1. Introduction
The problem is not so much why the Republicans prevailed over the Democrats; it is not so much to seek the reasons for the shift in the US electorate. In the previous elections, as in the one last November the gap between candidates was limited. That is to say that in the country there is no political force that clearly prevails over the other at least in the presidential elections. On the other hand, the alternation of the powers of the executive is also part of the exercise of democracy, as a sign of the strength and power of the communities entrusted with the task of choosing the government’s programs at the electoral level. Therefore, everything is in sequence, with the full exercise of alternation. Trying to discern the reasons why the US electorate decided to give the scepter, so to speak, of executive power to Trump is certainly not easy. More important could be to emphasize phenomena that do not seem consistent with the choice to support the Republican candidate.
First of all, the presence of the techno-billionaires, Musk, Bezos, Sundar Pichai, Zuckerberg, shareholders, and managers of the big US technology companies starts from Amazon, Alphabet Space X, Tesla and so on. The big owners of US wealth were all present and framed in the Rotunda, to listen to the speech of the president, re-elected after the four-year period 2017-2020 (Gittleman & Wolff, 2004). How can one justify the presence of these champions of technology and ultra-billionaires among the Republicans, that is, the transition from the Democratic Party to the Republicans, of which they were part until a few months or years before, is not a small matter. How can one speak of a new golden age for America if the golden age is now behind us and there is no other in sight? It is certainly not the credulity of the American people that one wants to attack. People are worried about inflation (Cossiga, 2018a) and the erosion of wages that are too low for a large part of the citizens. It is gratuitous to think that credulity is at the forefront in the choice of the magnate. Yet, these visionary entrepreneurs are putting themselves under the wing of the conservative party, despite the relative incongruity of the choice. Sure, they are betting on public administration contracts for men like Elon Mask who aims to reach Mars in the four-year period, obviously with public money. Yet, the ultra-feat of reaching Mars for now seems like an option to entrust to Space X. Same objection for Bezos and the others who seem have no reasons for the conservatives’ choice. So what?
There are many considerations that have been advanced to explain the compact and I would say regular presence (in relation to the assets of each) of the four musketeers of technology. And if it were precisely the ongoing advances in technology and the possibility that there is already news on the horizon that could knock our four heroes off their pedestal. The logic we are following looks at AI, not so much as a direct consequence of the ongoing advances in artificial intelligence. But rather in the range of areas of application that it could have to streamline and reprogram industrial production plants. To say that AI could innovate in the production field, making obsolete, so to speak, the plants that the USA and EU have massively transferred to China.
This is no small thing. In fact, the concrete possibility of a reshoring to the West of the industrial structures that are transferred to China has proven to be highly unlikely. Because the multinationals that have decided to transfer industrial capacity to the East have bet and profited from the process of deviation in favor of the growth of asset values and to the detriment of the real economy. Acting in the opposite way, that is, bringing the transferred plants back home or nearby would mean giving up the speculative advantage acquired and suffering the costs of reshoring. The status quo could, however, change over time, with the allocation of the potential offered by AI to the industrial plant engineering sector. Which is to say that controlled automation processes make it necessary in the near future to renew techniques and related plants. So it would be the rapidly evolving technology that would this time recommend a new geography of production chains that this time would move towards the West, less concerned among other things with the costs for the workforce that up to now has sanctioned the industrial concentration in China. Which is to say therefore that all the ruminations and promises of a new gold season set by the new US presidency would be, as it were, outdated.
Well, but what does this have to do with the almost subordinate presence of the major techno billionaires at the inauguration of the new Republican president. If AI assumes, as I think, a substantial role in terms of new industrial plants, there will be a clear rotation of interests from the current class of techno billionaires to the new industrialization that will flow back to the West in the coming years. Ergo, a concern for those who expect aid and funding from the US Treasury to maintain the insubordinate position of the current techno billionaires. We are not entering into the phantasmagoria of a near future that is difficult to define, but it is worth it to fully understand the composed presence of the big-tech-billionaires. Incidentally, the presence of the Italian Prime Minister, the only European Head of State at the ceremony to launch the Republican four-year term, is also surprising. Also, because Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, who would have represented the interests of the old continent, was absent.
