In the Year 2025, if Man is Still Alive, What Things May This Way Come?

On New Year’s Eve, The Daily Doom ran a story about Americans fearing what lies ahead in 2025. A lot of the consternation, of course, is by liberals over how Trump is going to decimate Liberalland, particularly tearing apart the Deep State. Many of us would be glad to see the Deep State—the unelected, largely liberal, but also Neo-con military, federal employees who haunt the halls of government after each old regime is laid to rest by the election—dismantled.

That said, a lot of the public fear also focuses on the economy, and it is more than justified because we are fully bedeviled by years of profligate spending that now ride our backs without mercy as a heavy social burden. On top of that, we’re about to experience the impact that more trade wars, on top of the impact of taking down the Deep State, will exert on the entire social fabric as a social war. Wars are messy. The other side fights back. So, the two biggest concerns run this way:

56 percent expecting the country to experience "economic difficulty," and 76 percent forecasting "political conflict," according to a new survey.

Moreover, 80% of Americans see their society as sharply divided, and Trump is clearly a divider, not a uniter; so few people on either side have hope that the divisions will heal. Rather, each side hopes their side will prevail so the divisions become decided their way (and one article below by a MAGA writer even talks about the divisions now forming within the MAGA movement—a sort of internecine war). That would require the other side to give up, and that isn’t going to happen.

The survey was conducted by Gallop.

While I thought one nation divided with liberty and justice for some would turn out to be more chaotic last year than it did, it’s hard for me not to believe my prediction was merely a couple of months premature. I cannot imagine that the most concerted effort ever to tear down the embedded liberal structures in government that MAGA is intent on removing will not result in huge societal upheaval. If you’re a MAGA Man (or woman), of course, you are saying, “Bring it on!” But that’s just the point: it is coming, and the outcome is far from certain.

Our financial phantom

As part of our nation’s ongoing buildup toward economic ruin …

Some 62 percent of Americans expect the federal budget deficit, which grew to over $1.8 trillion in fiscal 2024, to increase further in 2025 while 37 percent believe it will be reduced.

And why would this specter from the dead not continue to haunt us? As one story notes below, if we simply stay on the same spending slope we’re on now, the US debt will exceed $50 trillion by the end of Trump’s term. The pathway of this constant presence in our lives has only become worse with time. You can hope Elon Musk’s DOGE will expel it, and maybe it will, but another article lays out what a political challenge that will be. (No surprise.)

It is also far from clear whether Trump’s promise of additional tax cuts will make the deficit worse or better, but past performance of tax cuts leans a bit toward worse as we’re already past the curve where dropping taxes boosts revenue by increasing profit incentives. You cannot go forever along that curve and keep experiencing higher revenue. It’s just mathematically impossible. Go far enough, and cutting taxes equals no revenue at all. So, it is a curve of diminishing returns.

Trump does promise to replace those income taxes with other taxes called tariffs, which essentially amount to sales taxes on American consumers because businesses are unlikely to absorb those added costs on their imports now that we are in an inflationary environment where businesses stopped soaking up the added costs many eerie moons ago and have been passing along all their higher costs, sometimes even with a premium for added profits’ sake.

One thing I am certain of about tariffs is that they will add upward pressure on inflation, not downward pressure. Even if companies absorb them as much as they can or manage to pass on a fair portion of them to the international businesses they are trading within price adjustments, there is still going to be some residual upward impact on US prices. There has never been a time when US tariffs have helped lower US inflation; and it’s hard to imagine they won’t raise it over time, especially as they also increase supply-chain problems.

No US importer ever said, “Let’s lower our prices now that we are paying large import duties on this stuff, and no foreign company exporting to the US ever said, let’s cut our prices by even more than is necessary to offset the tariff.” So, there is no chance that tariffs don’t cause some upward pressure on prices, and they may get passed along almost entirely to consumers since price elasticity has intensified as the ability to absorb cost impacts has been exhausted.

