The impact of Trump’s policies on the US economy is causing unhappiness within the ruling class, but reversing his course will still be down to working-class struggle, argues John Clarke
Donald Trump was an infamous billionaire business celebrity long before he ventured into politics, set his stamp on the Republican Party and entered the White House. The political agenda he brought with him is viciously right-wing and he may be said to represent the most reactionary and reckless section of the US ruling class.
As he jettisons the US role in maintaining a ‘rules-based’ global order and pursues a highly authoritarian course, Trump expresses the instincts of those who have lost patience with the constraints imposed by bourgeois democracy.
If, however, Trump expresses the aspirations of a significant section of the US ruling class, he by no means enjoys universal support within it. Not only are there divisions over the political agenda he is pursuing but many of the measures that he is putting in place run counter to interests of sections of major investors.
Tourism slumps
One of the most obvious impacts of the Trump administration’s approach has been on tourism. In January, the BBC noted that this ‘was supposed to be a huge year for tourism to the US. In 2026, the nation is not only celebrating the centenary of its iconic Route 66 highway and the 250th anniversary of its independence, it’s also co-hosting the FIFA World Cup.’ Far from booming, however, US tourism has slumped disastrously.
Trump’s trade wars are generating a sense of hostility in other countries and his efforts to tighten border security are worrying many potential travellers. Report of tourists being detained at airports and news of a programme that would see visitors to the US face scrutiny of their social-media profiles are generating alarm and this is being translated into a huge decline in tourism.
As the BBC pointed out, ‘a growing number of nations have issued travel warnings to the US and: ‘According to a report by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), the US was projected to lose a staggering $12.5bn (£9.35bn) in international visitor spending in 2025.’
With Trump imposing tariffs on Canada and even raising the idea of annexing the country, the impact on tourism and travel has been particularly severe. On 18 February, Pax News reported that, while Canadian visitors made up 28% of foreign arrivals in the US in 2024, recent data ‘from Statistics Canada shows air travel from Canada down 24 per cent and land crossings down 30 per cent from the same time a year earlier, marking ten straight months of decline.’
The normal workings of global capitalism have increasingly involved an element of international travel and discourse. Academic, cultural, scientific and business activity has included a vast amount of this. There are no end of prestigious international conferences and other such forms of exchange across national borders that have become very important in various fields. The kind of intense border scrutiny that is being cultivated in the US threatens this process.
The visa bans that were imposed ‘on five prominent European figures [one a former EU Commissioner] who have been at heart of the campaign to introduce laws regulating American tech companies’ is indicative of this stultifying climate. It drives home the fact that the rigid and xenophobic perspectives of the Trump administration are at odds with the norms of discourse and exchange that capitalist states have come to enjoy.
We can assume that capitalists invested in the tourist industry are not the keenest Trump supporters at the moment. However, he is a divisive figure within his own class in a range of other ways. This includes the immediate economic impact and broader long-term implications of his immigration crackdowns.
The LA Times has pointed out that the ‘first month of President Trump’s immigration crackdown in Los Angeles put a dent in the area’s economy, costing business owners millions in lost revenue and exponentially more in lost output from workers, according to a new county report.’
It was ‘found that 82% of businesses reported negative impacts from the raids that began early last June and 44% reported losses of greater than half their normal revenue.’ Such an effect is hardly surprising since ‘undocumented workers contribute an estimated $253.9 billion in total economic output, equivalent to 17% of L.A. County’s gross domestic product. These undocumented workers support over 1.06 million jobs and generate $80.4 billion in labor income across a range of industries, including construction, manufacturing, retail, and services.’
In addition to the effects of driving undocumented workers into hiding and intimidating entire communities in the process, the deployment of repressive force against those protesting the crackdowns have had a huge impact. Strikingly, in ‘the first week of June alone, when the raids began in earnest and the National Guard was deployed into the city with active-duty Marines, researchers estimated that the nightly curfew downtown resulted in an estimated $840 million in economic output losses, according to the report.’
Trump isn’t the first president to oversee immigration raids but he has unleashed them in an unrestrained fashion, turned them into a political spectacle and linked the crackdown to an authoritarian assertion of control to such a degree that political instability and economic disruption have resulted.
Undocumented workers play a very major role within the US economy and the system of regulation to which they are subjected ensures that they live with the threat of deportation, so as to render them all the more vulnerable to extreme forms of exploitation. Trump’s racist crudity, however, has tilted the balance too far and undermined business operations on a major scale.
Trump’s efforts to restore the US manufacturing base and preserve a dominant global role through the use of protectionist measures have been advanced aggressively but there is far from a consensus within the capitalist class on this approach.
Last September, Fortune reported that it had ‘hosted a large gathering of top CEOs, primarily Republicans, and … they are increasingly questioning who truly stands to benefit from the maelstrom of chaos, fear, and confusion that he has intentionally created.’ The article noted that: ‘Business leaders at our forum worry that Trump is undermining an economic system that took decades to build and has long benefited the U.S. more than any other country.’
This grumbling in the corporate ranks is at odds with ‘the heavily trumpeted “Dear Leader” tributes of just a handful of tech titans, who are decidedly not representative of the leadership class.’ Moreover, it reflects very definite concerns about the impact of Trump’s course of action on profits. Fully two-thirds ‘of the CEOs surveyed at our event said that U.S. tariffs have been harmful to their businesses.’
Lack of alternatives
When the dust cleared, after ‘a violent and heavily armed mob of supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol’ on 6 January 2021, the incoming Biden administration seemed like a return to stability to most of the ruling establishment. Despite these hopes, however, the presidency of ‘Genocide Joe’ was a deep disappointment that ushered in the return of a much better prepared second Trump administration.
This failure of the Democrats to generate a viable alternative to Trump is still apparent. They may complain about the brutal excesses of the present administration but they really only offer to water down Trump’s policies. Recent comments that Hillary Clinton made at the Munich Security Summit on Trump’s hated ICE raids drive this home.
To the delight of the right-wing New York Post, Clinton conceded that ‘loose immigration policies in the US and other Western countries “went too far.”’ She only suggested that repressive state measures needed to be carried out with more tact and discretion. Indeed, she told those present that: ‘More people were deported under my husband and Barack Obama without killing American citizens and without putting children into detention camps than were in the first Trump term or this first year of Trump’s second term.’
For significant sections of the ruling class who question Trump’s course of action and fear the instability he is creating, the weak and vacillating Democrats offer no useful option. At the same time, they stand in the way of the working-class demands and struggles that need to be taken up.
Trump is increasingly unpopular at every level of US society and he faces a growing resistance on the streets. However, his reactionary and authoritarian objectives remain potent and dangerous largely due to the lack of an adequate challenge.
Opposition from within the US establishment, whether it comes from dissenting judges, disgruntled capitalists or timid Democrats can only, at very best, win temporary reprieves in the face of the right-wing agenda that Trump presently leads. Only mass action can stop this rightward march and the need for decisive mobilisation against it becomes ever more acute.
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