2. The Idea That the Community, as a Collective Subject, Is Not Able to Express an Elaborate Position on Foreign Relations Is a Deficit of Democracy
Remaining in Europe and the comparison with the United States, it can be added that the golden age announced by Trump seems to refer rather to the past. In the following figures, it can be seen that over the last five years, the GDP in the USA has averaged 3% per year, with the exception of the most acute year of the epidemic. The same can be added for unemployment, which has had an average rate of less than 4% over the last five years. This latter indicator of the ability of the American economic system to create new jobs, even in the face of the significant number of irregular immigrants.
Before talking about the golden age evoked by the new US president, it is worth mentioning the joke uttered by Trump that raised the stinging observations of the Heads of State of the nations involved. In what regard? To some form of integration of states close to the US federation. With essential lightness he addressed to Mexico, Canada, and Panama the invitation to join the United States, drawing on the historical experience of the nascent American states of uniting in federal states through assent to the new American constitution1 (Figure 1).
(A)
(B)
Source: Trading economic.
Figure 1. (A) United States, Euro Area China i—Annual GDP Growth Rate 2015-2024; (B) United States, Euro Area China—Unemployment Rate 2020-2024.
A surprising statement, which goes beyond centuries of construction of international law and gets to the point. The expected response of the Heads of State of the two largest countries, Mexico and Canada, involved in the affair, is not surprising and essentially leaves the unexpected statement in a nothing. On the other hand, Mexico was involved in conflict with the United States following the US annexation of Texas in 1845, opposed by Mexico, which still considered it part of its nation. Conflict that ended with the annexation of the cession by Mexico of the regions of Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo México, and the acceptance of the Rio Grande as a new border.2
Relations with neighboring Canada are regulated by the Market. They are very friendly of course and have a common history although there is a precedent for the Island of Newfoundland, disputed between the United States and Canada. The Canadian government decided to hold a referendum among the population to decide whether to return to being part of the English Dominion or enter as a confederate territory of Canada. The option of joining the United States was not included. After a bitter debate, the island of Newfoundland finally voted to enter as a province in the confederation of Canada, in 1949.
For Panama, a small state that was created to coincide with the entry into operation of the Isthmus of Panama.3 The first act of the new State was the concession of a territory to the USA to build and manage the canal (completed in 1914); this concession had also legitimized the US military presence within the Canal Zone. The issue of relations with the US continued to be controversial and to dominate Panamanian politics.
So, speaking of Panama and Canada, they are two countries that have long been tied to US politics, even if the issue of the independence of the two countries has never been raised with such arrogance. On the other hand, the issue of the enlargement of large states—starting with Russia and territorial tensions in China and the Middle East—is the underlying reason that agitates the prospect of new wars (Gordon, 2016).
However, if we can look beyond recent history, we cannot but agree that tensions towards the aggregation of territories is an attraction that runs through the history of humanity. From the great empires of prehistory starting with China and Persia and then to the Roman Empire, and then to the Russia of the Tsars and not least the different forms of aggregation functional to the economy but not only, starting from the United States to the EU and the countless treaties that bind the great States and territories, we can admit that humanity is looking for forms of aggregation and not separation and fragmentation of territories. Furthermore, governments often, without taking inspiration from the decisions of the populations, seek the advantage of the consensus that economic unions obtain from the populations, but they stand as impregnable champions of the sovereignty of every strip of land.
Well, it would now be unequivocal that the decision on the essential issues of relations between States is entrusted to the populations, who must have the last and definitive word in foreign policy, in contrast therefore with the current practice that essentially reserves the relative choices to politics and government leadership, without there being a specific mandate from the population. The idea that the community, as a collective subject, is not able to express an elaborate position on foreign relations is a deficit of democracy (Soroka & Wlezien, 2010). It cannot be said that the people are concerned with “panem et circensis”, that is, with daily economics and in the other. Democracy must live on the delegation of powers, all powers, from the people to the elected government leadership. No derogation from this principle of democracy can be admitted (Cossiga, 2023).
