Si ces données se confirment, c’est une véritable déroute pour la candidate démocrate qui courtisait cet électorat depuis plusieurs mois.
Et ce n’est pas le seul segment électoral sur lequel la vice-présidente sortante est en recul par rapport à 2020 : elle ferait moins bien chez les jeunes de 18 à 29 ans – beaucoup moins bien parmi les primo-votants notamment. Même chez les femmes, elle n’aurait obtenu que 54 % des suffrages contre 57 % pour son prédécesseur en 2020.
La candidate a tout de même grappillé du terrain sur certains segments moins démographiques et plus “culturels”. En 2020, un quart des électeurs se disait favorable à l’avortement dans tous les cas contre un tiers aujourd’hui. Cette portion grandissante de l’électorat aurait plébiscité Kamala Harris à 88 % alors qu’elle n’avait choisi Joe Biden qu’à 80 %. Chez les électeurs moins engagés sur cette question, qui affirment soutenir l’avortement “dans la plupart des cas”, la candidate n’aurait engrangé que 51 % des suffrages, 17 points de moins que l’ancien président. D’autres problématiques comme la lutte contre l’inflation ou de l’immigration (sur lesquelles Donald Trump est jugé plus crédible par de nombreux Américains) ont peut-être pris l’ascendant sur l’avortement parmi les préoccupations de ces électeurs.
La candidate gagnerait également un peu de terrain parmi les électeurs diplômés (57 % contre 55 % en 2020) et notamment les femmes blanches diplômées (59 % contre 54 % en 2020). Des chiffres trop faibles pour battre Donald Trump. L’ancien président républicain devrait regagner la Maison-Blanche dès le mois de janvier prochain.
Eurotopics, A European Press Review, 6 novembre, libre accès
Trump headed for White House comeback
There are growing indications of a clear victory for Donald Trump in the US presidential election. His party, the Republicans, are also likely to win a majority in both chambers of Congress. While the votes are still being counted, Europe’s press discusses what happened on the other side of the Atlantic – and what lies ahead.
https://www.eurotopics.net/en/?pk_campaign=et2024-11-06-en&pk_kwd=logo
The Economist, 6 novembre, article payant
Comeback king : Donald Trump claims victory
He has taken Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina
Extraits :
DONALD TRUMP claimed victory in the 2024 presidential election, saying that “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate”. Pennsylvania was called for the Republican shortly after 2am Eastern time. He had already taken a clear lead in the race, having earlier claimed the swing states of North Carolina and Georgia. Kamala Harris’s path to victory vanished, as she badly underperformed Joe Biden’s showing of four years ago.
Ms Harris’s fortunes shrank remarkably quickly. Within a few hours of the first polls closing it had become clear that she was failing to make headway against Mr Trump. It appears that Mr Trump was able to draw support from both urban and rural voters at levels notably higher than in his contest against Mr Biden in 2020.
Mr Trump was speaking during the early hours of November 6th, at Palm Beach County convention centre, in Florida. In the previous days opinion polls had appeared to show that momentum favoured Ms Harris, whereas the former president had appeared tired and frustrated with his campaign. That makes his apparent success all the more remarkable. Republicans also claimed control of the Senate, as had been widely expected, and seemed well placed to take the House too. (…)
A pressing question for Ms Harris—and the Democrats more widely—is why they did so poorly. As incumbents in other parts of the world discovered, voters were evidently ready to punish those in office. In addition, expectations that women would turn out in sufficiently large numbers to elect the first female president proved wrong. Mr Trump, meanwhile, appears to have done enough to fire up non-white voters, including Latinos and black male voters, to broaden his appeal beyond his showing in previous presidential elections. As a political comeback story, it is a striking one.■
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/11/06/donald-trump-claims-victory
Kiev Post, 6 novembre, libre accès
Trump Vows to ‘Stop Wars,’ Makes No Mention of Ukraine During Victory Speech
Donald Trump boasted of having no wars and defeating the Islamic State (ISIS) during his last presidency and said he would end wars instead of starting wars.
Extraits :
US President-Elect Donald Trump said he would “stop wars” in his victory speech on Wednesday morning at his campaign headquarters in Florida.
Shortly after midnight Eastern Standard Time (EST), Trump took to the stage at his home at the Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach, Florida to address the crowd of his supporters gathered there awaiting his victory claim.
He boasted of defeating the Islamic State (ISIS) and having no wars throughout his last four-year term as president, and he rebuffed critics who said he would start more wars, saying he would instead “stop wars.”
“We had no wars – four years – we had no wars. Except we defeated ISIS … we defeated ISIS in record time and [sic] but we had no wars.
During his speech, he made no mention of Ukraine or Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy, though he promised to stop the war in Ukraine “in 24 hours” in a highly publicized comment in June 2023 without further elaborations.
His running mate, JD Vance, has been vocally against further aid to Ukraine, prompting concerns that Washington’s current support for Ukraine against Moscow’s invasion could come to an end.
Trump mentioned Russia in passing during his victory speech, where he said the US has more “liquid gold” – oil – than Saudi Arabia and Russia. (…)
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/41784
The Jerusalem Post, 6 novembre, libre accès
Initial exit polls show Harris earning 79% of nationwide Jewish vote
An NBC News exit poll released Tuesday night indicated 21% of American Jews voted for Trump, with 79% of Jews voting for Vice President Harris.
Extraits :
The Republican Jewish Coalition spent a record-breaking $15 million this election cycle in confidence that the Democratic party’s handling of Israel and antisemitism in the US would deliver Donald Trump more than 30% of the Jewish vote nationwide.
An NBC News exit poll released Tuesday night indicated 21% of American Jews voted for Trump, with 79% of Jews voting for Vice President Harris.
According to the Jewish Virtual Library, Trump earned 30% of the Jewish vote in 2020 and 24% of the Jewish vote in 2016.
During a speech at an antisemitism campaign event in September, Trump scoffed at polling data that showed Democrats winning the Jewish vote by 60%, which he attributed to the Democratic party holding a curse on Jews. (…)
rump then repeated his frequent campaign quip that any Jewish person who voted for Harris or the Democrat party should have their head examined.
That night, Trump also lamented he hadn’t been “treated properly by voters who happen to be Jewish.”
“I was there four years, gave them billions and billions of dollars. I was the best friend Israel ever had, and still in 2020, now, I’ve done all these things, so now, Jewish people have no excuse,” he said.
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-827762
The Jerusalem Post, 6 novembre, article payant
Benjamin Netanyahu calls Donald Trump’s election victory ‘history’s greatest comeback’
“Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America,” Netanyahu continued.
Extraits :
(…) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately wrote to the President-elect, stating, “Congratulations on history’s greatest comeback!
“Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America. This is a huge victory! (…)
Incoming Defense Minister Israel Katz said, “Together, we’ll strengthen the US-Israel alliance, bring back the hostages, and stand firm to defeat the axis of evil led by Iran.” (…)
Finance Minister and Religious Zionist Party Leader Bezalel Smotrich writes: “God bless Israel, God bless America.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Trump is “a true and dear friend of Israel, and a champion of peace and cooperation in our region. I look forward to working with you to strengthen the ironclad bond between our peoples, to build a future of peace and security for the Middle East, and to uphold our shared values.
“On behalf of the Jewish and democratic State of Israel, and all our people, I wish you much success.” (…)
Amid congratulations from Israeli politicians on Trump’s victory, Kamala Harris earned nearly 80% of the Jewish vote in the country.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-827780
Le Point, édito, 6 novembre, article payant
FOG – La faute de Kamala Harris et de la gauche américaine
Harris a rejoué la partition d’Hillary Clinton : même moralisme, même soutien des élites, même communautarisme. Une stratégie perdante, qui interroge sur la capacité d’apprentissage des démocrates.
Extraits :
Ce qui est étrange avec les démocrates américains, c’est qu’ils n’apprennent pas. Si Donald Trump l’a emporté, on est en droit de dire que c’est grâce à la campagne de Kamala Harris. Comme Hillary Clinton, la concurrente de Trump à la présidentielle de 2016, elle aura eu tout faux du début à la fin.
