Donald Trump and the Rise of the Oligarchs

Jahangir Mohammed argues that the US oligarchs have decided to run the US government themselves. The result will be state capture by Oligarchs and greater concentrations of wealth among the rich. Few of the US people’s problems will be solved, leaving future governments to disentangle the Oligarchs from the state, as Russia once had to do.

Donald Trump and the Rise of the Oligarchs

For most people, the word oligarch conjures images of super-rich Russian billionaires such as Roman Abramovich. The term has negative connotations around illicitly gained wealth and corruption in Russia. It is seldom associated with the super-rich in the West.

Yet, for some time now, it has become clear that the oldest democracies in the world (the United States and Britain) are only superficially being ruled for the benefit of the people. Democracies have become oligarchies (governments for special and wealthy interests) that mobilise behind the scenes and influence governments and their agencies. Whichever party wins an election, those interests usually dominate and exploit the government. This combination of wealth and political power becomes exploitative of the masses of people in pursuit of their interests.

The Rise of Ideologies: White Nationalism and Supremacy

An issue for oligarchs is that they have little real analysis or political vision for society. An honest discussion of society’s problems would expose the role of wealthy elites in the economic injustices that affect the nation. Therefore, there is a need to deflect and divert society’s attention away from themselves constantly. The politicians and political parties that the wealthy support need to be brought into power. The easiest route to power is to blame “the other,” enemies (aliens and alien culture) inside and outside, for the misery caused by the economic systems of exploitation and political failure. In today’s world, being anti-Muslim and anti-migrant is a populist vote grab guaranteed by constantly raising and linking crime, migration and societal breakdown to Muslims and minorities as the reason for the economic decline set against some past glorious political age. Even better, aligning these groups with foreign enemies, culture, or alternative politics such as Marxism, the left/wokeness adds to the vote bank.

This targeting of the other/aliens often disguises an ideology and vision of racial nationalism and supremacy. So, slogans such as Make America Great Again (MAGA movement) are really about an impossible dream of making America white again. The drift toward overtly white nationalist/identity politics has been developing over the last three decades in the US and Europe. It is aided by a corporate US-dominated media, which is itself owned by oligarchs. They have reduced debates on serious social and economic issues to white nationalist talking points instead of informed discussion, including how multi-national corporations, big capital, debt-based finance, and oligarchies are sucking the wealth out of communities and states.

For example, the problem of illegal migrants in the US is divorced from its economic context, where businesses and big capital need cheap labour to make billions. The minimum wage in different US states varies between $7.25 and $16.28. The UK equivalent minimum wage is $15.24. The push and pull factors that drive migration and the role of the US and big capital are seldom discussed in compliant corporate Western media. Migrants are blamed, not the needs of businesses in the US for cheap labour or the role of US foreign policy in Central and South America, which pushes people to migrate. The corporate media, therefore, collude in promoting white nationalism and supremacy in the United States and as we are now also seeing in the UK and Europe.

It is also telling of the white nationalist direction of the Trump 2.0 administration that, except for one black member and a couple of Indian-origin members, all are white. Racial identity is not an indicator of political difference or progress, yet the absence of people of colour is noticeable compared to the Biden administration.

A US Government Run by Oligarchs

While Oligarchs are usually content to work behind the scenes outside of government, in the US, they see the state apparatus and bureaucracy as an obstacle to their goals. State bureaucracies can undoubtedly become a self-interested group with a life of their own, but they also keep the government ticking amidst constant political change. Politicians effectively rule for three years, with a fourth year where energies are focussed on the next election.

Under Trump 2.0, the Oligarchs no longer trust the state apparatus to do their bidding and have taken to running the country themselves instead of leaving it to the state’s bureaucratic machinery. Whilst the public rhetoric of Trump and the Republicans is working class, its government is full of billionaires, as are many donors to the party and politics. For example, Israeli-born Miriam Adelson and her family (the widow of Sheldon Adelson, the former CEO of casino company  Las Vegas Sands) are worth $32.4 billion.  Adelson is the 53^rd richest person in the world and the wealthiest Israeli. She donated $100 million to President Trump’s election campaign, it is reported, in return for his support in allowing Israel to annex the West Bank.

It is reported that there are at least 13 billionaires in the Trump administration, of which Elon Musk is the most well-known, estimated to be worth $400 billion and the wealthiest man in the world. Donald Trump is also a billionaire, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner is said to be worth around $900 million. The total wealth of the Trump 2.0 administration is estimated to be around $460 billion, more than the wealth of many nation-states. While it is not uncommon for those with wealth and business experience to serve in governments, it is rare for this level of ultra-rich to run a government, except in Gulf monarchies.  In contrast, under the Biden administration, the wealthiest official seems to have been White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, whose disclosures from 2021 showed his net worth ranging between $90 million and $443 million.

