The Inclination to Raw Force

At The Bulwark, Catherine Rampell lists four key reasons that Taking Venezuela’s Oil Isn’t the Win Trump Claims (sub. req'd). Her four well-supported contentions are that (1) it’s not clear the United States needs more oil, (2) even if we did want more oil, that doesn’t mean we’d want Venezuela’s, (3) Venezuela’s political instability and history of expropriation make investment risky, and (4) Trump-style socialism is unlikely to pay off.

This fourth problem with Trump's plan is convincing in the case of oil, and applies beyond oil. Rampell writes:

Lots of U.S. companies, in lots of sectors, have made choices that might appear to contradict their narrow economic interests under more traditional circumstances, because they fear crossing President Trump. In just the first year of this administration, the United States has already seen a lot of state-directed investment and socialization of private companies. In some cases firms have preemptively capitulated to Trump’s right-wing socialism, or state capitalism, or whatever you want to call it. And there is some reporting suggesting the possibility of a “joint venture with the U.S. government, in which American taxpayers would invest in drilling in return for a stake in any profits,” per the Washington Post.

While Trump can bully companies into making investments that lack financial sense, he can’t actually bully those investments into profitability.

See Catherine Rampell, Taking Venezuela’s Oil Isn’t the Win Trump Claims, The Bulwark, January 7, 2026.

This brings all of us to another question, about what we would describe as Trump's economic views. As most people have a coherent economic outlook, it's rational to assume that Trump does, too. (Admittedly, Trump does have a decades-long, destructive commitment to tariffs.) Reasonably, though, Rampell is right that Trump's economic approach is, futilely, to bully investments into profitability.

Writing about Trump's approach to Venezuela, Greenland, or Cuba at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall describes Trump's general approach to any domestic or foreign issue:

Very little of this is ideological. It’s instinctual, core to Trump’s character and way of navigating the world. We can map it on to theories of international relations. But that’s not where it comes from. Trump is the same guy in business as in domestic policy as in foreign policy. This has been a rough week for the rubes who bought the idea that Trump was in some way anti-war. But we’re dealing with the same issue of the persistence of character. It is wild to imagine the same man who operates by surprise, uncertainty and exertions of raw force at home wouldn’t do just the same thing abroad. Which of course is precisely what he is doing.

See Josh Marshall, Trump’s ‘High-Fear’ World, Talking Points Memo, January 7, 2026.

Trump has no coherent economics, no coherent foreign policy. Neither do his die-hard supporters. It's this — the bullying and raw force that Trump exhibits — that binds his base to him. They delight in this outlook, across thousands of Facebook comments in thousands of towns, every day.

He and they are united in using force to compel submission from their perceived common enemies. Trump despises what they despise, and they're loyal to him for it.