Goodbye, California…and other blue states?

 

So I read an interesting article in Newsweek the other day, California to Negotiate Trade With Other Countries to Bypass Trump Tariffs. In it, the authors detailed efforts by California, and its energetic governor,  Gavin Newsom, to go around the Trump tariffs and trade directly with the affected countries themselves. 

I’m sure that this won’t fly. Nations cannot allow their constituent parts to deal with other countries as though they were, themselves independent. The California Republic cannot be, in other words, a genuine Republic. The term “nullification crisis” springs to mind. 

That said, it is fascinating that California is considering such actions. One suspects that other Blue States will follow. If they succeed, even if only partially, then something very important will have happened. It will mean that the country is beginning to divide between Blue States and Red.

Which means the great American union may be done and gone. And historians will know that the man who was most responsible for its demise was, of course, Donald Trump.

The individual who, more than anyone else, condemned a once great nation to division…and, probably, irrelevance in history.