Private Sector Flop
Several lessons can be drawn from the now chaotic and dysfunctional Donald Trump Presidency.
However, given the current debate in the Caribbean on the necessity for private sector-led development, the most urgent lesson of the Trump fiasco is its explosion of the myth of the political wisdom of the business class.
In the USA, this myth is an ingrained part of the national consciousness symbolised by the image of the public sector as a bureaucratic backwater, peopled by dull and demotivated workers. In the 2016 election, this was translated to an anti-politician narrative, with “political insiders” seen as being unable to do the obvious simple things that would bring about instant transformation. Governing was supposed to be something that “any one can do”, except for those who were so “experienced” that they could no longer govern.
In the Caribbean, these anti-public sector sentiments have been latent, but perpetual. Following universal adult suffrage, the politically marginalised Europeanised sections of the economically dominant class, never hid their contempt for the “little black boys who could not manage anything”.
Today, historical amnesia has set in, and sections of the majority population continue to echo the myth of a backward public sector. “Government” is being reduced to a managerial-technical function, devoid of the question of the “balancing of sectional interests”. Hence today, we have political parties being sprung on the basis of government as “technical management”.
Thankfully, the wold now has the negative example of Donald Trump, providing us incontrovertible evidence that private sector success is not synonymous with governmental capability.
Trump’s major problem is “political ignorance”. He is discovering that running a private firm is a cake walk, when compared to the myriad, complex and unpredictable variables that one has to juggle when running a government. He genuinely did not know why the US could not engage with Taiwan, why China’s “devalued currency” could not be corrected by his say-so, and he is also now discovering that as a ruler he simply cannot do as he wishes.
Amazingly, Trump is fouling up despite his party having a majority in both houses. In addition to his incompetence, ninety percent of his problems spring from private sector ego: nepotism; reliance on personal friends of dubious quality; know-it-all arrogance bred from a life of privilege, and little else.
These are attitudes with which Caribbean citizens are now familiar. The Caribbean public sector is teeming with very accomplished highly educated and well trained individuals who have had to sit silently while the “blockheads” who struggled through school but who have landed private sector positions through blood connections, are busy down-crying the backwardness of the public sector.
Perhaps as Trump continues to flop, some balance and common sense will return to our discussions on the appropriate place of the public and private sectors in Caribbean development.
