{"id":49695,"date":"2025-08-06T14:43:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T14:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/49695\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T14:43:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T14:43:08","slug":"the-final-obstacle-to-trumps-dictatorship-may-be-the-people-he-needs-to-borrow-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/49695\/","title":{"rendered":"The final obstacle to Trump\u2019s dictatorship may be the people he needs to borrow from"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

U.S. President Donald Trump may find himself more and more preoccupied with soothing market tantrums as U.S. growth slows, debts mount and confidence continues to fall.Jonathan Ernst\/Reuters<\/p>\n

The president of the United States is commonly described as the most powerful man on earth. Nevertheless, his powers are ordinarily circumscribed in numerous ways, formal and informal. <\/p>\n

There is the Congress, of course, and the courts, and the rule of law they are sworn to uphold. But there are also the institutions under the presidency, which though they ultimately report to the president also act as something of a brake on his ambitions: the Justice department, the FBI and CIA, the military, and beyond them the broader bureaucracy. There is also, importantly, the Federal Reserve and other semi-autonomous government agencies.<\/p>\n

There are the states, with their distinct constitutional responsibilities. There are the obligations the United States has assumed under international treaties. There are the media and other organizations of civil society. And there are the less tangible but no less real restraints imposed by public opinion, and the chances of defeat at the next election; by custom and convention; and in the end, by the dictates of morality and the president\u2019s own conscience.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> presidency represents the progressive shedding of each of these restraints, in the course of what looks to be a triumphant march to dictatorship. He is, needless to say, entirely unconstrained by conscience or morality, much as he is unbound by any other obligations of character: taste, civility, industry, courage, continence. Neither has he any use for custom or convention. For whatever reason, he seems equally unconcerned about the next election.<\/p>\n

As for the rest, we may distinguish, first, those that are now under Mr. Trump\u2019s control, in whole or in part. That would include both houses of Congress, where narrow but militant Republican majorities have demonstrated there is nothing he can do that they will oppose and nothing he can ask that they will refuse. He has likewise installed his fanatical partisans, extremists with nothing to recommend them but fierce personal loyalty, atop Justice, the FBI, the CIA, as well as Defence, Homeland Security, and other government departments and agencies. He is in the process of stacking the courts in similar fashion and may yet succeed in doing the same to the military. <\/p>\n

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There are, second, those institutions Mr. Trump cannot directly control, but whose authority he can subvert or ignore. Where Congress has been slow to do his bidding, for example, he has simply ignored or overridden its prerogatives. He has likewise ignored repeated orders by lower courts en route to his inevitable rendez-vous with tyranny, when he ignores a Supreme Court decision (though this Court seems determined to make that unnecessary). <\/p>\n

He has pulled the United States out of some international treaties, such as the Paris climate accord but seems content to violate others: refusing to say he will honour its NATO obligations, for example, or imposing tariffs in explicit contravention of CUSMA and other trade agreements. He has used the powers of his office to settle scores with media organizations that crossed him, to punish law firms that represented his antagonists or law enforcement officers who pursued him, all with a view to intimidating further opposition.<\/p>\n

But there is one institution he can neither control nor subvert: financial markets. Whatever he might wish, there is nothing Mr. Trump can do to force them to fund his debts, or to prop up the U.S. dollar, or to keep the stock market flying. He cannot threaten them, and he cannot bribe them. Rather, it is he who is obliged to cater to their needs. We saw that this spring, when the mere threat of a bondholders strike forced Mr. Trump into a humiliating retreat on his \u201cLiberation Day\u201d tariff schedule. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s a significant check on his power. You can see its effect in other areas \u2013 it probably explains, for example, why he has not tried to fire the Fed governor. As U.S. growth slows, debts mount and confidence continues to fall, Mr. Trump may find himself more and more preoccupied with soothing market tantrums, made worse by his recent attempts to interfere with the integrity of U.S. economic statistics. <\/p>\n

Such authoritarian power plays may impress, or intimidate, or bamboozle others. But markets have no need for Mr. Trump\u2019s favour and no time for his nonsense. There is little he can do, what is more, to escape their judgement. He can try to impose capital controls \u2013 that may be next \u2013 but only at the cost of deepening the sense of panic and driving the U.S. into a financial crisis. Not even Mr. Trump could survive that.<\/p>\n

This may seem a thin reed on which to hang democracy\u2019s hopes. But a dictator\u2019s control must be absolute or he is lost. Imperfect, amoral, anything but democratic, the markets may nevertheless prove to be Mr. Trump\u2019s most implacable opponents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: U.S. President Donald Trump may find himself more and more preoccupied with soothing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[28472,20754,28473,43,44,927,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-49695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-andrew-coyne","tag-column","tag-coyne","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-opinion","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}