Can Trump institute fascism?

The Republicans’ recent budget fiasco, plus one or two other developments, including developments on the labor front, reveal a lot about fissures and conflicts that already exist within the Trump camp and Trump’s party, and which seem likely to worsen once Trump comes into office. There are also one or two other details that might not be such details in the future. Combined, these seem likely to constrain how far Trump can go.

Budget fiasco
Let’s start with what happened with the budget:

A new budget had to be agreed upon by Friday, December 27, or a federal government shutdown would have ensued. This came after weeks, maybe even a month or longer, of negotiations between the Republican and Democratic Parties.  On Wednesday the deal was supposed to come up for a vote. First Elon Musk and then Trump sent out a flurry of tweets opposing that deal. So that budget deal crashed and burned. Trump got the Republican House Speaker, Mike Johnson, to propose a new budget. Key to that deal was the provision that basically would suspend the federal deficit limitation for two years. Trump wanted that suspension so that he would not have to deal with it at least for his first two years in office. That deal also collapsed on a vote of 174-238. Thirty-five Republicans defied Trump and voted against it. They were the hardcore, so-called deficit hawks.

Some of the Republicans’ most important constituents have a strong interest in keeping the government functioning. That includes voters in southern states such as South Carolina who were dependent on federal disaster relief due to recent hurricanes that passed through that area. It also includes farmers in Midwestern states, who receive a fat cash cow in the form of Farm Aid. As a result, many Republican representatives had to act fast to get a new budget deal through. They could not do that without the support of at least some Democrats. Therefore, defying the will of Trump/Elon Musk, a new budget deal was patched up that did not contain the suspension of the deficit limit for two years. This passed the House, went on to the Senate immediately and Biden will sign it as soon as he wakes up from his nap.

Let’s take a look at those Republicans who defied Trump/Musk. Here’s how the NY Times describes them: “[they] are largely limited-government fiscal hawks who believe they are impervious to a primary threat in their bids for re-election.

“There was Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, known on Capitol Hill as Mr. No, who has never bent to Mr. Trump and so far never suffered politically for it.

“Mr. Massie has won re-election twice since then.

“Members like Representatives Andy Biggs of Arizona, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma and Tim Burchett of Tennessee have never voted for spending deals or debt ceiling increases. They also have well-known brands in their solidly Republican districts that allow them more freedom when it comes to stepping out of line from what the party’s leader demands.

“Then there is Representative Chip Roy of Texas, who has been at odds with Mr. Trump since he declined to vote to overturn the 2020 election results and then endorsed Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for president.”

U.S. economy

These deficit hawks will support Trump in all his repressive measures, But Trump/Musk will have a hard time with them on the deficit issue. And this will worsen in the coming years because, as the editors of the Washington Post pointed out: “the country might be returning to a new normal, which is to say the old normal that prevailed before the 2008 financial crisis. In the old normal, such as in the 1970s era of “stagflation,” policymakers had to make hard trade-offs: between inflation and unemployment.” In our previous article on the subject of inflation, Oaklandsocialist showed that the growth of global trade had helped keep inflation at bay. Trump’s tariff plans will strongly limit world trade. So, Team Trump is likely to clash even further with his own party’s deficit hawks in the House, and keep in mind that they will have a historically slim majority of just 220-215.

The WSJ editors summed up the budget fiasco by comparing Trump and Musk to Woody Johnson, owner of the NY Jets football team: “who, reports The Athletic, overrules his football people on a whim, consults his teenage sons for football insights, and looks for guidance from the internet. Result: perennial losing seasons… The Woody [Johnson, vs. House Speaker Mike Johnson] here is Donald Trump, who on the advice of Elon Musk blew up the end-of-session budget bill without a plan for getting another one passed….

“Mr. Musk tweeted Wednesday that ‘No bills should be passed [by] Congress until Jan. 20, when [Trump] takes office. None. Zero.’…. The greater concern is what this episode suggests about how Mr. Trump and his social-media enforcers will try to govern.” Then, after describing the attempts to bully Republican House members into line failed, the WSJ editors continue “for all Mr. Musk’s brilliance, he hasn’t figured that out. He’s also supposed to be a math whiz, so he can probably count to 218, the votes needed for a House majority when everyone is present. Memorize it….”

The Democrats are encouraging divisions between Trump and Musk by referring to Musk as “the president elect”. They know full well that if there’s anything Trump hates more than losing money, it’s having an associate steal his spotlight. That’s why Trump threw Steve Bannon out of his first administration, for example. Meanwhile, there are reports that Mike Johnson’s speakership may be in trouble, and if he’s voted out we can look forward to another clown show like the last one the Republicans staged that ultimately led to Johnson becoming the Speaker after 15 futile attempts to elect a Speaker.

