They say Trump governs by chaos. That he acts impulsively, erratically, without a plan. But what if that is the plan? What if the chaos is the cover? What if the daily spectacle—the tariffs, the purges, the budget cuts, the Twitter feuds—isn’t just noise, but a smokescreen for something colder, more calculated?
Because behind the outrage lies a pattern. Not of leadership, but of looting.
When institutions are gutted, when rules are rewritten, when the lights go out in the agencies that protect the public—who steps in? Not the small farmer. Not the corner shop. Not the family clinging to a mortgage. It’s the well-connected, the well-capitalized, the politically protected. The ones who know how to turn wreckage into wealth.
That’s the real game. And it’s happening in plain sight.
Take tariffs. Pitched as a punch to China, they’ve hammered small manufacturers and family farms here at home—people who can’t absorb the costs or reroute their supply chains overnight. Many go under. And when they do? Hedge funds, multinationals, and campaign donors are waiting, checkbooks in hand.
It’s not protectionism. It’s predation.
And it doesn’t stop at trade. In his second term, Trump is gutting the civil service—replacing experienced professionals with loyalists. Not to drain the swamp, but to drain the brakes. Environmental protections? Scrapped. Watchdogs? Fired. Procurement rules? Bypassed. With no one left to say no, federal agencies become pipelines for favors, land grabs, and sweetheart deals.
This isn’t deregulation. It’s a hostile takeover of the state itself.
Housing follows the same script. With tenant protections stripped and public housing defunded, eviction becomes policy. Neighborhoods are emptied. Then come the “Opportunity Zones”—tax shelters wrapped in the language of renewal. The public loses homes. Developers get subsidies.
And education? It’s being slowly bled out. Public schools are starved, then slandered, then sold off. Vouchers and charters vacuum up resources, while billionaires move in on school buildings, test contracts, and real estate.
Even disaster has become a business model.
COVID shuttered small businesses by the thousands. Many got nothing. But big tech, logistics giants, and private equity firms made a killing. Now Trump is back to the same script—slashing Medicaid, defunding science, gutting the safety net. Because every crisis is a chance to clear the field. And when the dust settles, only the powerful remain.
We’ve seen this before. In Mexico, where public cooperatives were crushed by debt, then sold off to cronies. In Russia, where state assets became oligarch fortunes overnight. In New Orleans, where homes, schools, and lives were swept away—only to be rebuilt for someone else.
Trump doesn’t need a governing vision. He just needs the wreckage. Because in the wreckage, rules disappear. Oversight vanishes. And billionaires buy what’s left.
This isn’t governance. It’s liquidation.
So don’t be fooled by the chaos. It’s not a distraction. It’s the business model.
And if we don’t call it what it is—organized looting, sanctioned by the state—it won’t just continue.
It will become the future.
(c)James B. Greenberg
Author Bio: James Greenberg is a Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Founding Editor of the Journal of Political Ecology, and past president of the Political Ecology Society.