Kamala Harris passe bien, à la télévision. Elle inspire même une certaine sympathie, avec un bon rire dont elle a peut-être abusé, comme si c’était tout ce qu’elle avait. Mais elle a commis l’erreur mortelle de reprendre point par point une stratégie, celle d’Hillary Clinton, qui avait échoué lamentablement il y a huit ans. D’abord, contre le candidat républicain, elle a fait campagne sur la morale avec le soutien de toutes les « élites » de Hollywood et de la quasi-totalité des médias.
Lors des dernières semaines, la mobilisation des célébrités fut à son comble. De Beyoncé à Richard Gere en passant par Leonardo DiCaprio, tous, drapés de probité et de bonne conscience, ont mis en garde contre le « fascisme » en marche. Même Arnold Schwarzenegger s’est joint au chœur des âmes pures. Quant aux journalistes américains, ils semblaient souvent en mission, une mission de sauvetage de la démocratie et de l’Amérique en péril. Certains ont même fini par ressembler, avec un discours opposé, aux grotesques prédicateurs ou télévangélistes du camp trumpiste.
C’est pourtant une loi infaillible qu’ils auraient tous dû apprendre, depuis le temps : plus il est attaqué par l’Amérique d’en haut, plus Trump peut espérer rassembler derrière lui l’Amérique d’en bas. (…)
À la fin, la plus grande des fautes de Kamala Harris a été, surtout, d’avoir tenu un discours fragmenté, segmenté, s’adressant à tour de rôle à chacune des communautés du pays alors que Donald Trump, comme Joe Biden qui avait battu ce dernier en 2020, s’adressait au peuple américain dans son ensemble, avec un message national, sinon patriote. C’est peut-être l’une des grandes leçons de ce scrutin : contrairement au patriotisme, le communautarisme ne paye pas – ou plus. La preuve, le candidat républicain qui, lui, a d’abord parlé de l’Amérique, a ramassé des électeurs dans tous les milieux et il aurait même, selon certains sondages, sérieusement progressé chez les Noirs.
Sans parler de la classe ouvrière, comme le montrent les résultats de la Pennsylvanie. Avis à ceux qui, en France, jouent la carte communautariste. La gauche française qui, ces derniers temps, a calqué la gauche américaine, avec la même démagogie communautariste et les mêmes tics de langage, va maintenant nous dire qu’il faut changer de peuple s’il s’est trompé à ce point. Il faudrait peut-être songer d’abord à changer les appareils et les stratégies.
Wall Street Journal, Editorial, 6 novembre, article payant
Trump Wins the Election and a Second Chance
He owes his remarkable comeback victory over Kamala Harris to his personal resilience and Biden’s failures.
Extraits :
Donald Trump, meet Grover Cleveland, the only other President in U.S. history to win a second term after losing his first bid for re-election. It’s a remarkable accomplishment and a political comeback for the ages. How he’ll use it to achieve a legacy larger than the divisiveness of the last eight years is the question for the next four.
To say the former President has been a portrait in resilience is the political understatement of the 21st century. (…)
His victory on Tuesday in the end wasn’t as close as the polls suggested. He won back states he lost in 2020, and he did so with a coalition that included more young voters, and more black and Hispanic men. He reduced his margin of defeat in states he lost by enough that he may even win the national popular vote. It’s a bigger win than in 2016.
Yet Mr. Trump’s comeback wouldn’t have been possible without the policy failures of the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats. He won again because President Biden failed to deliver the unity and prosperity he promised, and because over four years voters have soured on the results of his progressive policies. (…)
Democrats tried a late course correction by pushing Mr. Biden out of the race when it became clear he would lose, and it almost worked. Kamala Harris tried to pitch herself as a “new way forward,” but she couldn’t escape her four-year association with Mr. Biden. In the end she also failed to persuade enough people she was up to the job as President in a world of growing geopolitical danger.
Given these fundamentals, Republicans had the political advantage, and perhaps a younger GOP nominee without the baggage of Jan. 6 might have won a bigger victory. Exit polls show the threat to democracy and Mr. Trump’s character were big Democratic advantages. But Democrats overplayed their hand even here, as their comparisons to fascism and Hitler weren’t believable. (…)
The overriding policy message from the exit polls is that Mr. Trump needs to keep his eye focused clearly on economic growth. He has a mandate to repeal electric-vehicle mandates and the climate commands of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Above all he needs growth with low inflation that raises incomes, especially for American households who don’t have stocks or own a home. Extending the pro-growth planks of his 2017 tax reform and deregulation to unleash business investment will be crucial. He won’t get that result by adopting the income redistribution or union feather-bedding favored by the big-government right.
Most second terms fail, but then Mr. Trump’s second term is unlike any other in more than a century. To adapt Democrat Rahm Emanuel’s famous political dictum, a second chance would be a terrible thing to waste.
Wall Street Journal, opinion, 6 novembre, article payant
The Cure for 2024 Election Anxiety
Take a deep breath, America. Remember, we made it through 1968.
Extraits :
Move over, “climate anxiety,” because there’s a new dread in town. A private school in New York said last week it would excuse pupils who are “too emotionally distressed” by the 2024 election. A school at Georgetown University is offering “mindfulness activities,” and Middlebury College has a spot to “encounter your election anxiety with snacks, crafts and good company.”
That’s at America’s educational institutions, but the bad vibes hardly stop there. “If we don’t show up tomorrow,” Oprah Winfrey told a Kamala Harris rally on Monday, “it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.” (…)
Here’s a mindfulness activity: Remember that America has been through a lot, and if you think 2024 is a time of peak anxiety, you must be too young to remember 1968, with its riots and assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Yet the country made it through, and the same will be true this time, no matter who wins the White House. If the politically tumultuous past nine years have proved anything, it’s that America’s democratic institutions are strong and resilient.
The genius of the Founders was to balance power against power. After Donald Trump’s win in 2016, he struggled to get Congress to pay for his signature campaign promise, a border wall with Mexico, and the GOP was walloped in the 2018 midterms. Mr. Trump’s conduct after losing in 2020 was disgraceful, but there was no serious prospect that he could stay in the Oval Office as a squatter after President Biden’s inauguration. (…)
New York Times, 5 novembre, article payant
Win or Lose, Trump Has Already Won
Extraits :
Whether or not Donald Trump wins this election, he has already won a broader debate about whom our political system is supposed to serve.
In policy terms, Mr. Trump’s victory is especially clear on his two signature issues, trade and immigration. But what he has accomplished goes beyond any narrow matter of policy. Adopting his approach to those issues involves a change in the way political obligation is understood: It entails a clearer realization that it is permissible, and often essential, to give priority to one’s fellow citizens over those of other countries.
When Mr. Trump descended the golden escalator to announce his first presidential candidacy in 2015, his argument that free trade and mass immigration were hurting the United States was out of step with leading opinion in both political parties and with the academic consensus. But in the nine years since, with the help of these two issues, he has transformed American politics, not only remaking the Republican Party in his image but forcing Democrats to move in his direction as well. (…)
Even some experts are coming around. During the 2016 presidential campaign, a group of 370 economists, including eight Nobel laureates, signed a letter accusing Mr. Trump of ignoring “the benefits of international trade” and of exaggerating the “modest” role that immigration has played in the stagnation of working-class wages.
But in March of this year, one of those economists, the Nobel laureate Angus Deaton, offered a much more negative assessment of free trade and immigration. “I used to subscribe to the near consensus among economists that immigration to the U.S. was a good thing, with great benefits to the migrants and little or no cost to domestic low-skilled workers,” he wrote. “I no longer think so.” He added that he had also become “much more skeptical of the benefits of free trade to American workers” — and even of its role in reducing global poverty.