East Coast longshore strike
But it seems likely there will be a greater cause of a division opening up. That’s on the working class front, specifically around the struggle between the east coast dock workers union (International Longshore Association, or ILA) and the shipping companies (USMX). Several months ago they settled the wages portion of a new contract after a short strike. Since then, they have been negotiating over whether jobs will be lost due to automating the docks. ILA President Harold Daggett has staked his reputation among his members on this issue, and negotiations have broken down, with the ILA set to go on strike on January 15 – five days before Trump takes office. On December 12, Trump posted his support for the ILA on Truth Social. After blaming “foreign companies” and opposing automation at the expense of jobs, Trump concluded, “In the end, there’s no gain for them [USMX], and I hope that they will understand how important an issue this is for me. For the great privilege of accessing our markets, these foreign companies should hire our incredible American Workers, instead of laying them off, and sending those profits back to foreign countries. It is time to put AMERICA FIRST!”

Speaking on his father’s behalf, VP Dennis Dagget responded by praising Trump to the skies in the ILA newsletter. “Throughout my career, I’ve never seen a Politician– let alone the President of the United States – truly understand the importance of the work our members do every single day,” he wrote. “But yesterday, President-elect Trump not only demonstrated that understanding but also showed the utmost respect for the hard work, sacrifices, and dedication of our membership.”

There are divided opinions among industry experts over whether or not there will be a strike and, if so, how long it will be.  Leading up to the ILA 3 day strike in October, USMX calculated that Biden would support them and use the Taft Hartley to force the ILA leadership to call the strike off. When Biden made clear he was not going to do that, USMX quickly capitulated as far as wages. This time, they have far more riding on the outcome. One possibility is that there will be a strike and USMX will hold out for a while to see if Trump really does support the ILA. When he does, which seems most likely, USMX and Daggett will reach a deal: Allow automation with job protection for present members. Daggett will sell this to the members – “we have won a great victory. Your jobs are protected,” he will say, with not a hint about how this sells out the coming generations of workers. This will be one more example of the 80 year war against all the best traditions of the U.S. labor movement. “Think only of yourself and the devil with solidarity, including solidarity with the future generations of workers,” is the theme.

The significance of all of this is two fold: On the one hand, Trump seems to recognize that he cannot simply crush the unions nor can he corporatize them, make them simply agencies of the Trump government. The other point is how this contains the seeds of future divisions between Trump and Musk, who thinks the Trump administration can and should roll right over workers just like he and his ilk have been doing for years. That will add to Trump’s resentment over Musk tending to steal Trump’s spotlight.

Then there are other likely future divisions. For example, with Donald Trump sr. a lame duck president, others in Trump’s administration will be angling for the Republican presidential nomination of 2028. Topping that list will be Don jr. and

J.D. Vance. A rivalry will likely develop between these two from day one, with each trying to undermine the other. Other personal rivalries and divisions will probably arise, for example Musk and Ramaswamy vs. Lori Chavez-Deremer, Trump’s nominee for labor secretary. Then there is RFK jr. As crazy as he is, he also has an anti-pharmaceutical position. So far, he doesn’t seem to be dropping that position, meaning he will probably come into conflict with Ramaswamy and also Musk. We have not even touched on the issue of Ukraine, which Trump will probably try to sell out as well as weakening or leaving NATO entirely. Quite a few Republican senators and representatives have a long history of opposing this.

As far as Trump’s mass deportation of all undocumented immigrants: It’s impossible. If he did so, the grocery stores would run out of food in a matter of days. He’ll probably deport thousands, maybe tens of thousands, with enough cruelty to satisfy his blood thirsty supporters, but he cannot deport all ten or twelve million undocumented workers. He’ll probably call out the National Guard in order to do so, and that will mean increased repression, but if he can’t use the Guard to crush the ILA strike that means there are limits on how far he will go.

We must not minimize the depths of depravity, corruption and repression into which the incoming Trump administration will descend. As Oaklandsocialist has repeatedly commented,  he will have far fewer restraints than he had in his first term and he’ll go far further than he did then. 

But as far as instituting full fledged fascism vs. an authoritarian dictatorship?

That is not just a question of semantics. Assad is the closest we have come to a fascist dictator in this century. He murdered hundreds of thousands, many of them tortured to death. There was not a hint of an internal challenge to his rule. Not even a hint of working class organizing – or any other sort of organizing from below – was permitted. But as far as Trump, already, we have seen potential fissures and divisions in his administration. Already, we have seen that Trump recognizes he cannot simply smash the unions. And if he can’t smash the unions, it’s hard to see how he can institute a regime like that of Hitler, Mussolini or even Assad – in other words, actual fascism.  Maybe he’ll be able to overcome these problems, but so far it seems there are major obstacles to Trump instituting a full fledged fascist dictatorship.

None of this means we should not be organizing against MAGA now. In fact, as Oaklandsocialist pointed out, such organizing should have started months, if not years,  ago. It simply means we should consider the conditions under which we do so.