A shift in domestic policy and role of the U.S. government accompanies its shift to empire and the goal of world rule that began with the Spanish-American War. This is clearly the case just before and during World War I when government expands and controls the economy. The goal of world rule requires domestic superiority in production, a term that includes inventions and technical advances, especially in military matters, but not limited to them. This is the reason behind positing one domestic end for the U.S. government: Production superiority.

The Employment Act of 1946 exemplifies legislation that codifies this extensive and national goal:

“The Congress hereby declares that it is the continuing policy and responsibility of the Federal Government to use all practicable means consistent with its needs and obligations and other essential considerations of national policy, with the assistance and cooperation of industry, agriculture, labor, and State and local governments, to coordinate and utilize all its plans, functions, and resources for the purpose of creating and maintaining, in a manner calculated to foster and promote free competitive enterprise and the general welfare, con­ditions under which there will be afforded useful employment oppor­tunities, including self-employment, for those able, willing, and seeking to work, and to promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power.”

This overriding goal is obscured by much of what Congress enacts that does not seem to promote productivity. That is because the two parties disagree on means, because the government makes mistakes, and because the “natives”, the American people, get restless when the economy sours. Congress responds to pressures to enact social and economic laws that degrade production and redistribute wealth, but does so anyway because this stops the natives from becoming too restless. The Hoover and Roosevelt administrations enacted all sorts of malign laws from the standpoint of enhancing the U.S. economy, but these appeased restless constituencies. The regulatory socialism enacted by the U.S. government does not “promote free competitive enterprise and the general welfare”. It allows the government to maintain control of the country’s people and industry, without which its domestic power would be challenged. The establishment cannot allow the system to undergo a fundamental change that removes its power and forecloses its aim of world rule.

Importing skilled labor and outsourcing manufacturing has been a means of maintaining production superiority. Trump thinks that this has gone too far and weakened the American production edge. The establishment does not agree. If American manufacturers must hire more American workers, this also will tone down the restlessness of the natives. Whether Trump is correct or not in seeking to alter these policies, he is trying to achieve the goal of American production superiority. He is in tune with the broader purpose of the empire whether he knows it or not.

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