‘For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike’. That was the line Donald Trump took on Tuesday (April 2), to justify the long list of ‘reciprocal’ American tariffs on foreign imports he was announcing on what he chose to call ‘Liberation Day’. Included in his audience were a number of invited American autoworkers, who were asked to blame foreign tariffs on their exports and other ‘unfair’ practices for the decline of the car industry in Michigan and elsewhere.

That is being debated currently; as well as the question of whether Trump’s draconian taxes really will help revive American industry more generally: an issue I’m afraid I’m not competent to judge. (I would guess that Volvos sell better in the US partly because they’re superior cars; but that may simply be my pro-Swedish prejudice.) What interests me more, however, is the role that Trump is placing his country in, of ‘victim’ to all those horrible foreigners.

It’s clearly a canny card to play, in a world where most decent people side with the weak and hard done-by, rather than with the powerful bullies who are tormenting them. Britain has played it in most of the wars she has been involved in over the last hundred-odd years: defending ‘poor little Belgium’; ‘plucky Falklanders’; ‘brave Ukrainians’, and so on. Many of her colonial exploits were claimed to be justified as means of rescuing or safeguarding weaker native peoples. Israel has employed the same rationale continuously since 1948, exploiting Jews’ reputation as History’s leading ‘victims’: not only on account of the Nazi holocaust, but for centuries before. It’s a powerful trope; and so it’s not surprising to see Trump using it. Poor little America: ‘looted, pillaged, raped’ – eh? – ‘and plundered’ for all these years.

It’s odd, though, to hear the argument employed by the President of a powerful country that for decades has been seen as dominating, colonising (in one way or another) and ripping off other countries for at least eighty years now. And used to punish little countries (including one uninhabited one!); whose use of tariffs to safeguard their ‘infant’ industries against big rivals was even justified by the doyen of free traders, Adam Smith. It really is hard to see the USA as a long-term ‘victim’, in any way that would justify sympathy. Perhaps a victim of her own economic system? But that might not play so well.

Maybe it’s simply personal and psychological, on Trump’s part. It’s common knowledge that he’s a narcissist, and not as intelligent as he boasts. He must hate the derision that’s hurled at him, which makes him feel a ‘victim’ too. (That’s why he’s nice to those other world leaders who are – or pretend to be – nice to him.) It’s why both he and his Vice-President ‘hate’ Europe, where almost no-one apart from a few far Rightists gives him the respect he believes is his due. And it’s why he is so revengeful against his critics; with that revenge expressed now in the strongest way that he as a capitalist knows: through their nations’ pockets.