In 1938, five years into Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” the US remained mired in the depths of a “Great Depression.” Real income still hadn’t regained its 1929 level. Unemployment stood at six times at level. The nation languished in economic failure with no end in sight, making even the far-from-free-market policies of his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, look attractive by comparison.
Then, in 1939, a miracle! Europe went to war!
FDR saw that as a way to put America back to work. He instituted a “Lend-Lease” program, spinning up manufacturing to provide England with arms. He instituted the first US peacetime military draft. Americans opposed direct US involvement in a European war, so he went to work antagonizing Japan with oil and steel embargoes, knowing — or at least hoping — he’d get a war on THAT side of the world. Which, on December 7, 1941, he did.
US involvement in World War 2 didn’t end the Great Depression — it merely masked the symptoms for a little while, at the cost of 400,000 American lives.
What ended the Great Depression was widespread destruction across most of the world’s manufacturing capacity, while America’s remained untouched. We didn’t so much create our own fortune as gravy-train on the rest of the world’s misfortune. Global militaristic folly turned the US into an economic, as well as military, “superpower.”
Donald Trump calls himself a “peace president” abroad, even as he does his damnedest to devastate the economy at home with ruinous tariffs and an all-out attempt to deport the immigrants who constitute the backbone of American agriculture, construction, and manufacturing. The resulting dissatisfaction and unrest prompted him, earlier in June, to militarily occupy the country’s second-largest city.
Donald Trump needs two things very badly right now: A distraction from the consequences of his disastrous policies going forward, and some good economic news — even if it’s entirely artificial in nature — to cover up those consequences in retrospect.
His decision to order an unjustified and unprovoked June 22 attack on Iranian nuclear facilities answered that first need, at least for a moment.
Will he try to leverage the matter in pursuit of the second need as well? Time will tell.
As tariffs and deportations continue to decimate our ability to buy food, housing, and other necessities, it becomes more and more likely that he’ll try to pull an FDR.
Even if that temporarily “works,” the price ain’t right. Only freedom can produce prosperity — or peace.
Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
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