To be sure, the transformation that Mr. Trump has brought about has often been fitful and subject to resistance. Particularly on immigration, Mr. Trump’s polarizing approach at times drove immigration advocates to an opposite extreme. And important differences remain between the parties. But now, as he completes his third campaign, he can claim a remarkable degree of vindication. (…)
[…] in the nearly four years since Mr. Biden entered office, much has changed. Democratic opposition to Mr. Trump on trade and immigration has wavered and at times reversed itself. (…)
Mr. Trump can also claim some measure of victory on immigration. As of July, 55 percent of Americans want immigration to decrease, the highest percentage since 2001. Over the past year, the percentage of Democrats who want to see immigration decrease has risen by 10 points. A striking 42 percent of Democrats say they would support “mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.”
In the current campaign, Ms. Harris has taken a much more restrictive view on immigration than she did several years ago. She has promised to sign the bipartisan border bill, which mandates spending hundreds of millions to extend the wall that she once called un-American. (…)
In retrospect, the Biden years may be seen as an attempt to accept and extend elements of Mr. Trump’s critique of U.S. trade policy, while conceding less to him on immigration. But Democrats’ recent change in tone suggests that this strategy has failed, and they may continue to move closer to Mr. Trump’s restrictive border policies. If that occurs, it will be a sign of a more profound transformation.
Underlying our debates over immigration and trade is something deeper than any analysis of economic benefits. As Mr. Deaton, the economist, put it, his change of mind on these issues was accompanied by a realization that “we have additional obligations to our fellow citizens that we do not have to others.” One can agree with this statement without supporting any of the policy proposals of Mr. Trump, or feeling any attraction to his personality. (Mr. Deaton, for his part, has endorsed Ms. Harris.) But if Mr. Trump has forged a new consensus, it is because he forced people to confront this truth.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/opinion/trump-trade-immigration-election.html
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 5 novembre, article payant
Amerika wählt: Kamala Harris wäre eine schwache Präsidentin, Donald Trump ein Sicherheitsrisiko
Die Pläne der beiden Präsidentschaftskandidaten ähneln sich vielfach in ihrem vagen Populismus. Doch Trumps grosse Wahllüge trennt sie scharf. Auch den Republikanern ist deshalb ein Generationenwechsel zu wünschen.
Traduction : L’Amérique vote : Kamala Harris serait une présidente faible, Donald Trump un risque pour la sécurité.
Les projets des deux candidats à la présidence se ressemblent souvent par leur populisme vague. Mais le grand mensonge électoral de Trump les distingue nettement. C’est pourquoi un changement de génération est également souhaitable pour les Républicains.
The Economist, 5 novembre, article payant
We don’t predict a riot : The risk of election violence in America is real
But talk of civil war is overblown nonsense
Extraits :
THERE ARE countries in the world where machete-wielding teenagers intimidating voters are a routine part of elections. America is not normally among them. Yet on October 29th an 18-year-old man in Florida was arrested for doing exactly that. Caleb James Williams was, according to local police, part of a group of eight young men hanging out in the parking lot of an early-vote polling station in suburban Jacksonville, waving Donald Trump flags and chanting slogans. Mr Williams allegedly “brandished a machete in an aggressive, threatening posture over his head” at two women who were supporting Kamala Harris.
In late October two ballot boxes, one in Washington state and one in Oregon, were set alight. In Arizona, on October 24th, a 60-year-old man was arrested in connection with three incidents where a Democratic National Committee office was shot at, first with a BB gun, and then with real bullets. In Michigan, on November 2nd, a 55-year-old man was charged after allegedly accelerating his car at Harris campaign canvassers, while calling for them to be exterminated. And in July, one candidate, Donald Trump, was almost assassinated.
Many Americans fear it could get worse. Three-quarters of Americans say that they are worried about post-election violence, according to the AP/NORC poll. Some businesses in Washington, DC, have boarded up their windows, apparently for fear of riots. (…)
“I am not a panic peddler,” says Sheriff Tom Dart of Cook County, Illinois. “I am just sitting on data that is indisputable…saying that we’ve never had more people saying political violence is OK.” Mr Dart is among the most prominent of 200 law-enforcement officers who have been briefed by Robert Pape, an academic at the University of Chicago who studies political violence. Mr Pape has been surveying voters, both remotely and in person at rallies. Based on this evidence, he is frank: “We are going forward into a season of political violence.”
Underpinning this are data showing that significant minorities—a fifth of Americans—say they support the use of violence to either restore Donald Trump to the presidency or else to prevent him from taking it. That finding, Mr Pape argues, is roughly analogous to discovering there is a lot of dry wood in a forest. It does not necessarily mean that an enormous wildfire will break out. Nor does it tell you much about what sort of spark could set it off. But it means that you should be prepared.
What would violence look like if it happened? Much depends on the results. If Ms Harris appears to be winning in a close count, one possibility is protests at places where counts are being held (as happened in 2020), fuelled by conspiracy theories about fraud. Even if she won clearly, currently sporadic violent incidents against Democrats by amped-up or paranoid individuals could escalate. By contrast, if Mr Trump wins, the fear would be widespread protests in big cities, some of which could turn into violent rioting. Mr Pape stresses that his data suggest people on both sides of the political divide are supportive of violence. (…)
Yet there are reasons to be optimistic for a smoother ride than in 2020. Local officials are better prepared. (…)
Will it be enough? Predictions of imminent civil war are clearly overblown. Even widespread violence seems unlikely. But irregularities and a few bad incidents are inevitable (and happen at every election). “The notion that all police departments are going to be up to speed on election law is wildly naive,” worries Mr Dart, the sheriff in Illinois. After all, America has almost 18,000 police departments. Small forces are not all trained in active-shooter response, best crowd-control practices or in riot equipment and weapons, says Brian Higgins, a former cop and now a crowd-control expert at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Overall, police seem prepared. And election officials have put measures in place, including live feeds of drop boxes, in an attempt to build trust in the process. Sending a signal that political violence will be severely punished would help. Unfortunately Mr Trump is conveying the opposite message to his supporters—by promising to pardon January 6th rioters if re-elected. As long as violence is not roundly condemned, it is impossible to rule out. ■
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/11/05/the-risk-of-election-violence-in-america-is-real
Wall Street Journal, 5 novembre, article payant
The Third Candidate in This Election Is the Economy
The U.S. economy has grown rapidly during the Biden administration, but prices have soared. Which one will voters remember?
Extraits :
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are at the top of Tuesday’s ballot. The third major player in this election is the economy, which has shaped both campaigns’ narratives and kept the race on a razor’s edge.
But how the economy might influence the results is less than straightforward. On the one hand, it has been growing steadily, generating millions of new jobs and pushing wages higher. On the other, prices are sharply higher than when President Biden took office and housing is less affordable, and those factors are weighing on Americans’ moods.
Harris hasn’t put as much emphasis on the jobs and growth figures as Biden did, instead focusing her message on what she calls an “opportunity economy.” Trump has said he would push through an array of tax cuts and tariffs, while painting a darker picture of the economy. Over the weekend he warned that a Harris win would lead to “a 1929-style economic depression.”
Americans have given the economy low marks during the Biden administration, driven by frustration over prices. Here, too, however, a sharp partisan divide comes into play. Consumer surveys from the University of Michigan show Republicans rate the economy as worse than even when the pandemic hit in the last year of Trump’s presidency. Democrats rate it as better than they ever did during Trump’s time in office. (…)
Despite such downbeat assessments, what people have been doing with their wallets tells a different story. Last week, the Commerce Department reported that, adjusted for inflation, consumer spending was up 3% in the third quarter from a year earlier. During the first three years of the Trump administration, before the pandemic, spending grew at a 2.6% annual rate.
The interplay between robust growth and high prices might be a major reason why polls show the election as a tossup. (…)
Whether it is Harris who wins or Trump, it will be possible to point to the economy and truthfully say, “That is why.” But it won’t be the only reason, either.
The Economist, 4 novembre, article payant
MAGA-ology : Why half of America will vote for Donald Trump
Let us count the ways
Voir “Article du Jour”!
https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/4-novembre.pdf
L’Express, 4 novembre, article payant
“Le vrai vice-président” : entre Elon Musk et Donald Trump, récit d’une campagne poussée à l’extrême
Elections américaines. Le patron de Tesla et X a décidé de mettre toutes ses forces – et son argent – dans la campagne du candidat républicain. En jeu : des contrats juteux et un poste politique.