Well, if history does not lie 4and the aggregation and not the fragmentation of territories is the unconscious and manifest objective of human people without limits of time and space, well, the basic concepts of nation and citizenship, of national identity must be re-examined according to the vision of citizens of the world. From this point of view, that is, the natural tension of citizenship to consider spaces without borders, the lunatic hypothesis of postulating that two neighboring countries should be part of the United States, may not be as lunatic as it seems. Just as it may not be an absurdum that neighboring countries, integrated from an economic if not political point of view, give in on the terrain—too plowed and worn—of nationality. As if to say that governments finally offer peoples the final decision about participation in the creation of a federation of states, following in America the story of the foundation of the federal state and the constitution, as well as the purchase from Napoleon’s revolutionary France of the so-called Louisiana. In the present case it is certainly not a question of a market of lands to be sold, but rather of the determination to be entrusted to the peoples if and how to participate in the integration of a union of states, as in the perhaps scandalous case outlined by the new American president. Of course, it is not a question of incorporating lands or buying large neighboring territories, nor even of using as a counterpart blackmail the threat of imposing duties on the entry into the USA of products imported from the two neighboring countries. The problem is rather the immediate opportunity to give bait to a trade conflict between various parts of the world that is certainly not needed. The matter is of great significance, pertaining to the continuous development of commercial and political agreements among global regions. This evolution could result in agreed processes for the aggregation of neighboring states, based on mutual understandings and primarily facilitated by referendums conducted among the concerned citizens.
The hypothesis that nationalism could be a disease not of sovereigns but also of the people and that it could justify the ultra-nationalistic position of governments does not seem justified. Based on this assumption, how could we understand the drive of the armed youth who were attracted in time and space by the great leaders in Europe and Asia and who lost their lives to support the “borderless” strategy? If we do not admit that the collectivity of citizens can be different from the thinking of individuals, we risk unexpectedly causing the very idea of popular sovereignty to fall. We add then that the phenomena of political fragmentation can attenuate collective thinking and accentuate the dispersion of the minority. If we do not admit that the collective thought (of the people) can be different from the thought of individuals, we risk unexpectedly causing the very idea of popular sovereignty to fall. As to say that the phenomena of political fragmentation can attenuate collective thinking and accentuate the dispersion of the minority.
3. The Unkind Expression of the Political Class That Rejects a Priori the Hypothesis of a Peaceful Aggregation Was Also Ill-Advised
It is hard to believe that citizens called upon to decide whether to wage war on their neighbor are willing to sacrifice their children in a bloody battle in which, as the Pope says, there are only losers (Pope Francis, 2014). It is certainly no coincidence that the battles underway in the Middle East and Europe, as well as those afflicting Africa, indebted and struggling on the path to development, are always imposed for the aggression of non-democratic countries. The forms of aggregation experienced by democratic countries represent in themselves a permanent objection to the aggression of countries large or small that are still waiting for the rights of the people to be respected. Democratic countries are the object of aggression but are not in turn aggressors. Refusing the war of aggression, on the other hand, is written in various constitution, including the Italian one.
At this point, taking a further step in the plane of relations between democratic countries is certainly not achievable with the use of duties to rebalance the balance of payments and reciprocal exchange relations. In democracies, it is always appropriate to resort to agreement between the parties even for difficult problems on the common ground of the economy, such as the mutual balance of payments. On the other hand, the position of the country that considers itself a leader and that advances unilateral proposals to neighbors with whom it already has intense political and economic relations is wrong a priori. As if to say that according to this point of view, it is not really a sin to advance proposals for forms of political, economic, and military integration to neighboring countries. Without it being a raising of shields by political representatives against the invasiveness of the neighbor.