Biden is already emptying the government coffers with last-minute spending as quickly as he can before he makes his final exit from the Oval Office. So, that is likely to increase funding needs in 2025 as he spends out the limits remaining under his discretion during the final few days of Bidenomics. He’s not likely to leave a penny more than he has to for Trump to spend, but that is hardly surprising either.

Republicans, of course, having secured all branches of government (albeit with slim majorities), feel positive about where things will go from here.

World domination

Only 19% of Democrats believe the US will increase its power in the world. That is, I suspect (but do not know because I haven’t asked all of them) because they believe US influence in the world comes from the US government working diplomatically with other powerful liberal governments in the world in a partnering kind of way. So, by that worldview, a disruptive move against liberal institutions, as Trump is expected to make, will reduce US influence with other governments, particularly European, Canadian, and Australian.

However, 90% of Republicans believe US power in the world will increase. I would venture my own guess that this is because they believe their champion Trump will successfully assert dominance with some strong-arm moves.

Speaking to Newsweek Mark Shanahan, an American politics expert who teaches at the University of Surrey in the U.K, said: "If Americans had wanted a conflict-free year at home and abroad, they wouldn't have voted for Donald J Trump. He's now the most known quantity in US politics and his whole offering to the public is disruption. He may spark a short-term economic spike at home, but that's by no means guaranteed.

"Abroad, the deal maker's populist shtick may founder on the rocks of Chinese and Russian intransigence, while America's 'friends' fight against his America First agenda. The majority are most probably right as we all prepare to ride out a very choppy year."

I think that the battle outcome is far from decided. I am, however, more certain of the disruption side of the argument now than I was of my chaos prediction for 2024, but I hate retreaded predictions.

I don’t think Xi is likely to back down from the conflict he is intensifying, but China is becoming quite strained financially, too; so will circumstances make him desperate to take military approaches or anxious to do the practical thing and not disturb business but build better trade with the US? Generally, the Chinese are practical about business, but I’m not particularly hopeful about that outcome based on the trends I see in how Xi has acted for years as well as in how he responded to Trump’s first Tariff Wars. The fight is still on from those.

No one can stop China’s “reunification” with Taiwan, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in his New Year’s speech on Dec 31, laying down a clear warning to what Beijing regards as pro-independence forces within and outside of the island of 23 million people.

In the past year, Beijing has stepped up military pressure near Taiwan, sending warships and planes almost daily into the waters and air space around the island in what Taiwanese officials view as a creeping effort to “normalise” China’s military presence….

According to a report by a national security expert, the People’s Republic of China has ordered the largest military build-up of any nation in the world since Germany in the 1930s, raising concerns about the military threat presented by China.

So, with ten major world conflicts going on right now, war is about as certain as it has ever been; yet, Trump says he will tamp that down by negotiating some sort of armistice between Russia and Ukraine while helping Israel win all of its wars. I have no idea how that will turn out. It’s war. So, it is by nature highly unpredictable. If we could predict the outcomes of wars, maybe we wouldn’t get into them in the first place but would just say, “Look, we all know how this is going to go, so let’s just cut to the chase.”

Putin is a lot weaker than he was when he first started his war, but also more desperate. His forces look frazzled. His economy was exhausted. I’m not saying he is more weakened or desperate than Ukraine is, by any means, but both sides are looking intensely strained. Trump intends to leverage that to get both sides to come to a bargain. That could work. Now that attrition has taken a huge toll on both sides, the will to keep fighting is likely becoming fatigued on both sides.

I’ll just say I’m not optimistic that the world will become a more peaceful place with so many ongoing wars. Maybe Trump will pull off a miracle, but peace would be quite ironic coming from one known to be the Great Disrupter—a guy who seems to thrive on negative energy for its own sake just because he loves the thrill of a spectacular fight. Sometimes you have to fight things out, beat down bullies, to get to peace; but, if you fight because you love a good fight and love to be the center of attention by disrupting things, then that is fighting for its own sake; and I think peace is not a likely outcome.

In all of this, the one thing that is nearest to certain is that we are about to have a four-year chance to find out. One other near certainty, given history and Trump’s cabinet choices, is that the billionaires will do better than the rest of us. I’ll keep you posted on how the battles are going.