Subscribe
Subscribe Now to receive Goldsea updates!
- Subscribe for updates on Goldsea: Asian American Supersite
MAGA Means "Minimize America's Greatest Advantages"
By Tom Kagy | 30 May, 2025
Trump administration initiatives that gratify MAGA supporters are destroying the advantages that made the US the world's dominant superpower.
At times it seems we're watching the successful execution of a conspiracy to weaken the United States by turning it into a minified, nazified parody of its best self.
Who would do such a thing? Vladimir Putin comes to mind. After all, the Russians are known to have invested years in a sophisticated social media campaign to fill the heads of less educated young Americans with the notion that a liberal conspiracy seeks to replace Whites with non-white migrants bent on "giving away" American wealth to China.
Installing Donald Trump in the White House is the most effective way I can imagine to bring about America's swift decline and ultimate demise.
Let's see what Trump has already done to Minimize America's Greatest Advantages (MAGA).
First, as promised, on day one Trump figuratively tore up the Constitution with a slew of executive orders that violated its core principles, starting with the separation of powers designed to protect the nation from falling under the thumb of a despot. Like all despots Trump justified de facto invocation of martial law — in which protected rights like freedom of speech, privacy rights and due process are suspended — as dire necessity in the face of a "national security emergency".
Unfortunately, Congress is currently infested with too many Trump sycophants to invoke the impeachment process against a president who has clearly violated his oath to uphold the Constitution. Fortunately, for the most part the federal judiciary — including judges appointed by Trump himself — has shown integrity in interposing constitutional blocks against the vast majority of Trump's power overreach.
This escalating clash between the executive and judicial branches is building toward a constitutional crisis that may come to a head when key abuses reach the Supreme Court for final decisions. If Trump holds sufficient sway over the US military to enforce his will physically against orders of even the Supreme Court, we would have a full-blown coup against the established Constitutional order. At that point we would have another Adolph Hitler on our hands. That would likely precipitate a full-blown civil war among the states.
And of course even a few steps in that direction would lead the world to conclude that the US has lost the stability that had made it the indispensable nation, one that has kept the world on a progressive course toward peace, prosperity and democracy. In turn that perception of US stability is what had made the dollar the international reserve currency, giving it a premium of about 50% above the actual value of assets underpinning the dollar relative to assets backing other major currencies like the Euro, yuan, yen and the British pound.
In other words, in pure economic terms the US is worth far less than the buying power Americans enjoy simply because the world chooses to buy and hold trillions of dollars worth of dollar assets for safety and stability. That value is completely dependent on the perceived prospects for US stability and economic growth.
Donald Trump's tendency to make brash declarations followed by lack of performance has always made him bad for the dollar index (DXY), the relative value of the dollar versus a basket of other currencies. For example, during the first nine months of 2017, corresponding to the first 8 months of Trump's first term, the DXY slid 10%, with that loss persisting throughout his term. Compare that with a rise of 18% during Biden's full term.
In Trump's current term, DXY is now about 95.7, about 13% lower than the 108.5 in December 2024. Investment analysts project it to stay at that level in the coming months. That's because investors have been selling dollar assets, steadily reducing the dollar's share of the world's reserves from the current level of about 58% as they worry about the impact of Trump's policies on US economic prospects.
A major aspect of Trump's destabilizing power grab is usurping Congress's power to set tariffs. Virtually all economists agree that tariffs are essentially a regressive sales tax that most hurts the working poor. In other words, they hurt MAGA supporters more than those who don't support Trump. They also disrupt businesses small and big that rely on a free flow of goods to and from other countries. And finally, the erratic on-again-off-again nature of Trump's tariffs introduce a high degree of uncertainty that prevents businesses from making decisions and pursuing initiatives, further eroding growth.
That's why tariffs are associated with stagflation — a pernicious combination of inflation and slow growth that destroys prosperity and growth. That's precisely what Japan suffered for over three decades due to the protectionist tariffs and regulations imposed during the 1980s. And if Trump and his ilk stay in power with irrational notions about tariffs, that is precisely the fate the US will suffer, leading to permanent decline.
Trump's purported strategy is to force American businesses to manufacture more at home. The problem is that even existing manufacturing jobs go unfilled because most Americans simply don't want to work on assembly lines. So the tariffs merely add to the cost of routine purchases, creating inflation, while hampering productivity and innovation — one of the great historic drivers of American prosperity and power.
Another of Trump's push to Minimize America's Greatest Advantages (MAGA) are Executive Orders deporting migrants without judicial hearings under the kooky premise that they pose a national security threat as members of violent foreign gangs. If Trump had exposure to how our real economy works, he would understand that our single biggest advantage as a nation is the ability to attract the energies and talents of migrants. Not only do they allow us to staff industries that can't otherwise recruit enough workers to survive, migrants have supplied the creative energy and talent to build innovative industries that keep the US on the cutting edge of future technologies.
Trump claims not to want to deport tech workers. Even if we believe that, his hostility to migrants in general and a despotic desire to suppress free speech by foreign students makes America a far less attractive place for the most talented young foreigners, over half of whom settle permanently in the US after receiving their degrees. Great American companies like Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, AMD, Google, and even Boeing and Amazon, wouldn't be able to exist but for migrants contributing talent and labor at all levels. Without world-beating companies the US would become a has-been power with standards of living sliding to the levels of Japan, Italy and Spain.
So the next time we see MAGA, we all know what it really stands for.
Donald Trump's tendency to make brash declarations followed by lack of performance has always made him bad for the dollar index (DXY), the relative value of the dollar versus a basket of other currencies.
MAGA has come to stand for "Minimize America's Greatest Advantages".
Asian American Success Stories
- The 130 Most Inspiring Asian Americans of All Time
- 12 Most Brilliant Asian Americans
- Greatest Asian American War Heroes
- Asian American Digital Pioneers
- New Asian American Imagemakers
- Asian American Innovators
- The 20 Most Inspiring Asian Sports Stars
- 5 Most Daring Asian Americans
- Surprising Superstars
- TV’s Hottest Asians
- 100 Greatest Asian American Entrepreneurs
- Asian American Wonder Women
- Greatest Asian American Rags-to-Riches Stories
- Notable Asian American Professionals