Consequences of Oligarchic Rule

What happens when such wealthy people become so intimately part of government? We know that the tendency and priority of such elites is towards 1) Wealth maximisation for their ends rather than for ordinary people and the creation of even more super-rich elites, 2) State capture—they end up privatising government and state assets, including state-controlled industries, with public wealth ending up in private hands, and 3) weak states that will fragment as political power becomes concentrated in a few private hands.

We have seen this in India, where the Modi regime using Hindu nationalism that scapegoats Muslims as India’s enemy in pursuit of political power, has led to the wealthiest getting wealthier and the rise of Indian Oligarchs linked to politics (while the public’s attention has been diverted to its “Muslim problems”) instead of more equitable wealth distribution in society. The wealthy elite now owns some 40% of India’s wealth.

We also witnessed problems with Oligarchy when the old Soviet Union transitioned to Russia, and state assets were captured by the wealthy, who subsequently became ultra-billionaire Oligarchs. It was left to President Putin to deal with the problem of Russian oligarchs, bring them back under state control, and force them to return some of their wealth to help rebuild Russia. However, faced with a crackdown, many fled overseas with their wealth.  Russia now has much better control over Oligarchs. China also has a political system that allows wealth creation but not for wealthy elites to dominate politics and misuse their wealth through politics. President Xi Jinping also launched a crackdown on political/business corruption as part of those controls.

The Arabian Oligarchs and US Politics

The Gulf monarchs are oligarchs. There is no distinction between the Arabian Oligarchs and the government; they are the same. The rulers and members of their families are some of the wealthiest people in the world, and they have many ultra-billionaires. These Oligarch States happen to be as much USA protectorates as Israel. Their wealth is intimately integrated into the US global capitalist infrastructure. It is invested in US corporations, banks, finance, hedge funds, media, think tanks, and soft power propaganda agents (individuals and agencies). They have a greater affinity with US Oligarchs, particularly Donald Trump, who, like many of them, is a real estate developer and billionaire. To help Donald Trump with US debt cash deficits, Saudi Arabia injected $450 billion during his first administration. Trump is asking them to invest up to a trillion dollars in the US economy. The US economy has a 36 trillion dollar fiscal debt, which requires 308 billion annually to service. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a part of the last Trump administration, worked on many issues with Saudi Arabia.  After leaving the White House, Mr Kushner’s private equity firm received a $2bn (£1.59bn) investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

Like all oligarchs, the Arabian Oligarchs are concerned with maximising wealth and preserving their power and rule. They see any developing regional strong national state as a threat to their hegemony and a potential obstacle to expanding their wealth. Whilst they have developed their states, they have assisted along with the US and Israel, the fragmentation of surrounding states making them ripe for investment, reconstruction, and exploitation. It is Gulf Oligarchs who end up investing in the privatised industries assets and real estate in the broken countries of Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Sudan, Yemen and recently Syria. Gulf states also become financiers and lenders to these countries. If these countries were allowed to develop as independent states, few would be interested in visiting or investing in Gulf states, and their tourism trade would be decimated.

Will the US Oligarchs Make America Great Again?

Whilst appealing to the working masses through populism (racial and otherwise), the Oligarchs will privatise large chunks of the US state and sell it off either to new companies or their own. Elon Musk is tasked with making the state apparatus more efficient. This will involve privatisation and bringing the technology warlords and billionaire class present at the Trump inauguration into government administration. Managing migration and other parts of state business could also be privatised. The United States has always been protectionist at home whilst championing free trade with the rest of the world. However, imposing the US economy on the rest of the world through wars is becoming more complex. So, the preferred method is soft power economics/trade, threats, and intimidation.

The US has entered a new phase of trade protectionism through tariffs. It also pushes for land/asset grabs in the American continent and Europe to increase its internal trade market. However, protectionism will also lead to retaliatory measures by other countries, with price increases and inflation. The obsession with migration to preserve white identity, deporting illegal migrants and finding ways to deport or cull the rights of existing citizens (people of colour) will also harm the US economy and create social division inside America.

The Oligarchs now rule the US, and one thing is sure: their wealth will increase, but as we have seen elsewhere, that is unlikely to bring the jobs and resolve the cost-of-living crisis that ordinary Americans cared about and made them vote for Trump 2.0.  People in the US will learn the hard way that it is not migrants, Muslims, people of colour, or Marxism who are the cause of their misery but the very people who rule them – a combination of the politically powerful and the wealthy.

Many verses of the Quran warn against the concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of a few. It emphasises that authentic leadership should be based on the distribution of wealth, justice, piety, and knowledge rather than wealth. Islam promotes a politics where economic resources are used for the common good of the masses as a public service as opposed to the pursuit of personal political advantage and accumulation and hoarding of wealth. Wealth is seen as a test from Allah (SWT) rather than an automatic right to power. Wealth should not lead to the type of arrogance currently displayed among the leadership of the US administration and in other countries. Nor should wealth be a means for economic injustice and oppression.