Extraits :
(…) Sur le plan idéologique, l’homme d’affaires et l’animal politique sont en phase. Celui qui a bâti sa réussite dans la très progressiste Californie, a glissé vers une idéologie ultra-conservatrice matinée de théories du complot. Il n’y a qu’à voir leur conversation partagée sur X le 12 août : ils évoquent leurs doctrines racistes, en comparant les immigrés clandestins à des “zombies” ou parlent de “coup d’Etat” contre le président américain Joe Biden. Derrière cet échange faussement décontracté, Elon Musk permet à l’ex-magnat de l’immobilier de recycler ses thèmes de campagne sur une plateforme dont il avait été banni après l’invasion du Capitole, le 6 janvier 2021. Quelques jours plus tard, le milliardaire New Yorkais lui renvoie la pareille. Auprès de Reuters, il se dit alors prêt à offrir un poste de ministre, ou bien un rôle de conseiller, “s’il le voulait”, au libertarien.
Elon Musk se donne corps et âme dans la campagne de son poulain de 78 ans. Dimanche 6 octobre, l’homme le plus riche du monde court sur scène rejoindre Donald Trump lors de son retour à Butler, en Pennsylvanie. Casquette noire vissée sur la tête, tee-shirt floqué “Occupy Mars” et poings en l’air, le trublion de la tech est tout en joie. Son soutien à l’ex-chef d’Etat est si extrême, intense, que le clan démocrate le surnomme “le vrai vice-président”. L’entrepreneur ne lâche pas son candidat : il était encore avec lui sur la scène du Madison Square, à New York, 27 octobre.
Pendant que les deux milliardaires assurent le show, la propagande pro-Trump tourne à plein régime sur le réseau social X. Des centaines de “bots” prorusses répandent des fausses informations sur la candidate démocrate, Kamala Harris, alors que le patron de la plateforme avait promis de se débarrasser de ces comptes alimentés par des programmes informatiques, rapporte une étude de l’organisation American Sunlight Project (ASP). Au total, grâce à leur profil et l’activité – plus de 100 millions de posts entre leur création et juillet 2024 -, plus de 1 200 comptes ont été associés à des “bots”.
Petit à petit, le réseau social X change de visage et devient le mégaphone de Donald Trump. Des rapports du Wall Street Journal et du Washington Post révèlent que la plateforme met de plus en plus en avant les messages liés aux élections. Récemment, c’est la page Progress 2028, très active sur Facebook, qui a fait parler d’elle. Depuis plus d’un mois, elle publie des propositions de campagne mensongères de Kamala Harris, comme le fait que la candidate démocrate voudrait “abolir les frontières de l’Etat”. Si cette entité laisse entendre avoir été créé par les démocrates, elle est en réalité pilotée par une ONG politique pro-Trump, largement financée par… Elon Musk. (…)
“Si Donald Trump perd, je suis foutu”, a plaisanté Elon Musk lors d’une interview avec Tucker Carlson, ex-présentateur de Fox News. En effet, comme L’Express l’écrivait déjà , une vingtaine d’enquêtes ou de poursuites judiciaires ont été lancées contre ses diverses entreprises, parmi lesquelles l’entité Starlink, fournisseur d’accès à Internet par satellite. Cette dernière s’est vue refuser une subvention de près de 900 000 dollars de la part de la Commission fédérale des communications (FCC), tenue par l’administration Biden. Des désagréments financiers qu’il mettra derrière lui en cas d’élection de Donald Trump.
Wall Street Journal, 4 novembre, article payant
Young Men Could Boost Trump to Victory—if They Show Up
Former president courts key group with macho rhetoric and podcast appearances, but in the process risks alienating women
Extraits :
Donald Trump is pinning his political future on winning the votes of disaffected young men. But persuading them to get off the couch to cast ballots is no easy feat.
Young men vote at far lower rates than many other demographic groups. They are more likely than older generations and their female peers to be disconnected from politics, and they are increasingly disillusioned with the country’s institutions, according to researchers and election analysts.
Youth voting increased in the 2020 presidential election, but it paled compared with the share of older voters who showed up at the polls. In 2020, 18- to 24-year-olds were the least likely age group to vote, with just over half of that cohort voting that year, according to U.S. Census Bureau surveys. In that age group, fewer men than women said they voted in 2020. In contrast, about three-quarters of Americans ages 65 to 74 reported voting in 2020. (…)
Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump has taken pains to appeal to young men, from showing up at a sneaker convention in Philadelphia and an Ultimate Fighting Championship event in New Jersey, to appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast. On Thursday, he received the endorsement of the social-media influencer and boxer Jake Paul, who has 20 million subscribers on YouTube. The strategy could help offset Kamala Harris’s big advantage with female voters—but risks widening that gap should Trump’s macho rhetoric and crude comments alienate women. (…)
Luke Meihack, 25, a high school physical education teacher in the Milwaukee suburbs, said he didn’t used to be a Trump supporter, but changed his mind during Joe Biden’s presidency, and said many men his age are moving in the same direction.
“It’s mostly guys. Guys are more big into Trump,” he said. “He’s a guy that speaks in a way that demands respect, and that appeals to a lot of guys.” (…)
In the final days of the election, Harris is focusing in part on turning out women, who are statistically more likely to vote than men. Her campaign strategists are betting that abortion rights and giving women freedom over their bodies are more motivating messages to women than Trump’s closing argument is to men. (…)
A large survey of young voters released recently by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University found that Harris leads Trump by 20 points among registered voters under 30. Among 18- to 29-year-old men who say they will definitely vote, Harris leads Trump 55% to 38%. Trump has a solid 11-point lead over Harris among 18- to 29-year-old men who are less certain about voting, making young male turnout a crucial factor for the former president.
“If you have a traditional electorate, Harris will win young men, likely by double digits,” said John Della Volpe, the Institute of Politics polling director. “If Trump expands the electorate in similar ways that he did in 2016, it could be a different story.”
He estimated that Trump could do 5 to 7 points better among young men than he did in 2020—if they show up.
“These young men are telling us they are disaffected from politics,” he said. “They’re incredibly skeptical, among the most skeptical among us. So encouraging them to participate in an institution they don’t trust is hard.”
New York Times, 4 novembre, article payant
A Second Trump Term? Three Conservative Columnists Unpack What Could Happen
Extraits :
(…) Bret Stephens: I think there’s plenty of life left in normie conservatism, if I can use that term. Most successful G.O.P. leaders I can think of are in that camp, from Mike DeWine in Ohio to Glenn Youngkin in Virginia to Brian Kemp in Georgia. Even to Mike Johnson, the House speaker: They all know that they can’t govern or even win most elections as full-on MAGA Republicans. Ask Kari Lake later this week.
The problem the normies have is twofold: First, no normie Republican today can match Trump’s political charisma. Ron DeSantis auditioned for that job, just as Ted Cruz did eight years ago, and both bombed. Second, they live under the permanent threat of Trump’s blackmail, which forces them to bow and scrape at his altar more than they would otherwise like. But I hope that’s a problem that resolves itself when Trump eventually, inevitably, leaves the stage. (…)
Trump’s one of a kind. He leads the G.O.P. not as a party figure in the mold of Lyndon Johnson or as an ideological icon like Ronald Reagan. He’s a cult of personality figure, in the mold of Juan Perón. He draws his power not only from the adulation he inspires among supporters but also from the hatred he generates from his opponents. If he reversed all of his positions tomorrow, his followers would still love him, and his enemies would still hate him. He’s a once-in-a-century phenomenon. (…)
I also think my brand of conservatism is probably insufficiently allergic to the cultural left. We dislike it but accommodate it, whereas younger, Trumpier conservatives hate it and mean to wage cultural war on it. Good for them; I lack the energy, and maybe the stomach, to write columns about, say, transgenderism.
