How Trump presidency is a mix of Louis XIV mercantilism and dictatorial rulership
Donald Trump’s presidency can be best understood not as a traditional democratic governance style, but through the lens of historical absolutism. He is, in essence, a hybrid figure part Louis XIV, part Hitler; not yet in terms of genocidal violence (although he flirts with policies that would lead to that), but in structure, symbolism, and the political mechanics of control.
Like Louis XIV, Trump views the state as an extension of himself. He embraces a 21st-century mercantilism: a crude belief that national strength is measured in accumulated wealth, and that trade deficits are evidence of weakness. Money, to him, is like gold to the ancien régime: concrete, finite, hoardable. Tariffs are not tools of negotiation but symbols of domination, levers to force other countries into tribute, to force others to produce in the United-States of America. He doesn’t sees the international economy as a complex web of mutual dependencies, but as a zero-sum game.
But Trump is also like Hitler; the decision-making process is not rational, linear, or institutional. It is court politics. Advisors are not policy experts, there to inform his judgement and help him and his administration makes the best decisions, but courtiers. Influence is achieved not by persuasion but by manipulation; by making him believe that your idea was his all along. His staff doesn't advise they flatter, maneuver, and interpret his vague impulses into policy. He gives broad brush strokes like “I want a portrait”, and others must guess at the style, subject, and meaning. If they succeed, they are rewarded with his favour. If they fail, they loose his favours and if they loose it too much they are dismissed.
This dynamic explains the inconsistency and chaos of his policy, especially on trade. It isn’t strategy, it’s the outcome of internal factional battles. Each trying to please a president who neither understands nor cares about the details. There is no doctrine. Only mood.
Take, for example, the issue of "aliens". When Trump says they should be put in camps, he doesn’t sketch out a plan. Instead, factions within his administration scramble to deliver one. One group looks to Guantanamo; another turns to El Salvador. The second group wins out in the end, not because of ethics or efficiency, but because it lets Trump outsource the mess. It aligns with his instincts: strongmen, tough borders, no accountability.
Even in economic matters, there is little true leadership. Only factions, like the one Lutnick finds himself in, focused on market stability. Lutnick understands that Trump can’t be reasoned with in conventional ways. Instead, he tries to engineer outcomes that make him feel like a winner, even when nothing changes. The USMCA, a rebranding of NAFTA, is a case in point in his first administration.
But this faction is weak. Its members are always on thin ice. Their contradiction is unresolvable: they want to calm the markets while reducing the trade deficit, a goal Trump obsesses over but does not understand. Sooner or later, their failure to deliver results will turn Trump against them, and another courtier will rise, someone more willing to tell him what he wants to hear.
In the end, everything revolves around Trump. And yet, paradoxically, very little is truly directed by him. He is both the sun and the void around which the court orbits. Power is personalized, not institutional. Decisions are performative, not deliberative. The danger of such a system isn’t just its inefficiency or cruelty, it’s that it is unstable. It depends entirely on who captures the ear of a man who listens only to himself.
