I think you are right, Robert, that these coincidences are more than coincidences.

There is, even if it is a bit chaotic and not totally unified, a Grand Strategy on the part of some to abolish or limit democracy, to "restore" certain values, and to destroy, in particular, the welfare state, and to destroy or eliminate certain "progressive" ideologies, ideologies which, in fact, are not, in my opinion, always that "progressive." The Left has a lot to answer for.

Conservative - or, rather, reactionary - think tanks have been working on this reactionary restoration project for many decades, since the 1940s in fact.

So, on a theoretic level, some - Trump - aim at the "patrimonial state" where the government is in fact a fiefdom serving the interests of a family or clan - and what has been called "technofascism" - and this has something in common with Italian Fascism and even with aspects of Vichy France - where technocrats rule, an idea that goes back to Plato, the technocrats then being philosophers.

Others, such as Steve Bannon, aim at a sort of libertarian anarchic destruction of the present in order to restore some mythical hierarchical idealized past.

All this is at a rather abstract level and it's a mixed bag but it can be enlightening.

As for the balance of payments and other countries "screwing" the US. I agree with your analysis.

But ,also, being a reserve currency can imply that you have to run current account deficits because other countries need to accumulate "reserves" of your currency and the only way they can do that is by running trade surpluses with you. This was, as I'm sure you know, called the Triffin Dilemma.

But if Germany exports a Mercedes to the US and the US pays for it, that is not exploitation, though for the Donald, who didn't like to pay his contractors and subcontractors, if you pay for something you bought it is scandalous and according to the Donald Doctrine you are undoubtedly getting screwed.

That said, some countries have followed mercantilist policies - export-led growth engineered by using an undervalued currency, restrictions on entry to the domestic market, national planning which through the allocation of incentives, the allocation of capital, and national planning with export objectives included.

And these policies have impacted industries and employment - and politics and polarization - in the rich importing countries - the US and Europe.

Export-led growth implies, of necessity, for trading partners, high imports. South Korea is an interesting case - policy was designed to force Korean industries to penetrate and compete in the "most advanced" markets - a recipe for climbing up the value chain.

Domestically, the relationship between finance and industry, between exchange rates and competitiveness has played out, in the UK, in the tension between The City (finance) and industry, and in the US between Wall Street (finance) and Industry, with the complication of retail chains depending on cheap imported goods, often very high quality goods

Polarization has deep complex roots and is partly obviously related to imbalances in the international monetary and trading systems, problems foreseen in part by John Maynard Keynes incidentally.

Trump's response to complex problems is, I fear, counter-productive and will make most problems worse and create new problems.

Much to say on the monetary front but for another day. Cheers. Gilbert gilbertreid.com