On the other hand, some of the G.O.P.’s more populist positions are ones they’ll come to regret. High tariffs on imports sound great until you realize it will raise the prices of thousands of consumer goods without doing much to improve the economy at home. Cutting off aid to Ukraine is another idea Republicans will regret when Russian troops march into Kharkiv and China sees it as a case study in how to wear down the West in its own theater of interests. (…)
I worry about the ricochet effects of either presidency — of Trump or Kamala Harris. One of my main fears about a second Trump term is that it will revive the resistance not just in terms of an even more woke culture at universities or in the media but also in terms of street violence of the kind that paralyzed much of the country after George Floyd’s murder. Then again, if Harris proves to be an incompetent president or if she leans further into the cultural left, it will further radicalize the right, assuming that’s even possible. (…)
Or maybe Trump got lucky in being surrounded by sober-minded advisers like H.R. McMaster and Gary Cohn, who steered him away from his worst foreign policy instincts — and who won’t be around in a second Trump term. Remember, the global disorder we’ve seen under Biden started with the shambolic retreat from Afghanistan, which I predicted at the time would embolden Russia to pursue its own adventures in Europe. That withdrawal, though executed by Biden, was originally Trump’s idea — patiently negotiated by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
On the other hand, probably my biggest misgiving about Harris is that Putin, Xi Jinping or Ali Khamenei will seek to test her early in her presidency and that she won’t rise to the occasion. Either way, it feels as if we are drifting toward the rapids. (…)
I want to stay open to the idea — and maybe this is wishful thinking — that a second Trump term could hold some pleasant surprises, just as the first one did. There is something to the madman theory of international relations, which holds that American adversaries might be better deterred by Trump’s erratic and sometimes truculent instincts than by the cautious, measured and predictable patterns of the Biden administration’s foreign policy. Trump was also more right than wrong about some big foreign policy questions, such as opposing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would have made Germany even more dependent on Russian gas; promoting peace between Israel and the more moderate Arab states; and, most important, seeing China as the aggressive and determined adversary that it is.
I also think it’s important to acknowledge that, as much as I detest Trump the man, there are sides of the MAGA movement that deserve respect. I don’t think of it as a collection of unadulterated bigots. Most Trump voters I know are decent people who don’t like being condescended to by a morally smug and self-serving elite that fails to see the many ways in which the federal government fails ordinary people. I also think Trump’s voters see things that too easily escape the notice of Trump’s haters, whether it was the farce of many of the Covid rules and restrictions or the double standards by which Trump’s opponents claim to be defending democracy while using every trick in the book to put him in prison. (…)
Douthat:And now, Bret, since both you and David have reluctantly argued that anti-Trump conservatives should accept a Harris presidency, give me your optimist’s view of where you think conservatism will stand a few years into a Harris administration.
Stephens:Very optimistically: Trump will be remembered by Republicans as the repeat loser of winnable elections and will be quietly repudiated by rank-and-file conservatives who want candidates who win by appealing to the center of America. The party will regain some of its Reaganite bearings, especially by rejecting protectionism and isolationism and regaining its broadly positive view of immigration, its belief in smaller government and its faith in the free world. Republicans will also demand that their leading political candidates pass the moral smell test and the intellectual laugh test — no more Matt Gaetz or Marjorie Taylor Greene. And it will remember that the ultimate purpose of American conservatism is to defend a liberal order rooted in the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” “created equal” and “unalienable rights.” (…)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/03/opinion/trump-republican-party.html
The Economist, 4 novembre, article payant
This campaign is also demonstrating America’s democratic vitality
Let’s hope it’s not, in retrospect, the high point
Extraits :
Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American journalist and human-rights activist, likes to tell a story about walking through New York after appearing on various cable-TV networks to crusade against Iran’s oppression of women. Ms Alinejad, who has a nimbus of spiralling curls that makes her easy to recognise, describes being stopped by people who wanted to voice their support. But on one block a person pleaded with her not to appear again on Fox News (“They are miserable”) while on the next a person urged her to stop going on CNN (“They are using you”).
“I was like, ‘Wow, wow—guys, having Fox News and CNN is the beauty of America,’” Ms Alinejad said, speaking at the Global Free Speech Summit at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, on October 18th, just days before prosecutors in Manhattan would charge four men, including a senior official in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, with plotting to kill her in 2022. Americans who wanted to cancel either network and watch only one, Ms Alinejad continued, might consider life in North Korea or Iran, where “You only see people repeating the narrative of the government, and you only see your family members and your heroes doing false confession in order to survive.” (…)
Start with what can be a basic vital sign: participation. A generation ago, when about half of eligible voters might turn up at the polls, America’s mandarins were sounding warnings about voter apathy and assembling commissions to overcome it. But two-thirds of eligible voters cast ballots in 2020, the highest proportion since 1900, and voting in the midterms of 2018 and 2022 reached levels not seen in decades. (…)
Along with surging registration of new voters, higher turnout is changing the composition of the electorate in unpredictable ways. This shift appears to be settling dumb debates within both parties in recent years over whether turning out partisans matters far more than persuading independent-minded voters to support your candidate. In a changing yet evenly divided electorate, both turnout and persuasion are essential, and the campaigns have been putting this rather obvious insight into practice. More competition for more voters can only benefit the country.
Indeed, one cause or effect, or both, of these efforts at persuasion is that America is becoming less polarised by race. Both parties have discarded facile assumptions that black or Latino voters are monolithic on matters such as illegal immigration or policing. The left’s conviction that Donald Trump was succeeding solely by catering to white people began to fray after the 2020 election, when he made gains among Latino, Asian and black voters. He is courting them more vigorously in this campaign. That outreach has clashed at times with his core emphasis, reaching disaffected young men, as when a comedian popular with that group managed the rare feat of upstaging Mr Trump by telling racist jokes before he spoke at Madison Square Garden on October 27th. (…)
The imperative to attract less-partisan voters has also compelled both candidates to moderate some of their more extreme views. Ms Harris has backed off leftist positions she espoused in 2019. Mr Trump, who has moved his party towards the centre on matters such as entitlements and gay rights, has been clumsily trying to moderate his stance on reproductive freedoms after a backlash he clearly did not expect to the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to eliminate the constitutional right to abortion.
Far more than other protest movements this century, the grassroots movement to restore abortion rights is proving durable and effective. It has won in all six states that have had plebiscites on abortion rights so far, including such conservative ones as Kansas and Kentucky. Americans, it seems, have not forgotten how to put their democracy to use in defence of their liberty. ■
The Dispatch, 4 novembre, article payant
Garry Kasparov: The United States Cannot Descend Into Authoritarianism
An endorsement of Kamala Harris from a Russian dissident.
Extraits :
Like millions of others who lived behind the Iron Curtain, I grew up in the Soviet Union viewing America as a beacon of hope. The difference between free and unfree was readily apparent to me as a young player on the international chess scene, and I began to use my platform to protest repressive practices back home. When I retired from professional chess in 2005, I channeled all of my energy into preventing Russia from sliding back into the hands of the KGB, the Soviet Union’s secret police and most sinister spy agency. Unfortunately, those efforts were unsuccessful: Vladimir Putin consolidated power and rebuilt an authoritarian state in the image of the Soviet regime under which I was born. Facing imminent arrest, I was forced into exile and have lived in New York since 2013. I never thought I would need to warn Americans about the dangers of dictatorship.
Donald Trump has been breaking down the guardrails of American democracy for nearly a decade now. Generations to come will reap the consequences. His presidency—and his three campaigns for the office—have demonstrated that the institutions so many of us took for granted are, in large part, based on custom and tradition, not written law. As Ronald Reagan famously said, freedom is “never more than one generation away from extinction.” The political system we hold dear is deeply fragile, and depends on our constant commitment to uphold it.
Given my experience, I am not willing to stand idly by and watch the beacon of hope that I am grateful to now call home slide into the authoritarianism of my childhood. This election is a choice between a candidate who has vowed to fight for America’s institutions, and one who is deeply dangerous—a candidate who I believe will bring total mayhem and destruction to this country. (…)
Legally, we have a choice in this election, but morally, the answer is clear: If we want to preserve America’s institutions and its standing on the world stage, we must elect Kamala Harris on November 5.