On the contrary, the start of a process of aggregation between the United States, Canada and Mexico could be a need and an opportunity to be seized (Morse, 1783). Without waving nationalist flags by everyone obviously but as a consequence of the need of the parties made more pressing by the contrast that has opened between the social development of humanity and the condition of the planet. A contrast that to be smoothed out requires large investments and in-depth research, which also require reflections on the relationship between the States and on the traditional model of land distribution. Natural difficulties, therefore, can be addressed precisely by accelerating the development of humanity, which instead seems blocked by the natural aversion of the planet to traditional growth. An aversion that requires large investments for the decarbonization of the planet and the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy. An objective that is not around the corner and that all humanity and not pieces of it must face and resolve. The decision renewed by Trump’s America to exit the Paris Agreement on climate is understandable but unfortunate (Fagan, 2017). It is a fraud, says the new president. It is a fraud to decide not to participate in the common effort to contain the natural evolution of the planet’s climate, in an attempt to support the price of oil and gas, in the interest of the United States, which is the world’s largest producer of fossil fuels. The decision taken in Trump’s first term is therefore repeated. A selfish decision and not just a declaration of principle because in the next five years, unfortunately, we will not see the expected collapse in global consumption of fossil fuels, which will take longer than expected.
The problem for humanity is to overcome the natural limits to current development, troubled by the disease of the planet, and coordinate the growth of the economy at a global level, to encourage the technological leap of developing countries (Cossiga, 2024a). Coordinating development at a global level must mean that the lines of development of the lagging countries must use the pedestal of innovative technologies to accelerate the economy but bypassing the contrast in existence between development to be accelerated and global warming. There are no valid alternatives to this general direction. Coordination of the lagging areas requires achieving greater coordination on the path of global development. A task to be entrusted to a specialized agency of the UN, which should have non-repayable funding with the aim of authorizing and financing investment works with the obligation of clean and renewable energy. It is essentially a transfer of powers from the depressed economic areas to international bodies to which the countries in question also contribute. But beware of the plague of nationalism that can open the way to the logic of fragmentation that has also involved countries with a democratic regime (Dozon & Atlani-Duault, 2014).
Border protection is an obligation for autocratic countries that also serves to justify the centralization of power. But even in democratic countries, selfish nationalism exists and often infuses political parties, for the mere survival of the parties themselves. A rash but not improvised hypothesis that, however, could be questioned precisely in the case of aggregation of large countries. As in the proposal advanced by Trump ex abrupto that Canada become the 51st state of the USA. The idea is not surprising given the great ties that unite the two North American countries. However, any eventual decision to be taken in this regard must necessarily be submitted to the decision of the citizens of Canada, by referendum. The decision of the citizens is obviously mandatory in a democratic state, so that the holder of power (collectiveness) can express itself by majority. There is no doubt that the prevailing trend should be favorable to the historical inclination of citizens to large spaces without borders. Let us think of the great empires of the past from the Roman Empire to Greater Persia, the Ottoman Empire, Imperial China and Napoleon’s Europe. However, decisions on these matters presuppose a willingness to accept changes tolerated for the merging of their respective systems.
Therefore, it goes without saying that a first referendum is necessary to start discussions and decisions on the subject. Followed by a second referendum six months after the first comes to confirmation, after the theme of aggregation has been discussed and evaluated at various family, group, city, and territorial levels. Having said that, the determination with which the Heads of Government of the two great countries under the attention of the new American president was anticipate the outcome of a process (integration) that requires complex elaboration. However, the ungracious expression of the political class of the countries in question that rejects a priori the hypothesis of a peaceful aggregation was also ill-advised. Although as I said it should not be up to politics to make judgments on issues that should be the exclusive competence of the community. Also, because politics often exudes a genuine nationalistic sentiment, perhaps to protect the status quo of the parties. And therefore, it is necessary that the delicate matter of the aggregation of territories that have a community of historical political, military and economic interests such as Canada and the United States, it is necessary that the matter, where proposed in acceptable terms and of common interest, be submitted first to a first popular referendum that will start, if positive, the preliminary discussions at a diplomatic level.
The case of Panama is certainly different and not easy to resolve, due to the presence of the Canal that has global importance as a waterway of international value and whose location in the center of the Americas is certainly not enough to affirm or demand that it return under US jurisdiction.
