this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
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The president should not have their own clothing line and currency.
But what if the clothing line was selling custom versions of high quality labels like Hugo Boss?
Your shirt can be any color as long as it's black. Something-something honor and loyalty.
What about black, red, and white? Maybe the black part is a catchy symbol? We can turn it a bit so it’s not copyright infringement.
Can just replace it with an S rune, it's not copyrighted. With another rune, so it will be "US" and "undefeatable" shortened at the same time. In white circle, on red background.
What's wrong with owning a clothing line as president? As long as they're not using their office to impact their business in any meaningful way, I have no issues at all with it. So before taking the oath of President, you should be required to demonstrate that you have removed yourself from any obligations or loyalties you may have (so appoint someone to take care of your company(s) and whatnot).
As long as decisions made by the company have zero relationship to the actions of the President, I'm fine with it. And Congress and the Supreme Court should have some checks against that (i.e. Congress should be able to set rules for the President through legislation, and the Supreme Court should be able to review executive actions and force divestment if there's evidence of bias).
I despise Trump, but let's not be hasty.
Ok and the currency? That undermines the currency of the country he is serving. What if Biden came out with Biden Bucks you think he wouldn't be attacked from every angle?
He'd be attacked, but not by me. Likewise for Harris or anyone else running for President. I'd call it stupid and probably scammy, but I wouldn't suggest that it somehow undermines the US.
If Trump's crypto platform or "Biden Bucks" or whatever takes off enough that it threatens the national currency, then perhaps we should be using it instead of the national currency. Competition is good, and we shouldn't be using a currency just because the government wants control, we should be using it because it provides value. In the case of the dollar, that value is stability and ubiquity, and if Trump, Harris, or anyone else can do it better than the Federal Reserve, perhaps we should all be using that instead of the dollar. I highly doubt that's the case, but it certainly doesn't affect someone's eligibility to run for President.
That said, they should divest themselves of any controlling interest in anything that could impact their role as President. That means handing off control to someone else, and ensuring that someone else doesn't have any way to impact your decisions.
A politician should not be allowed to own something they have the explicit power to artificially inflate the value of. For the president, that's all businesses.
As for currency, again, the president has the ability to crash the value of the American currency and drive people to his currency in order to artificially inflate it. Sacrificing an entire global economy for personal gain should not be possible.
But not only is it possible, now with the recent Supreme Court ruling, he'd be immune to prosecution for doing it, so why wouldn't he do it?
That's where there should be a requirement to demonstrate that you have removed yourself from any conflicts of interest. Trump didn't do that (at least not in a way that's satisfactory to me), and I think there should be a change to the qualifications for President that includes some level of divestiture.
But the President doesn't really have the power to do that. The Federal Reserve does (and there's a lot of legal barriers between the President and the Fed) and Congress does, but the President can't directly crash the value of the dollar. Look at Trump's campaign, he says he should have direct control over the Fed, not that he does. Making that change would be a big deal that would piss a lot of people off.
The Supreme Court immunity ruling is absolutely dangerous and Congress should fix that ASAP, but that doesn't mean the President can go devalue the currency on their own. That's just not how things work. The closest they can do is attempt to fire board members of the Federal Reserve and appoint new ones that would hopefully listen to them, and that would be challenged by the Supreme Court. According to the ruling, they'd be immune from making the attempt, but that doesn't mean the attempt can just go through w/o review.
But Trump believes that all executive branch employees are directly reportable to him and he forced out and refused to replace many employees. Also, there is Schedule F. Trump didn't have enough time to fully implement it the first time. This removed employees are n "confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating" positions from the General Schedule. Meaning they were political appointees going forward. Biden rescinded it immediately so it never got used, but it will be reimplemented.
With that, he has the power to implement almost anything without oversight. When he implements his tariffs for example, and other countries retaliate with their own, the value of American goods will plummet since they'll be way more expensive. This will reduce trade and thus the value of the currency. And no amount of tweaks to interest rates will stop that.
Sure he can't print money, but the reliability ratings of US debt are already declining due to the fights over the debt ceiling, and Trump supports that fight and doesn't believe that the US should have to pay those debts because of the investments we've made. Simply blocking those payments could tank the currency. There are tons of ways if there's no legal consequences and most employees are replaced with his loyalists.
Sort of, he believes they should be, not that they are. He wants to replace merit-based positions with appointments, which means he can more easily replace them as needed.
The value of American goods is irrelevant. We're not a net exporter, and our most valuable trade partners (Canada, Mexico, EU) would likely get exceptions.
Tariffs would hurt imports and result in more purchases of local goods, which increases demand for labor while decreasing purchasing power (i.e. inflation), but then we'd respond with higher borrowing rates, which decreases labor demand and fewer total purchases of goods, etc. The short-term impact is a spike in labor demand, but the longer term impact is slower growth. It's a bad policy, but it's not so inflationary that the dollar would lose value, the average American would just become worse off. We need the dollar to be stable because we need it to remain the main international reserve currency, and we're absolutely willing to let the average consumer suffer to keep that status.
I guess he could theoretically veto a budget, but Congress would likely pass it anyway. He doesn't have that much control over his own party, and doing that would piss off voters enough that they'd likely lose in the midterms. It's not going to happen, the fight over the debt ceiling is for concessions, and politicians will concede to prevent default.
There has pretty much never been legal consequences for the President, the only thing the Supreme Court decision does is say the quiet part out loud. We'll put on a show for things like Clinton's affair or whatever, but not for anything of consequence. The law is scary, but Presidents have largely been immune from legal consequences for pretty much the entire history of the US.
They could have some fucking dignity for one thing. Respect the office.
Sure, that's another thing I hate about Trump, but I don't see what that has to do with what they own.