Ultimately, I am cautiously optimistic about a Harris presidency. She has the opportunity to normalize a deeply fractured political climate, to bring together the center-left and center-right under a banner of creating real opportunity for all Americans. I look forward to challenging her when we disagree, which I imagine will be often. But if her opponent is elected, the very institutions and traditions that guarantee our right to freely disagree would be under threat. Anyone who has lived in the Soviet Union or in Putin’s Russia will tell you what it’s like to fear publicly condemning the government. In Trump, I hear echoes of Soviet leaders past and Russian leaders present. Kamala Harris’ election is the only way to preserve democracy, at home and abroad. She may not be the best choice. But on November 5, she is the only one.
L’Opinion, 4 novembre, éditorial, article payant
Erwan Le Noan : « Les Etats-Unis, phare de la démocratie dans le monde »
« Les déchirements actuels de la société américaine renvoient aux racines des républiques démocratiques modernes et préfigurent leurs défis contemporains »
Extraits :
Tocqueville constatait qu’il arrive que « dans la démocratie, les simples citoyens voient un homme qui sort de leurs rangs et qui parvient en peu d’années à la richesse et à la puissance ». Pour expliquer « comment celui qui était hier leur égal est aujourd’hui revêtu du droit de les diriger », ils désignent « la principale cause dans quelques-uns de ses vices » ; « il s’opère ainsi je ne sais quel odieux mélange entre les idées de bassesse du pouvoir, d’indignité et de succès, d’utilité et de déshonneur ». En démocratie, la forfaiture fascine.
L’aristocrate normand avait ainsi déjà identifié dans quelle mesure « la corruption » et les « vices des gouvernants » peuvent exercer un pouvoir d’attraction sur les citoyens. La dynamique savamment anarchique de Donald Trump, en dépit de ses excès verbaux, des dangers de son projet et de la menace que la violence du 6 janvier 2021 a directement porté contre les institutions démocratiques, en est une illustration. Un bon nombre d’Européens regardent dès lors la campagne outre-Atlantique avec une forme de condescendance méprisante et de supériorité prétentieuse.
D’abord, parce que les Etats-Unis restent la première puissance économique mondiale – là où le Vieux Continent poursuit son déclin, justifiant sa torpeur par sa vieillesse et se satisfaisant d’être devenu le premier pôle bureaucratique mondial. Ensuite, parce que la jeune Amérique assure, jusqu’à maintenant, notre sécurité, comme elle l’a fait face au totalitarisme soviétique et auparavant en donnant ses enfants pour la liberté de l’Europe. Nous lui devons la démocratie et la richesse – mais il est vrai que, comme l’écrivait déjà Corneille, « un service au-dessus de toute récompense, à force d’obliger tient presque lieu d’offense ». Enfin, car l’Amérique, fille du riche héritage philosophique de ses Fondateurs et inscrite dans un tel mouvement politique dès son origine, occupe une place telle parmi les démocraties qu’elle révèle les tensions qui les traversent toutes et annonce les développements auxquels chacune sera confrontée. (…)
La « crise de l’identité américaine », écrivait Denis Lacorne il y a trente ans, « est inscrite dans l’origine même de la nation américaine. Elle exprime la tension, l’ambiguïté, le caractère indécidable d’une nation imaginée tantôt comme assimilationniste et unitaire, tantôt comme pluraliste et multiculturelle ». (…)
L’Amérique est à la fois la « République une et divisible » (Thierry Chopin) que ses Founding Fathers avaient voulu fragmentée, y voyant une garantie de liberté, et la survivante de la Guerre civile, qui conduisit au triomphe de l’unitarisme centripète sur les tentations de divisions. En ce sens, les déchirements actuels de la société américaine renvoient aux racines des républiques démocratiques modernes et préfigurent leurs défis contemporains. L’Amérique n’est pas notre lointaine cousine turbulente, mais notre mère démocratique.https://www.lopinion.fr/international/les-etats-unis-phare-de-la-democratie-dans-le-monde-par-erwan-le-noan
New York Times, 4 novembre, article payant
Our 61 Focus Groups Make Me Think Trump Has a Good Chance of Winning
Extraits :
After 61 focus groups for New York Times Opinion, listening to voters on the Biden presidency, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and holding sessions with police officers, teachers, “Yellowstone” fans, young women, Black men, transgender people, tweens, 80-somethings and many others — what did we learn from it all?
Little did we know that our very first focus groups, in January 2022, would anticipate the frustrations and desire for change among the 680 people we’ve talked to over nearly three years.
“The economy started to go bad,” said Judi, an Oklahoma Republican, recalling what she remembered most from 2021.
“My grocery bill is through the roof,” said Jules, a Virginia independent.
“You can’t afford it,” said Sue, a Kentucky Democrat, talking about Covid tests.
“I’ve had Covid multiple times, and I’m concerned with that, but inflation is hitting us every day,” said Nick, a Pennsylvania independent.
The worst of the pandemic may feel far away now, but as we look at the Harris versus Trump contest on Tuesday, Covid is the essential prism through which to understand the trajectory of the last three years in America. The pandemic felled Mr. Trump in 2020, bringing out the true autocrat for all to see on Jan. 6, 2021, and fueled his hunger for the second term he felt he was owed. Covid shaped the economy that Mr. Biden tried to revive through policies that proved inflationary. The shocks and aftershocks of the lockdowns and closures set many of our focus group participants on harder paths in life, from schoolchildren to college students to workers to the elderly.
Covid changed and scarred America. Desperation set in for people who thought of themselves as financially stable or middle class. The frustration we heard in our early focus groups in 2022 metastasized into anxiety in 2023 and intensified into anger in 2024. Listening to them, I stopped seeing anxiety and anger as two separate and distinct emotions. They were one in the same by the time the presidential general election began this year.
So many people talked about their lives before and after Covid that it influenced how I saw Mr. Trump’s chances and Mr. Biden’s challenges in this election (and how those challenges, inevitably, shifted onto Ms. Harris).
A main takeaway from our groups is that a cross-section of independents, Republicans and Democrats liked how America was under Mr. Trump — they liked the economy, the perception of relative global stability, the restraint of divided government and the image that this outsider businessman was not beholden to Washington insiders, lobbyists and big money (the unholy trio of turpitude for many of our participants). There were plenty of things that they didn’t like about Mr. Trump — his behavior and tweets most of all — but those didn’t matter as much. Then Covid happened and Americans wanted a more stable leader. Listening to all of these voters over the years, I can’t help but feel that Mr. Trump probably would have been re-elected in 2020 if not for Covid. And his refusal to concede the 2020 election and his behavior on Jan. 6 turned our focus group participants against him more than anything else he did. Perhaps that will be enough to defeat him this week.
As for Mr. Biden’s challenges, one of the signal failures of his administration has been telling Americans that the economy was getting better and better. They kept telling us: Not for me. Americans hate inflation, full stop. If there was a common denominator for our groups across 2022, 2023 and 2024, it was experiencing and loathing inflation, such that I see it as the single most important fact of life in Tuesday’s election. That can’t be overstated. (…)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/03/opinion/election-focu
The Economist, 1 novembre, article payant
Our election endorsement : A second Trump term comes with unacceptable risks
If The Economist had a vote, we would cast it for Kamala Harris
Voir “Article du jour”
https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/1-novembre.pdf
Wall Street Journal, 1 novembre, article payant
How Risky Is a Trump Second Term?
He’d slow the left’s coercive march, but his policies are likely to be a jump ball.
Extraits :
Editor’s note: The Wall Street Journal hasn’t endorsed a presidential candidate since 1928. Our tradition is to sum up the candidacies of the major party nominees in separate editorials, and on Thursday we assessedKamala Harris. Here we take up Donald Trump.
What a presidential choice America’s two major political parties have offered the country. The Democrat is a California progressive, elevated at the last minute, who looks unprepared for a world on fire. The Republican is Donald Trump, who still denies he lost in 2020 and has done little to reassure swing voters that his second term will be calmer than his rancorous first.
The best argument for a Trump victory is that it would be suitable penance for the many Democratic failures at home and abroad. A spending-fueled inflation that shrank real wages. Adversaries on the march. Abuses of regulatory power and law enforcement. If Ms. Harris wins, progressives will claim vindication and pursue more of the same—perhaps checked somewhat by a GOP Senate. A Harris defeat would slow the forced march left, at least for a time.