4. A Global Turning Point Is Expected, This Time Driven by the Potential for Innovation Offered by AI
The US economic problems, according to Trump’s version, could be solved with a series of tariffs, starting with Canada and Mexico, and then based on their relative commercial importance, China and the EU. It is inexplicable a priori how such a project, if implemented, could solve the problem of long-term inflation, which also influenced election against challenger Kamala Harris. It is not only the probable increase in inflation fueled by the wide-ranging tariffs proposed by Trump, in stark contrast to the pre-election hopes of the Democrats. The devil’s tail hides in the prejudice that the more or less high wall of tariffs could attenuate the US trade deficit. An unlikely thesis that postulates a recovery in domestic production (in the case of the United States) also due to the increase in prices of the product subject to tariffs. Inconclusive because we could witness a limited recovery in US domestic production, with greater domestic productivity but not new investment programs not justified by random tariff maneuvers. Tariffs are impositions subject to the comings and goings of agreements between importing and exporting countries, as well as subject to changes in political orientation. Therefore, an influx of investments into the country imposing tariffs to fill the (possible) shortfall in imported goods is unlikely. In addition to the doubts about the concrete possibility of containing the trade deficit in some areas through tariffs, it should be added that low-cost imported products, especially if of daily use and food, are sought after by the low-income classes (Milanovich, 1998). The increase in these costs is interpreted as a large inflation by the low-income area, in contrast to the expectations of those in the US who looked to the Republicans to improve purchasing power (Cossiga, 2024b).
Nor should it be forgotten that the long season of the relocation of US and EU industrial plants to the East has recently ended with the exhaustion of the boom in the value of stock exchanges and industrial assets, on a global scale. The political hypothesis of Nearshoring and Offshoring of transferred industrial plants has partly run out of steam and instead the hypothesis is gaining ground that a return of industrial structures close to home could materialize with the intervention of AI, even in the plant engineering sector with relative obsolescence of the industrial sector. The same sector that underwent the relocation to the East to enjoy the advantages of low costs and the added value created between stock exchanges and instrumental assets could return home or nearby, under the push of the new industrialization dictated by AI.
A new global turning point is therefore expected, driven by the innovation potential offered by AI, with the concrete prospect this time that the new industrialization in the perspective of AI would have no reason to veer from West to East. Consider that AI cannot invent or create now and in the coming years, but it can accelerate the potential for creativity and invention. It will not be able to write a Nobel Prize-winning novel, but it will be able to help the author. In the industrial sector, AI will intervene now and in the coming years on assembly lines, supply chains, costs and yields, automation and the presence of robots, the entire production cycle. With the result that the failure of Onshoring and Nearshoring, that is, the return home of industrial production will be overcome (Figure 2).
(A)
(B)
Source: Trading economic.
Figure 2. (A) United States, China and Euro Area—Trade balance 2020-2024; (B) United States, China and Euro Area—Inflation rate 2020-2024.
That is to say that Trump’s concerns, even if partly legitimate in a nationalistic vision, if implemented as indicated, would not have the possibility of bringing the results expected by the new president during his mandate. But they would have inevitable effects on the issue of domestic prices and on international trade (Cossiga, 2018b). Let us consider on the other hand that those with modest or very modest salaries depend, as far as daily consumption is concerned, on the contained prices precisely from free movement, which instead the duties would hinder. Therefore, a possible diffusion of the duties for now threatened would create strong discontent in the poorest segments of the US population and in the areas most dependent on the moderation of prices, in open contrast with the hopes created during the presidential elections.
5. Conclusion
On aspects that influence the economy, there is no lack of contradictions in Trump’s plans. Wanting to balance the US trade balance is not lacking in common sense. The easy and distorting choice of putting duties back into play to subvert the market and the free circulation of goods not only may not achieve the objective during the period of the presidential mandate. It causes alarms and countermeasures that worsen the condition of the markets. It would be better to wait for the rebalancing of foreign accounts to be adjusted with the new phase of AI-driven industry, which in the coming months or years should begin to create a new industrialization in the USA, in opposition to the long phase of relocation of industrial plants in China and Asia. A gradual return, driven by the new technology will bring among other things a widespread phase of development centered on a diffusion of economic development among the territories and continents that have so far marked a historical delay on the road to economic development.
