Economist Adam Tooze has expressed concern over the first weeks of the US presidency under Donald Trump. The fact that Tesla CEO Elon Musk is reportedly using data from the US payment system “is part of this – one must really say – power grab that has been going on for a few weeks now”, Tooze told the economic magazine “Surplus”.
The “biggest victim” so far, he said, is the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the US agency responsible for development cooperation. With a budget of 40 billion US dollars, USAID is “the largest development aid institution in the world”, Tooze stated. “All by itself, USAID is responsible for 20 percent of global development aid expenditures.” Of the 10,000 employees, only a few hundred are expected to remain, the economist explained. Musk and Trump, he said, have targeted the “weakest link in the American state apparatus” to push through their drastic cutback policies.
Tooze sees entirely different portents for Trump’s second term in comparison to the first. “The first Trump term was marked by an ongoing national crisis, the very slow recovery from the 2008 financial crisis”, the expert said.
Trump still talks about “crises”, Tooze said, “but in essence, his administration is rather fueling the idea of the ‘American exceptionalism’ that the US is leaving all others behind”. This is particularly evident in the areas of AI and “Big Tech”, where the US sees itself as superior. The threat of tariffs only adds to the uncertainty, the economist added.