A second argument is that Mr. Trump’s first term was better than expected. His leadership was often chaotic and caustic, and he rolled through multiple chiefs of staff and security advisers. But voters recall that at home he presided over a strong pre-Covid economy spurred by deregulation and tax reform. His judicial nominations were excellent.
Abroad he broke many diplomatic rules and his praise for dictators was disconcerting. But enemies stayed quiet on his watch, he kept Iran in a box, and the Abraham Accords began a new era of cooperation between Israel and the Sunni Arab states. (…)
The authoritarian rule that Democrats and the press predicted never appeared. (…) America’s checks and balances held, and Democrats benefited from the political backlash. (…)
Ah, but what about the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021? Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the election was appalling, and for many Americans is disqualifying for a second term. We thought he shouldn’t win the nomination again.
But Democrats helped to revive his fortunes with their unprecedented prosecutions and other excesses. Democrats made Trump II possible as much as GOP primary voters. (…)
Opponents say a second Trump term poses too great a risk given his character flaws, and it surely wouldn’t be a return to “normalcy.” We don’t buy the fascism fears, and we doubt Democrats really do either. Our own concern is whether he can successfully address the country’s urgent problems. (…)
He’s promising more deregulation, which is a big plus. But he wants much higher and across-the-board tariffs, which will introduce uncertainty that would slow growth. His second term could be a struggle between free-market advisers like those in his first term, and the protectionist, industrial policy, pro-Big Labor voices who surround JD Vance.
If Mr. Trump goes with the latter, the GOP will no longer be a party of free markets and smaller government. This is one way the U.S. turns into slow-growth Europe where the major parties are all statist.
On foreign policy, who knows? The former President understands deterrence far better than Ms. Harris, and he is likely to revive pressure on Iran. But he is above all a deal-maker, and he will court Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping to uncertain ends. (…)
Mr. Trump also surrounds himself with grifters and provocateurs who flatter him, and many have new prominence in Trump World as his son Don Jr. gains influence. Think Tucker Carlson instead of son-in-law Jared Kushner. This could lead in destructive policy directions. Mike Pence’s influence on policy and personnel will be missed. (…)
A second Trump term poses risks, but the question as ever is compared to what? Voters can gamble on the tumult of Trump, or the continued ascendancy of the Democratic left. We wish it was a better choice, but that’s democracy.
Donald Trump and the ‘Brilliant’ Dictators
The adversaries he likes to flatter are now allies and on the march. (WSJ, opinion, 30 octobre, article payant)
Extraits :
Donald Trump isn’t the wannabe Hitler Democrats claim he is, but he sure seems to have a soft spot for the world’s dictators. This is one of the former President’s rhetorical habits that raises questions about how he’d conduct foreign policy in a second term, even among many of his supporters.
This rhetoric was on display again on Friday in Mr. Trump’s interview with podcast host Joe Rogan. Consider this exchange over dealing with Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping:
Mr. Trump: “We’re dealing, Joe, we’re dealing with the smartest people. They hate when I say, you know, when the press, when I called President Xi, they said, ‘He called President Xi brilliant,’” Mr. Trump said. “Well, he’s a brilliant guy. He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. I mean, he’s a brilliant guy, whether you like it or not. And they go crazy.”
Mr. Rogan: “Right. It doesn’t mean he’s not evil, or it doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous.”
Mr. Trump: “Actually, we have evil people in our country. If you have a smart president, he can deal with Russia. He can deal with all of it.”
The reason freedom-loving people don’t like talk like this is because it flatters Mr. Xi for his success in terrorizing his people “with an iron fist.” Mr. Xi may be a smart guy, but you don’t have to be brilliant to rule when you can arrest or purge anyone at any time. All you have to be is ruthless and remorseless.
Mr. Rogan gave Mr. Trump an opening to speak such a truth, but the former President immediately pivoted to talking about his opponents in the U.S. This fits his pattern of describing his domestic opponents in nastier terms than he does rulers who imprison their people on a whim or start wars that kill tens of thousands of people.
Mr. Trump probably thinks he’s maintaining negotiating flexibility with Mr. Putin, Mr. Xi and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. He likes to flatter all of them. It’s as if he thinks his personal charm can win them over to sign some diplomatic or military deal. (…)
On an instinctive level, Mr. Trump does seem to understand deterrence—certainly better than President Biden or Kamala Harris do. We assume this is what he’s getting at when he frequently says that “Russia would have never gone into Ukraine if I were President.” As he put it recently when he met with Journal editors and columnists, he thinks he wouldn’t have to use military force to stop China from invading Taiwan because Mr. Xi “respects me, and he knows I’m f— crazy.”
That may be true, but the world is also different than it was when Mr. Trump left office in 2021. The dictators he says he got along with then are on the march now and they’re working together more than they ever have. North Korean troops are fighting for Russia against Ukraine, and Russia is shielding North Korea from nuclear sanctions enforcement. China and Iran are also helping Russia. (…)
Mr. Trump has borrowed Ronald Reagan’s mantra of “peace through strength,” and that’s the right message. But Reagan also won the Cold War, and spread global freedom, because he told the truth about adversaries even at the risk of offending them. He called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.”
It would be reassuring if Mr. Trump said, at least once in a while, that these dictators are dangerous and the enemies of liberty. One place to start would be speaking publicly for the release of publisher Jimmy Lai from unjust imprisonment in Hong Kong. That would send a message heard ’round the world.
Amerika ist kein Vorbild mehr – aber es bleibt der beste Freund, den sich die Deutschen wünschen können
Die Westbindung der Bundesrepublik ist eine Erfolgsgeschichte. Sie hat es verdient, verteidigt zu werden. Jetzt mehr denn je. (NZZ, opinion, 18 octobre, article payant)
Extraits :
(…) Die deutsche Westbindung ist eine Erfolgsgeschichte. Sie hat den Deutschen ein Dreivierteljahrhundert Wohlstand und Sicherheit beschert. Und sie hat es verdient, verteidigt zu werden: gegen ihre Gegner im Inland und zur Not auch gegen den nächsten amerikanischen Präsidenten – sofern dieser Donald Trump heisst und seine «America First»-Politik der ersten Amtszeit fortsetzt. Das gilt aus Sicht der Handelsnation Deutschland vor allem für dessen zerstörerischen Glauben an Zölle. (…)
Dem Hinweis auf Trump liegt die Überzeugung zugrunde, dass Westbindung nicht gleichbedeutend sein darf mit blinder Loyalität. Ganz im Gegenteil: Die Vereinigten Staaten sind für andere westliche Staaten schon lange kein Vorbild mehr. Amerikas Gesellschaft ist tief gespalten, seine Kulturkämpfe wirken abschreckend, und sein Erscheinungsbild ist vielerorts verwahrlost.
Warum sollte man einer Supermacht die Stange halten, die im Innern so zerrüttet ist und international so viel Schaden anrichtet? Die Frage ist berechtigt. Und es wäre unklug, Kritik an den USA pauschal als «antiamerikanisch» abzukanzeln. Wer so agiert, und das tun viele selbsterklärte Transatlantiker, überzeugt niemanden, der nicht schon überzeugt wäre. Er vertieft nur die Gräben, die von den echten Antiamerikanern ausgehoben werden. Und diese sind in Deutschland so einflussreich wie nie. Sie kommen von links und von rechts, und sie stossen vor allem im Osten auf offene Ohren. (…)
Und damit zurück zu Joe Biden und Olaf Scholz. So schwach wie mit diesen Köpfen sah das transatlantische Bündnis lange nicht aus. Der eine ist seinem Amt aus Altersgründen nicht mehr gewachsen, der andere ist von seiner Koalition überfordert. Doch die Tatsache, dass beide Männer an der Idee des Westens festhalten, ist ein Grund zur Freude, zumal für die Deutschen.