An even greater incongruity is found in the hypotheses of solution suggested in the second term of the current US president. While he shows “manu militari” to bring back illegal immigrants in the USA to their countries of origin, he suggests that the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip be transferred to Sinai, the so-called big sandbox or partly to Jordan, with the offer of a congruent sum (dollars) that would certainly please a very indebted country, such as Egypt. Aside from the immediate refusal by Egypt and Jordan, the fact remains that maintaining territorial continuity between the Palestinians of Hamas and Israel clashes with common sense and the hope for a prolonged peace in the country. Because rebuilding the Gaza Strip in the next generation in twenty years and remaining in an atmosphere of endless creeping war is not a prospect. “My homeland is now where we live: the others are not far away” as the poet says (Pascoli). Time will tell the development of the delicate situation in the Mediterranean Middle East. While waiting for a Solomonian decision, one could hypothesize that the Gaza Strip be subjected to the extraordinary administration of the UN for a few years (at least ten) during which the creation of the two States and above all the decision on the fate of the Palestinians of the Strip is decided.
In this potential hypothesis, it could also be established that at the end of the UN management, the trusteeship of the area be entrusted to Israel, on the assumption that only a forced territorial discontinuity can provide assurance for a prolonged period of peace between the two contenders in the Middle East. Let us not forget, on the other hand, that the wind of war in the Strip comes from the Shiite Arabs, almost as if the war in the Palestine of the Strip were a war of religions. An absurd thesis takes us back to the times of the Crusades and Constantinople. Let’s clear the field of this joke. In reality it is a war of survival and resistance of a country, Iran, that looks with concern and anguish at the decline of the power of oil that is approaching, which however is aiming at the predominantly Shiite countries to expand its influence in the Middle East.
NOTES
1On September 17, 1787, representatives of the thirteen states voted by a majority against centralization and adopted a Constitution that made the United States a federal republic, applying the Enlightenment theory of the division of powers theorized by Montesquieu. “We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain this Constitution for the United States of America.”
2To make peace with Mexico, the United States agreed to pay $15 million in compensation for material damages and to cancel $3.25 million in debt that Mexico owed to U.S. citizens. On July 1, 2020, the new preferential free trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the United States, the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement), officially entered into force, replacing the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement).
3In Italy, the increase in the cost of bread became intolerable, a consequence of the protectionist policy of the Crispi Government—1887/1896—aimed at limiting French agricultural products with high customs duties, especially those related to wheat and its derivatives (rice, bran, etc. etc.), as well as steel and metallurgical products. This operation damaged the export and import of products to and from France. A customs war that generated a reaction in the labor market. Very cheap Russian and American wheat remained stuck rotting in French border warehouses because it was landed there but not placed on the Italian market. Therefore, serious riots broke out in various parts of Italy due to the associated increase in the price of bread. At the beginning of May, there was a peak in strikes and demonstrations. Martial law was declared in Milan and order was restored after violent clashes and hundreds of deaths and injuries. Naturally, the Government had many members of the young Socialist Party arrested.
4In Italy, the increase in the cost of bread became intolerable, a consequence of the protectionist policy of the Crispi Government—1887/1896—aimed at limiting French agricultural products with high customs duties, especially those related to wheat and its derivatives (rice, bran, etc. etc.), as well as steel and metallurgical products. This operation damaged the export and import of products to and from France. A customs war that generated a reaction in the labor market. Very cheap Russian and American wheat remained stuck rotting in French border warehouses because it was landed there but not placed on the Italian market. Therefore, serious riots broke out in various parts of Italy due to the associated increase in the price of bread. At the beginning of May, there was a peak in strikes and demonstrations. Martial law was declared in Milan and order was restored after violent clashes and hundreds of deaths and injuries. Naturally, the Government had many members of the young Socialist Party arrested.