WWJDD?
Published at 13:26 on 2 September 2025
What will J.D. (Vance) do?
I think that is the main question to now ask about the U.S.A. There is a lot of speculation out there about how much time The Donald has left on this Earth, and Trump is not exactly young, so this is a reasonable question to ask.
There are, I think, two almost certainly true general principles that should guide this analysis:
- J.D. Vance will be a more competent macroeconomic administrator than Trump.
- J.D. Vance is unlikely to inspire the sort of cult following Trump has.
Let’s discuss these in order.
The Economy
Trump’s understanding of economic principles, particularly foreign trade, is just bizarre.
He apparently thinks any trade deficit anywhere implies that someone is getting the better of the U.S.A., and must be stopped. Well, what about essential natural resources that the U.S.A. has an insufficient amount of within its own border to satisfy the demands of its own economy? What if such a resource dominates the economy of a nation or two? Then of course the U.S.A. will run a deficit with those nations. It just has to be that way, that nation has a lot of what the U.S.A. wants, and the U.S.A. does not have so much of what that nation wants. How could it? That other nation is probably one heck of a lot smaller than the U.S.A. Just not enough consumers to buy very much.
The thing is, the U.S.A. still gets whatever resource it is in amounts greater than it otherwise would have, absent foreign trade. This allows the U.S. economy to grow more than it otherwise would have. The U.S.A. ends up better off, even with a trade deficit with Country X.
One of the key insights of economic theory is that transactions can be positive-sum; both parties can emerge better off post-transaction. Transactions don’t have to come with winners and losers. This insight is utterly absent from Trump’s beliefs about international trade.
I don’t grow my own food. Living in a big, expensive city, I can’t. Don’t have the required land. Not particularly interested in being a subsistence farmer, anyhow. So I buy food from my neighbourhood grocery store. I give them money, they give me food. They never give me money for anything. If me and the grocery store were countries, I would be running a trade deficit with them. Does this mean I’m worse off than if I had no access to food?
Trump has even gone so far as to claim “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” Literally no economist, whatever their political biases, believes such a thing. They, almost down to a last one, believe precisely the opposite.
Even the economists that believe in managed trade draw a distinction between an orderly and cautious set of tariffs to drive industrial policy versus the chaotic retaliation and counterretaliation that entails a trade war. Trade wars are bad things that often prompt avoidable economic downturns.
Trump’s trade beliefs are just so out-there bizarre that I think it highly unlikely that J.D. Vance is that out there and bizarre. No, Vance has not criticized Trump’s trade policies, but this is most likely because Vance is just keeping his yap shut until he inherits the throne. A Vance administration will have a more sane and rational trade policy.
As such, a Vance administration is likely to exhibit improved economic performance over the alternate timeline of continued Trump trade policies.
The Cult
Trump is unique. There is hardly anyone else so well-suited to appeal to the moral shortcomings that have been indoctrinated in the American people in order to instill pro-capitalist sentiment into them.
The authority of the capitalist boss is similar to the authority of the dictator within a fascist state. In fact, the authority of the fascist dictator was deliberately modelled on the authority of the capitalist boss; Mussolini called his model for Italy the “corporate state” for this reason.
And it just so turns out that the amount of propaganda needed to instill in a people a consensus in favour of submission to the capitalist boss, something the U.S.A. has excelled at (the U.S.A., alone amongst industrial nations, has never had so much as a politically viable social democratic party), is only very slightly less than the amount needed to instill in them an appreciation for the merits of fascism. This is the root of the problem that has now manifested with Trump, and I started blogging about it over twenty years ago, well before Trump became a major political player.
It’s not just me nor is it a particularly recent insight. Approximately 100 years ago to this very day, Norman Thomas wrote: “… political democracy itself will remain in a perilous state while industrial autocracy continues. It is the old story: a house divided against itself cannot stand. A man not good enough to have anything to say about the conduct of the industry in which he makes his living is not good enough to be a voter in a self-governing republic.”
If I were to engineer the perfect leader to transition the U.S.A. to fascism, I would create someone almost exactly like Donald J. Trump. He would have to be a businessman, yes, but he would have to be a famous businessman, one in the public eye as a result of having been a TV or movie star. His acting role would be one that exemplifies and idealizes the authoritarian power of the capitalist over the worker. He should have a catchphrase such as “You’re fired” which embodies this power. He should have a record of demonstrated success as a self-made businessman. (That final item is something Trump, who inherited his fortune, does not have. But three out four ain’t bad.)
There really isn’t anyone else with these attributes ready to step into Trump’s shoes. At any rate, the one per the Constitution who will step into those shoes is J.D. Vance, who has precisely none of these qualities. He’s not even a businessman! He’s a career government employee who has not worked a single day in the private sector.
The closest businessman to Trump is Elon Musk. But he’s not even a natural-born citizen, and thus is not eligible. Plus, although Musk has a measure of star power, he’s not a TV or movie star. He’s just a capitalist with a knack for grabbing the headlines.
What does this mean? Unpopularity. Trump, with all his star power, is still polling underwater. Vance can, after a possible honeymoon period, be expected to poll more underwater.
The Transformation
The thing is, unpopularity won’t matter so much anymore. Per the previous article, the U.S.A. will no longer be what the U.S.A. once was, Trump having transformed it into a right-wing authoritarian system.
There will probably be some unrest, but it will be dealt with harshly. And the bleak news is that harsh measures typically work in authoritarian societies with naturally submissive populaces. And the latter is what we will have; the U.S. populace having already amply demonstrated its naturally submissive proclivities.
Add to those proclivities an economy that, at least initially, stabilizes itself, and any Vance regime will in large be accepted by a populace who doesn’t value freedom very much but mostly just wants personal safety and material comfort.
And with that, we can trace out the likely arc of the coming Vance Administration:
- A more stable economic policy.
- Despite the above, initial economic problems.
- Growing unpopularity.
- Repression.
- Economic growth (thanks to No. 1 above eventually bearing fruit).
- Regime stabilization.
Any hope for greater political freedom in the U.S.A. will have to wait.
The Slow-Acting Ticking Time Bomb
There will, however, be a slow-acting ticking time bomb, and that time bomb is called corruption. Authoritarian societies are inevitably more corrupt than open ones.
Economically, corruption eventually produces collapse. Crony capitalism is unstable, and crony capitalism in the new U.S.A. will be particularly unstable, existing as it does in a political culture that has proven itself repeatedly incapable of adequately regulating its financial sector.
The only question is how long it will take. It took about thirty years in Indonesia under the Suharto dictatorship, which is squarely within the 20–50 years that fascist political orders typically last. The U.S.A. doing a poor job at financial regulation may push things towards the low end of that range.
Even a political culture with generally low morals can be compelled to reform itself morally and resist once it learns a lengthy and painful lesson in the School of Hard Knocks that wages of low moral standards tend to be most unpleasant in the long run.