Donald Channels Nero After Torching International Trade, Stock Market
By Tom Kagy | 04 Apr, 2025

An American emperor engages in drama-queen antics that may destroy the prosperity built on international trade.

Most of us think of Roman emperor Nero as the kook who fiddled while Rome burned.  We now think of Trump as a would-be emperor who went golfing at Mar-a-Lago the day after torching global trade and the US stock market.

In fact, the parallels between Nero and Trump run far deeper than easy imagery.  

Nero was a narcissist who considered himself a gift to the world.  He had zero regard for loyalty, the rule of law, or the dignity of human life.  Not only did he murder his mother, brother and sister to settle personal tensions, he had no qualms about having many innocent Christians killed as scapegoats for the fire that burned a quarter of Rome.  In fact, the self-absorbed tyrant is thought to have had the fire started to clear a large tract of land for a magnificent golden palace he had designed for himself.

Before we consider Nero's fitting end, let's examine how Trump is displaying the same kind of narcissism and tyrannical tendencies in virtually every act of his first 75 days in office. 

In the dark muddle of Donald's own mind his word is law, apparently never having learned about our constitutional separation of powers.  To him the legislative and especially the judicial branches are mere pesky impediments to the kinds of precipitous actions calculated to show that his campaign pledges are being carried out "bigtime".  

To Donald abruptly shipping off to foreign prisons law-abiding naturalized US citizens who have been legal US residents for decades is merely incidental to his push to show that he's deporting large numbers of immigrants of all stripes, supporting the implicit MAGA agenda of showing the more insecure among native-born Americans that under Donald they enjoy greater rights than mere immigrants.  Never mind that Donald himself is the product of an immigrant, as are every single one of the 200 million White Americans.

To Donald slashing essential federal agencies and destroying the international trading system with irrational tariffs is a way to show that he has the power to carry out his proclamations, no matter how thoughtlessly uttered.  He is justifying these disastrous tariffs by invoking an economic emergency — a bald fiction, as has been pointed out Wednesday by a majority of the Senate, including four gutsy GOP senators willing to buck Donald's MAGA agenda.  

Donald's strategic decision to invoke emergency powers under completely normal circumstances is like the bad decision made four months ago by former S. Korean president Yoon Seuk Yeol to declare martial law in an effort to facilitate quashing political dissent.  Yesterday Yoon was convicted in his impeachment trial and removed from office.

Donald, the would-be American emperor, may too face a similar fate once the dust settles, revealing the sheer senselessness of the massive disruption he has caused in everything that makes America a stable and prosperous society.

Getting back to Nero, he did end up building a lavish network of palaces in the ashes of the great Roman fire.  He also burdened the various regions with the cost of other massive projects, not unlike the wall Donald had his heart set on during his first term.  Or the zany "Golden Dome" to protect the US from missiles at virtually infinite cost.  Not surprisingly, a few courageous members of the Roman Senate decided they weren't willing to put up with more of Nero's costly excesses.  Their rebellion forced Nero, then only 31, to flee Rome.  

Ironically by that point the only followers who remained loyal to him were four freedmen, i.e., immigrants.  With their help Nero was able to work up the courage to commit suicide, ending one of the more tempestuous periods of the Roman empire, and kicking off an even more tempestuous one as four factions battled to claim the throne.

Donald isn't the type to take his own life.  But he is certainly setting himself up for a reckoning that may well end his political life.