The Black Pill on Trump

It’s not just four years. There’s no waiting Trump out. Certainly no return to the ‘before times.’

Taiwanese Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo seems to be the only one brave enough or naive enough to say out loud what many are privately muttering. “Trump will only be in office for four years and cannot run for another term, so his influence will be limited.”

Hate to bring the bringer of the black pill, but the truth of the matter is, there is no going back to pre-Trump America-led world order. Humpty Dumpty cannot be put back together again. And this is even assuming the Democrats can somehow get it together for 2028…strong doubt given how rudderless and cringe they’ve been behaving of late.

If this is how the Democrats are fighting back, we are all doomed

If you ask me, Vance has been setting himself up superbly as a successor, getting almost unprecedented attention from the usually neglected post of Vice President. And we’re not even venturing into the unthinkable possibility that Trump might try to somehow wrangle a third term for himself.

No, this post assumes that we will see the end of Trump in 2028, and yet, the world we took for granted for so many decade is nevertheless irrevocably broken.

Uncontrolled burn

This is because Trump didn’t create those underlying dynamics that pulled us out of a unipolar moment into a multipolar world. He merely accelerated the process and made it more undignified than it had to be.

Don’t believe me? Look at Trump I’s tariffs. Quietly continued by Biden. Why? Because Trump identified that Clinton-Obama brained engagement with China wasn’t going to bear fruit and we’re feeding the dragon. The long-standing thesis that if we bring China into the fold through bringing them into the World Trade Organization (WTO…on very favorable terms I might add) they would eventually trade with us and eventually be reformed in our image. In short, Washington tried to run the same playbook it used on the four little dragons on the big dragon. The result was the creation of a near-peer economic behemoth with zero interest in liberalizing and democratizing. We fed our own threat.

Now who knows what would have happened if Hillary Clinton came in instead of Trump? Would she also have started her own faceoff with China? Or could the cooperative relationship somehow continued? To what conclusion? We will never know.

But post Trump I Biden picked up right where Trump left off on China. I suspect it will be the same on America’s abrupt withdrawal from European allies. It was probably already well-understood within the Washington establishment that there was an imbalance in how much America was contributing to European security versus what the US was getting back. Originally, the plan was to prevent Europe from “super powering up.” The role of NATO was to “keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down,” remember? Well, it’s not just the Germans but all of Europe that have been rendered defenseless as a toothless kitten. The domestication went too well. We’ve been gently suggesting that Europe can now take more ownership of their own defense for a while now, but the hints haven’t been landing until Trump ripped the band-aid off.

Maybe that was shocking. Maybe it left a gaping wound. But in its brutal and uncouth manner, Trump got the job done. Europe is finally frantically looking through the junk drawers to see where it misplaced its balls and talking about breaking the piggy bank for defense. Perhaps it might even transform from a “welfare state to a warfare state.” This is something three years of Russian war in Ukraine could not accomplish. The cost to America: it will never be fully trusted by Europe again, probably as long as we all shall live.

In any case, I doubt any subsequent American president is even going to volunteer to try to Make Atlanticism Great Again. Again, the original fear of Europeans somehow getting too big for their britches has evaporated. We actually actively want them to get it together to counter the Russians so America can focus on the main task of containing the Chinese, the dragon we all fed so well.

So I hear a lot of “it’s going to be a long 4 years” “but it’s not like he’s going to be there forever”. Yeah maybe. But it doesn’t matter if Trump leaves. I define trauma as an event consequential enough to forcibly fracture reality into “before” and “after.” The trauma of the Trump administration (and a reminder we are only about a month through) is simply not going to be erased when Trump himself exits stage left.

Taiwan’s Happy Talk

One party that still seem blissfully unaware that everything has changed is Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The people of Taiwan actually get it. Despite the unprecedented Trump Mania over Trump’s first term, with many Taiwanese accounts using his portrait as their PFP, people finally GOT IT when Trump came after our Chips.

Listen to the voices of Taiwan as TSMC chairman CC Wei met with Trump to announce the $100 Billion investment in the US:

“Today we are all Ukrainians”

“At least Zelensky has guts”

“ASMC”

“So they’re taking our stuff, leaving us with no cards. Think they’ll help in the future? Stop dreaming!”

“Taiwan’s remaining value is becoming a meat grinder like Ukraine.”

“He looks like he has a gun behind his head. Hostage situation.”

“The silicon shield we spent decades building the government is handing over without a whimper”

“TSMC built by the KMT, sold by the DPP”

“Is Lai Ching-te such a pussy that he’s not even gonna say anything?”

“Today Ukraine, tomorrow Taiwan. One step closer to refugee status.”

“Bandits…just like the CCP”

Trump himself minced no words: "It will at least give us a position where we have in this very very important business, we would have a very big part of it in the US if something should happen with Taiwan."

Inexplicably, however, the leader of Taiwan is trying to sell the TSMC investment to the US not as a forced hollowing out but as some sort of a win.

President Lai lined at in the presidential office for a congratulatory photo-op with Wei, tweeting the following:

In this dire moment for the world, more happy talk won’t cut it. In the Taipei Times:

Investments by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) in the US should not be a cause for concern, but rather seen as the moment that the company and Taiwan stepped into the global spotlight, President William Lai (賴清德) told a news conference at the Presidential Office in Taipei yesterday alongside TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家).

Dear President Lai: Taiwan is in danger. With TSMC coerced into offshore investments, America has made it clear our de facto independence is no longer their core priority. It’s time to seize agency and rebalance Taiwans geopolitical portfolio. Everything is not all right.

Nothing is ever the same again, and pretending that it is won’t make it so.