Ronald Reagan once asked Americans a simple question: âAre you better off than you were four years ago?â Today, the answer is harsher. We arenât even as well off as we were last year. Wages are flat, prices are rising, and the institutions that once gave the economy stability are being hollowed out. What is sold as strength and resurgence is in fact an economy designed to failâstructured to reward the wealthy, punish the vulnerable, and erode the trust that makes markets function.
In 2025, we are not witnessing the failure of policy. We are witnessing the success of a system built to concentrate power, extract value, and destabilize the institutions that once anchored economic resilience.
Tariffs illustrate the logic. Marketed as patriotic tools of economic independence, they function in practice as a flat tax: shifting the burden from the rich to the poor. When tariffs are imposed on imported goods, itâs not corporations or billionaires who absorb the cost. Itâs families buying groceries, clothing, and household items whose prices quietly rise. Tariffs drive inflation, not investment. They punish consumption, not capital, and they do so indiscriminatelyâhitting low-income households hardest. Trumpâs trade war is not just a foreign policy gambitâit is a domestic tax policy disguised as nationalism. Families look around and know the answer to Reaganâs question: they are paying more and getting less.
The consequences extend far beyond the checkout counter. Investors, spooked by protectionist rhetoric and institutional instability, are reallocating billions abroad. The dollar has lost over 13% of its value since Trump took office [1], while Treasury yields have spiked. The euro is gaining groundânot because Europe is booming, but because it now looks safer than the United States. This is not just a currency shift. It is a vote of no confidence in American leadership.
The dollarâs role as the worldâs reserve currency is now under threat. Historically, the dollar has been the anchor of global tradeâa symbol of stability, backed not by gold but by trust in U.S. institutions. That trust is more than confidence in numbers on a ledger. It is a kind of cultural infrastructure: an invisible contract that makes credit, debt, and exchange possible. When leaders politicize the Federal Reserve or manipulate data, they are not just undermining markets. They are tearing at the foundations of economic life itself.
In quantum systems, entanglement describes a state of deep relational coherenceâparticles remain connected across space and time, even when separated. Institutions function similarly. They are not isolated entities but interdependent nodes in a civic field. When leaders politicize central banks or manipulate data, they sever these connections. What collapses is not just confidenceâit is coherence. The economy decoheres, and with it, the possibility of resilience.
Trumpâs attempt to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, despite lacking legal authority, has triggered a constitutional crisis over central bank independence [2]. Foreign central banks are quietly reducing their dollar holdings. Global investors are demanding higher risk premiums to hold U.S. debt. If the dollar loses its reserve status, the consequences will be profound: higher borrowing costs, reduced global leverage, and a domestic economy exposed to sharper volatility and deeper inequality. The rest of the world is quietly asking its own version of Reaganâs questionâand answering no.
Meanwhile, the jobs Trump promised have not materialized. Despite claims of a manufacturing renaissance, employment growth has stalled. The July jobs report showed just 73,000 new positionsâfar below expectations [3]. Sectors like auto manufacturing and construction, which were supposed to benefit from trade protection and domestic investment, are instead facing labor shortages, rising costs, and declining output. Administration data shows most new jobs are low-wage, temporary, or clustered in politically favored industries. The broader labor market is softening, and the promised boom is nowhere to be found. For workers who once believed the promise, the verdict is plain: they are worse off than before.
Mass deportation has only deepened this fragility. Trumpâs crackdown has removed over a million workers from the labor force since January [4], gutting agriculture, hospitality, and elder care. Crops are rotting in fields. Restaurants cut hours. Construction sites are understaffed. The economic damage is not theoretical: it is unfolding in real time. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, Trumpâs deportation agenda will shrink GDP by nearly 5% over the next decade and increase the federal deficit by almost $1 trillion [5]. These are not side effects. They are the design.
This is not simply bad economicsâit is a politics of precarity. In this system, instability itself becomes the instrument of control. Workers kept uncertain are less able to organize. Migrants forced into the shadows cannot claim rights. Investors rattled by policy whiplash retreat into short-term speculation rather than long-term stability. Precarity becomes the currency of governance.
This disruption is more than a matter of supply and demandâit is a rupture in the social contract. Immigrant labor has long sustained the invisible infrastructure of American life. When those workers are removed, itâs not just productivity that suffers. Itâs trust. Employers lose confidence in continuity. Workers lose confidence in fairness. Communities lose confidence in stability. Deportation doesnât just remove peopleâit removes the connective tissue of economic life.
In quantum terms, this is decoherence: the collapse of relational structure under external disruption. Migrant labor is not just economic input; it is entangled with continuity, care, and community. When deportation severs these links, the system doesnât just lose productivity. It loses its capacity to adapt, to trust, to evolve. Fragility emerges not from absence, but from disconnection.
From this perspective, fragility is not an accident of Trumpâs economy but its organizing principle. By dismantling the very forms of trust and continuity that hold markets together, the administration builds an economy where volatility benefits the few and disempowers the many. Here the state is not a referee but an economic actor, remaking markets by deciding who belongs inside them and who is forced out.
Trust, the invisible currency of any economy, is being systematically dismantled. The politicization of the Federal Reserve, the manipulation of economic data, and the purging of career officials from regulatory agencies all send a clear message: the rules are no longer neutral. Institutions that once anchored market stability are now tools of political control. Investors notice. Workers notice. Consumers notice. And when trust erodes, so does resilience.
Trumpâs immigration crackdown has also reshaped enforcement agencies into instruments of economic disruption. ICE and DHS have been rebranded through recruitment campaigns that glorify militarism and border violence, while internal culture shifts have normalized far-right symbolism and rhetoric. These agencies now operate not just as immigration enforcers but as enforcers of labor precarityâremoving workers, intimidating communities, and reinforcing a climate of fear that destabilizes entire sectors of the economy. This is not neutral law enforcement. It is economic warfare carried out through the machinery of the state.
Meanwhile, the benefits of this economy remain tightly concentrated. Corporate profits are soaring, fueled by deregulation, tax loopholes, and preferential contracting. The âBig Beautiful Bill,â passed in March, allocated billions to defense contractors, surveillance firms, and private prison operatorsâmany with direct ties to Trumpâs inner circle. Stock buybacks and executive compensation have surged, even as wages stagnate and small businesses struggle under the weight of tariffs, labor shortages, and compliance uncertainty. The economy is not lifting all boats. It is selectively flooding the yachts.
For workers and consumers, the Trump economy is a landscape of rising costs, shrinking wages, and narrowing mobility. For global partners, it is a source of volatility and unpredictability. And for institutions, it is a stress test they are increasingly failing. This is not a rising tideâit is a controlled flood. The damage is not collateral. It is the design.
Trump promised to make America great again. Instead, he has built an economy that trades stability for volatility, security for fear, and shared prosperity for the enrichment of a few. What we are left with is not greatness but a dangerous illusionâan economy designed to fail most of us so it can serve the rest.
James B. Greenberg
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Endnotes
[1] U.S. Dollar Index data, Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), 2021â2025 trend showing cumulative decline.
[2] Congressional Research Service, âFederal Reserve Independence and the Attempted Removal of Governors,â March 2025 briefing.
[3] Bureau of Labor Statistics, âEmployment SituationâJuly 2025.â
[4] Department of Homeland Security, âEnforcement and Removal Operations: Monthly Summary, 2025.â
[5] Penn Wharton Budget Model, âMacroeconomic and Fiscal Impacts of Large-Scale Deportation,â 2025 analysis.
