Will Liberation Day transform the world? The Nixon Shock set a radical precedent
by Yanis Varoufakis

https://unherd.com/2025/04/will-liberation-day-transform-the-world/#msdynmkt_trackingcontext=ebaa54aa-e581-4b3e-abb9-96a5d8780000

“My philosophy, Mr President, is that all foreigners are out to screw us and it’s our job to screw them first.” With these words, the #US Treasury Secretary convinced the President to deliver a colossal shock to the global economy. In the words of one of the President’s men, the objective was to trigger “a controlled disintegration of the world economy”.
No, those words were not spoken by members of President #Trump ’s team in advance of their “Liberation Day” tariff splurge. While the “foreigners are out to screw us” certainly has a Trumpian ring, it was uttered in the summer of 1971 by then Treasury Secretary John Connally, who succeeded in convincing his President to unleash the infamous #Nixon Shock a couple of days later.

"Trump is therefore not the first President to seek the controlled disintegration of the world economy by means of a devastating blow. Nor is he the first to purposely damage America’s allies to renew and prolong US hegemony. Nor the first who was prepared to hurt Wall Street in the short run in the process of strengthening US capital accumulation in the long term. Nixon had done all that half a century earlier.

And the irony is that the world the Western liberal establishment is grieving over today came into being as a result of the Nixon Shock. While admonishing the idea of a US President delivering a rude shock to the world economy, they are lamenting the passing of what only came into being because of another President’s readiness to deliver an even ruder shock. That is, the Nixon Shock gave birth to the darlings of today’s liberal establishment: neoliberalism, financialisation and globalisation."

https://unherd.com/2025/04/will-liberation-day-transform-the-world/

#USA #Trump #TradeWar #PoliticalEconomy #Tariffs #Protectionism #Nixon #Dollar

Another last gasp…

Katherine Graham, the brave owner of The Washington Post during the #Nixon vengeance spree, is the subject of a new feature documentary, "Becoming Katharine Graham", which just premiered at the Kennedy Center!

Meanwhile we have a White House tyrant who makes Nixon look like a saint and now controls the KC, a #WaPo billionaire owner who obeyed in advance to the tyrant and owns the company that produced the film.

#journalism #trump #bezos #amazon
https://archive.ph/xvVlN

Now that you are grieving about #JeffBezos & the #WashingtonPost:

How about taking the opportunity to start a #reader-owned #newspaper #cooperative or an #audience-owned #media cooperative!?

Plenty of examples exist; several of them in #Germany alone.

I'd very much be interested to partake.

🏷️ #WaPo #Bezos #AllThePresidentsMen #JonathanCapeheart #BobWoodward #CarlBernstein #Watergate #Nixon #Trump #MAGA #HowFascismWorks #Amazon #ElonMusk #MarkZuckerberg #Musk #Zuckerberg #Distributism #Coop

A fond reminiscence of the oil crisis of 1973. https://youtu.be/2HpjnfekaJw?si=D1aImb3XV14MEN0b
#oilcrisis #1973 #israel #palestine #oil #nixon