Joe Biden in Berlin: Die deutsche Westbindung war und ist eine Erfolgsgeschichte (nzz.ch)
Julie Girard: «Le clientélisme raciste et antidémocratique de Kamala Harris envers les “hommes noirs”»
TRIBUNE – Avec son «Opportunity Agenda for Black Men», la candidate démocrate à la présidence des États-Unis assume de proposer des mesures fondées sur la race pour séduire un électorat qu’elle peine à convaincre. (Le Figaro, 18 octobre, article payant)
Extraits :
Nul n’est censé ignorer la loi… à l’exception, semblerait-il, de la vice-présidente des États-Unis, Kamala Harris. En lice pour la Maison-Blanche, Harris vient d’annoncer un train de mesures intitulées « Opportunity Agenda for Black Men », destinées exclusivement aux hommes afro-américains, oubliant sans doute que certaines de ces propositions, dont l’attribution d’une remise de dette gouvernementale fondée sur la race, n’étaient pas conformes à la Constitution.
Qu’à cela ne tienne, Harris persiste et signe. La candidate au Bureau ovale propose l’émission de 1 million de prêts d’un montant de 20.000 dollars chacun, soit un budget annuel global de 20 milliards de dollars ; en d’autres termes, 300 milliards de dollars sur dix ans — si l’on tient compte de l’inflation — à destination d’une communauté qui représente environ 7 % de la population américaine totale.
Mais la dispendieuse Harris n’est pas à quelques centaines de milliards près par clientélisme. En effet, la vice-présidente s’inquiète des derniers sondages. Si les électeurs noirs américains votent massivement en faveur du camp démocrate, le soutien des hommes afro-américains à sa candidature serait en recul.
Alors que 87 % d’entre eux auraient voté pour Joe Biden en 2020, ils ne seraient plus que 78 % à envisager de la soutenir, selon un sondage récent du New York Times/Siena College. (…) Cette baisse, qui peut paraître modérée, pourrait peser significativement dans l’élection tant l’écart qui sépare les deux candidats est mince. (…)
L’« Opportunity Agenda » de Harris s’inscrit, sans aucun doute, dans la droite ligne de cette politique qualitative, qui repose sur l’agenda éthique d’une élite bien arrogante, persuadée que sa vision de la démocratie serait plus légitime que celle du peuple considéré dans son ensemble. Mais sur quel fondement ?
(…) ce projet est fondé sur un principe de discrimination. Pour quelles raisons la communauté des hommes noirs devrait-elle bénéficier d’un régime de faveur que la communauté hispanique de même sexe se verrait refuser ? Plus encore, au nom de quoi, Harris la féministe pourrait-elle favoriser les hommes noirs aux mépris des femmes noires ? (…)
Est-ce à dire que rien ne doit être fait pour aider les populations défavorisées ? Certainement pas. Il est plus que souhaitable que le gouvernement tente de juguler les inégalités, notamment par le biais de politiques éducatives ambitieuses et de programmes d’aide au logement, mais cette intervention ne peut être fondée que sur des critères racialement neutres, comme l’impose le 14e amendement de la Constitution.
C’est ce qu’a rappelé la Cour suprême l’an dernier, en limitant le principe de l’Affirmative Action dans une affaire célèbre — Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard — qui concernait l’admission des étudiants dans les établissements d’enseignement supérieur. Alors que le sort de l’élection semble, plus que jamais, incertain, rappelons-nous que la démocratie est un régime quantitatif par excellence et que les électeurs sont avant tout des citoyens, libres de leur choix, qui n’ont pas à être réduits à un collectif ou à une appartenance communautaire. La nation est peut-être une « communauté » froide, mais elle est libératrice parce qu’elle transcende tous les particularismes.
Democrats Deserved a Contest, Not a Coronation (NYT, 24 juillet, tribune, quelques articles gratuites / sem.)
Extraits :
The last two times Democrats attempted to stage a coronation instead of a contest in choosing a presidential nominee, it did not go well. Not for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Not for Joe Biden this year.
So why would anyone think it’s a good idea when it comes to Kamala Harris — the all but anointed nominee after barely a day? (…)
But the one thing the Democratic Party is not supposed to be is anti-democratic — a party in which insiders select the nominee from the top down, not the bottom up, and which expects the rank and file to fall in line and clap enthusiastically. That’s the playbook of ruling parties in autocratic states. (…)
It’s also a recipe for failure. The whole point of a competitive process, even a truncated one, is to discover unsuspected strengths, which is how Obama was able to best Clinton in 2008, and to test for hidden weakness, which is how Harris flamed out as a candidate the last time, before even reaching the Iowa caucus. If there’s evidence that she’s a better candidate now than she was then, she should be given the chance to prove it.
Or perhaps that’s what party leaders fear. They seem as determined to ignore Harris’s manifest weaknesses as they were to ignore Biden’s — right up until the fiasco of last month’s debate.
She’s unpopular (…)
She’s been a bad campaigner (…)
She’s been a bad manager (…)
She has a penchant for excruciating banality: “It is time for us to do what we have been doing,” she told NBC’s Craig Melvin. “And that time is every day.” These and her many other Jack Handey-style Deep Thoughts are being weaponized by the Trump campaign in social media memes. They cut deep because they underscore a widespread perception, quietly shared by many Democrats, that Harris is a lightweight. (…)
She’s a blue-state Democrat who needs to win purple states (…)
She’s anchored to Joe Biden’s record (…)
Her career smacks of connections and favoritism (…)
“Decide in haste, repent at leisure” is an old expression. In the Democrats’ hurry to crown Harris, it’s also, sadly, an apt one.
Opinion | Democrats Deserved a Contest, Not a Coronation – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Why Biden must withdraw (The Economist, Leader, 5 juillet, article payant)
The president and his party portray themselves as the saviours of democracy. Their actions say otherwise
The presidential debate was awful for Joe Biden, but the cover-up has been worse. It was agony to watch a befuddled old man struggling to recall words and facts. His inability to land an argument against a weak opponent was dispiriting. But the operation by his campaign to deny what tens of millions of Americans saw with their own eyes is more toxic than either, because its dishonesty provokes contempt.
The effect has been to put the White House within Donald Trump’s grasp. Fresh polls have found that voters in the states Mr Biden must win have moved against him. His lead may be in danger even in once-safe states such as Virginia, Minnesota and New Mexico. (…)
Democrats argue, rightly, that Mr Trump is unfit to be president. But the debate and its aftermath have proved Mr Biden unfit, too. First, because of his mental decline. Mr Biden can still appear dynamic during short, scripted appearances. But you cannot run a superpower by autocue. And you cannot put an international crisis on hold because the president is having a bad night. Should someone who cannot finish a sentence about Medicare be trusted with the nuclear codes?
Mr Biden is blameless for his failing powers, but not for a second disqualification, which is his insistence, abetted by his family, senior staff and Democratic elites, that he is still up to the world’s toughest job. Mr Biden’s claim that this election is between right and wrong is ruined by the fact that the existence of his campaign now depends on a lie. (…)
Why Biden must withdraw (economist.com)
To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race (NYT, édito, 29 juin, quelques articles gratuites / sem.)
Extraits :
(…) Mr. Biden has said that he is the candidate with the best chance of taking on this threat of tyranny and defeating it. His argument rests largely on the fact that he beat Mr. Trump in 2020. That is no longer a sufficient rationale for why Mr. Biden should be the Democratic nominee this year.
At Thursday’s debate, the president needed to convince the American public that he was equal to the formidable demands of the office he is seeking to hold for another term. Voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago.
The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence. (…)
Mr. Biden has been an admirable president. Under his leadership, the nation has prospered and begun to address a range of long-term challenges, and the wounds ripped open by Mr. Trump have begun to heal. But the greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election. (…)
The clearest path for Democrats to defeat a candidate defined by his lies is to deal truthfully with the American public: acknowledge that Mr. Biden can’t continue his race, and create a process to select someone more capable to stand in his place to defeat Mr. Trump in November.
It is the best chance to protect the soul of the nation — the cause that drew Mr. Biden to run for the presidency in 2019 — from the malign warping of Mr. Trump. And it is the best service that Mr. Biden can provide to a country that he has nobly served for so long.