U.S. President Donald Trump is not afraid of picking fights. From tit-for-tats with foreign leaders to squabbling with U.S. state governors, Trump has a propensity for making policy personal. This was most evident last week when he had a very public falling out with Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who had become one of Trump's closest advisers since supporting his presidential bid last summer.
It started when Musk, who had left his post in the administration on good terms the week before, publicly opposed Trump's proposed tax cut and spending bill, calling it a "massive, outrageous, pork-filled … abomination" that would "defeat all the cost savings achieved" by his own so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. After a series of additional posts by Musk criticizing the budget, Trump finally replied , telling reporters that he was "very disappointed" in his former adviser and that, while they "had a great relationship," he was no longer sure that would be the case moving forward.
It escalated from there, with Musk implicating Trump in sex crimes, claiming Trump wouldn't have won the election without his help, and lambasting Trump's tariff policies, which he said threatened to pull the economy into a recession. For his part, Trump threatened to cut the government's contracts with Musk's businesses and even announced his decision to sell the car he purchased from Musk's company, Tesla.
While the heated exchanges peaked a week ago, with Musk now admitting that he might have gone too far With his social media posts, the two sides have yet to reunite. The impetus of Musk's attack—Trump's tax cuts and spending bill—is now at risk of losing some much-needed Republican support in the Senate, in all likelihood due in no small part to Musk's criticism of it.
During the first few months of Trump's administration, Musk was instrumental in orchestrating DOGE's efforts to rationalize and reform the functioning of the U.S. government as well as to reduce its size. From cuts to U.S. foreign aid and the elimination of agencies responsible for scientific research, to the closing of entire agencies that provide basic government functions, such as weather tracking, pandemic prevention and emergency response, DOGE has left a mark on the U.S., both domestically and abroad.
Given the prominence of those efforts, coupled with the Musk's visibility in the Oval Office during his time in the administration, Trump may not have taken kindly to the perception that Musk was truly the one in charge. After all, such perceptions didn't sit well with Trump when they were projected onto Steve Bannon during his first term.
Just as the wealth-politics nexus in the United States is not unique to Trump and Musk's relationship, so is the nexus itself not unique to the United States.
While the two men's falling out was perhaps predictable , the public spectacle of it when it happened offered a bit of Schadenfreude for their critics, and even some of their supporters , who had grown weary of the chaos the two had sown since the beginning of the year. But others see a darker side to the episode. The Guardian's Blake Montgomery wrote ", perhaps the loser is democracy itself rather than Musk." Political scientist Abe Newman also mourning What their spat, but also their prior relationship, means for U.S. democracy, he says, highlighting how the country now operates more according to the power and egos of wealthy individuals than through institutions. The Trump-Musk fight, he wrote, "signals how far US economy/politics has deviated from rule of law. We have entered a world in which rich people are not just donors but seek to steer the government."
I agree with Newman, with one caveat: As with many things that Trump takes to extremes, this is by no means a recent development. Just as presidential power has long been a function of what is politically possible rather than legally permissible and U.S. policy toward its allies has long been uncomfortably coercive , the centrality of wealth in U.S. politics and governance under Trump is more a sign of continuity than change. The falling out between the world's richest person and the world's most powerful person only underscores this point.
The U.S. Treasury has repeatedly bailed out corporations and financial firms, even those engaged in risky lending, when episodes such as the 2008 financial crisis and before that the 1980s Savings and Loan crisis threatened to devastate the economy and, in turn, the political prospects of U.S. elected leaders. These protective measures even extended to financial firms investing abroad, such as the Federal Reserve's efforts to save the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund from insolvency during the East Asian Financial crisis in the late 1990s.
One could go back even further. The U.S. government relied on J.P. Morgan to save the banking sector—and the U.S. economy—during the 1908 financial crisis. The captains of industry and robber barons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries—a historical period during which America, according to Trump, was at its greatest—wielded great influence on U.S. politics and policy. In the middle of the 19th century, it was the wealthy southern slaveholders This drove the secession crisis of 1860 that led to the Civil War. And one should not overlook how many of the founders of the United States were themselves some of the most affluent members of colonial society.
When attempts have been made to limit the influence of wealth in politics, such as the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002 restricting the ability of corporations to donate money to political campaigns, it has been short-lived: The Supreme Court overturned that bill in 2010 with a 5-4 decision .
To be certain, just as the wealth-politics nexus in the United States is not unique to Trump and Musk's relationship, so is the nexus itself not unique to the United States. Sovereign monarchies gave way to democratic systems in 19th- and 20th-century Europe in large part as a bargain by conservative landholders and court-aligned aristocrats to ensure the support of key capitalist wealth-holders. Even autocracies today are on fragile footing if they lose the support of, not the masses, but the wealthy class. For instance, the interplay between wealth and power is a key feature of the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin, where Russian "oligarchs" are dependent for Putin's support for their economic wellbeing, even as Putin-who may well be the wealthiest A person in Russia must maintain their loyalty to shore up their political power.
Years ago, the political scientists Adam Przeworski and Michael Wallerstein referred to this aspect of government as the "structural dependence of the state on capital." By this they meant that "under capitalism all governments must respect and protect the essential claims of those who own the productive wealth of society." The same idea is found in the writings of Karl Marx, but also of Adam Smith. The paper by Przeworski and Wallerstein was published in the late 1980s, in the midst of the Savings and Loans bailouts mentioned above, and while they drew on history for their evidence, their core argument remains relevant today. This isn't to say that corporations conquer the world and that the true levers of power are in the hands of their CEOs, rather than elected national leaders. But the symbiosis between the two is quite evident.
By his manner, rhetoric, and propensity to always say the quiet part out loud, Trump takes this characteristic to an extreme. But it is not a fundamental change in the operation of the U.S. government, which, like most governments, has long been dependent on, and even subservient to, capital.
Paul Poast is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a nonresident fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
The post Wealth Has Always Offered Outsized Influence in U.S. Politics appeared first on World Politics Review .
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