If the past is prologue, what to make of the early days of Trump 2.0? The first Trump transition in 2016 was characterized by foreboding, especially in the salons of Washington DC. What would a rank outsider do in the ultimate hall of power? How would Trump go about ‘draining the swamp’? Would the international order centered on America go off its axis, writes Louis Auge.
The answer, for the most part, was that the system held. Despite Trump’s personal foibles and Twitter incontinence, America kept its place in the world, the economy boomed, and, bar a post-election attempt at insurrection, Trump 1.0 unfolded largely as a Republican administration should. At least, policy-wise.
Which isn’t to say it didn’t get weird at times. Trump’s style is both controversial and unconventional. His solipsism often guided his decision-making to disastrous effect, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. And while he trusted his first administration to mostly establishment figures, he did also make use of his informal networks, whether that was a kitchen cabinet of private sector businessmen he would consult – like pillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell – over the telephone, or family members like his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner.
The mixing and matching of personal and private networks produced some conflict. Both Ivanka and Kushner had their knuckles rapped for mixing their formal roles with business interests, particularly in China. It was Kushner’s informal networks – in the form of ‘maverick private equity guy’ Gabriel Schulze, an ‘extra apparently pulled from the set of American Psycho’, according to Foreign Policy Magazine – that also produced Trump’s controversial overture to North Korea.
The blurring and obscuration of President Trump’s network and business interests was another feature of his first administration that experts expect to continue on in the Trump sequel. Just how much money did go into the Trump Organization’s pockets via the President’s use of Mar-a-Lago in Florida and the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC for official government business? The Donald might have railed against the ‘Biden crime family’ but Biden never charged the US Secret Service for the use of his golf courses.
The enthusiasm of Wall Street financiers and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs for a second Trump administration is a signal that both sectors expect the White House to once again be biddable and open for business. Elon Musk is already firmly ensconced, and some who tried it on during Trump’s first term, like Schulze, have since deepened their ties into Congress. The ‘frontier capitalist’ now counts Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts amongst his investors, and in Chinese concerns no less, an oft-stated concern for the past and future President.
A proper screen of those in the orbit of the Administration would normally spot and catch any conflicts of interest or politically-untenable connections. Which is why it’s worrying that Trump is asking the vetting of his appointments to be done by private firms and not the FBI, as is standard practice. It is an invitation for others to join the swamp.
A more curious administration would ask why people like Schulze – who, like Trump, is an heir to a family fortune (in this case, Newmont Mining) – is so eager to build ties with the administration while prospecting for fortunes in geopolitical (and authoritarian) hotspots like Georgia, Ethiopia, China and North Korea. The Schulze-Ricketts deal, according to news reports, involves a Chinese cement company that is building critical infrastructure in Ethiopia, a country whose burgeoning oil assets could be vital to China establishing some form of control over the shipping lanes in the Red Sea. A curious administration would ask if this activity is related to Schulze, currently a partner at Cerberus Capital Management, launching a lawsuit against a prominent and pro-Western Ethiopian entrepreneur named Tewodros Ashenafi?
Then again, if Schulze’s foray into North Korea is any indication, perhaps we have nothing to fear. The now Dubai-based entrepreneur was allegedly authorized to attempt to introduce Coca Cola to the Hermit Kingdom, a deal the beverage maker subsequently denied it was seeking, a prospective deal the respected Petersen Institute for International Economics essentially dismissed as fantasy, citing reporting from Forbes.
Indeed, the Forbes reporting bears quoting at length:
“[Schulze] has been surveying this forbidden market on the strength of informal connections to Coke and one of its bottlers, SABMiller, but without either company’s top-level approval. SABMiller sent a regional executive at Schulze’s invitation to the May meeting with Taepung Group, saying in a statement for this article, “however, we have no plans to invest in North Korea.” Coke turned down a request from Taepung Group (via Schulze) to visit this summer, and distanced itself from the remotest hint of soft-drink summitry in Pyongyang with this statement to FORBES ASIA: “No representative of the Coca-Cola Co. has been in discussions or explored opening up business in North Korea.”
Welcome to the world of ‘frontier capitalism’, I suppose. It is certainly a long way from the New Age commune on which Schulze’s parents met in the turbulent 1960s before settling into their long life of Christian ministry. And what does Father Schulze think of his son’s efforts at the bleeding edge of acceptable capitalism? Schulze answered the question in a 2013 profile in the Financial Times: “I think sometimes people, including my own father, in the past looked at us and said, are you guys just cowboys? I think you can be a cowboy once and be lucky but I think we’ve developed a pattern of success in getting into these markets.” Coke could not be reached for comment.
Not that Schulze will be discouraged, not with the resources of Cerebrus now backing him. If anything, he probably feels a deep kinship with those, like the space explorer Musk, who are now crowding around President Trump. “The boundaries of frontier investment will keep moving,” Schulze told the Financial Times in that same 2013 interview. “Some day in the decades to come we’ll be looking for first-mover advantage on Mars.”
Welcome to Trump 2.0: To infinity and beyond!
