I think that Adam Sosomething had a nice analysis of the three factors that make Trump's team tick (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijtYJrVBG_M&ab_channel=AdamSomething).
It's an alliance of fascists (including neo-nazis, christian fascists, etc. and represented by JD Vance, Mike Johnson, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter - who want to remake the country like the 1950s - more religious, more white, less diverse, and less gay), corporatists (represented by Zuckerberg, Bezos, Altman, Pitchai, Huang, Cook, Thiel - they just want to suck as much money from the corpse of America and pick the bones clean and if they aren't already they're hoping to become oligarchs), and the incompetent (represented by Trump and the useless but loyal faithful who he constantly hires to positions of power when left to his own devices).
Musk is incredibly popular in MAGAland because he bridges the gap - he's got strong fascist tendencies, is a corporatist, and has the ability to regularly and easily wow the incompetent. If another country wants to do business with the new America they have to find a way to be more like Musk - appeasing the fascists, oligarchs, and incompetent alike. Putin is a natural fit/match for all three, which is why the US keeps seeming to be aligning with him and his wishes. None of the US's traditional allies are able to bridge all three of these pillars of MAGA - hence the pushing away of former friends.
TBH I doubt this coalition can hold for very long, a crisis that goes badly and the whole thing collapses in infighting. You just can't have this many incompetent morons who all seem to hate each other fighting their own stupid turf wars and not have it spectacularly collapse. The tariffs may be the breaking point, who is Trump going to blame as the US economy collapses and there's no competency to successfully make the transition to an insular economy (if it can even be done "successfully". If it's not tariffs it'll be bird flu, or China invading Taiwan, or NK invading SK, or Israel invading Iran and the entire middle east going up in flames and the US has to support Israel, etc. etc. There's a lot of potential catastrophes that could very easily occur over the next couple of years that this administration just straight up does not have the competence to deal with. Many of them self-imposed.
I have been assuming that Trump is setting up Musk to be the fall guy when things go bad.
As a moron, I don't see Trump being able to outmaneuver Musk in that manner. Maybe if some of the other corporatists tire of Musk and Trump follows their advice it could happen . . . but they would still have to deal with the unpopularity of this amoung the fascists (and many of the morons).
So far, the fascists and corporatists have been managing the morons pretty well. If this pattern holds true, the corporatists will likely force a walk back of the tariffs within a few months before lasting damage is done to the US markets*. There's some risk of an uprising by Americans if the markets really crash super hard, but that wouldn't help things at all. It would immediately trigger the fascists to jump in and start demanding the end of rule of law as we know it now. Most morons would jump on board with this, and that's the end of democracy in the US for the foreseeable future.
*Biggest risk here is that the fascists actually want to crash the economy hard to trigger the end of rule of law.
As for the specific other cases you raised:
- Another pandemic will certainly kill a lot of people, but won't hurt the corporatists or the fascists. The morons won't be aware of the damage done to their number, so I don't see this as being a real problem.
- China invading Taiwan will likely raise the ire of the corporatists (most of them are big into tech, and tech depends on chips). I suspect that it will also raise the ire of the fascists (fascists don't like shows of military might by other countries - particularly countries made up of "inferior" races). My suspicion is that the US would probably act in this case.
- NK invading SK - none of the three factions cares at all. No US action. The fascists might privately enjoy it, they know how to speak with dictators and empathize with them.
- Israel invading Iran/Entire middle East going up in flames - Christian fascists will enjoy this, they're big fans of Israel and Israeli expansion. Christian Zionism is a thing, and there's a relatively common evangelical belief that this will help usher in the end of times that they're salivating for. Going up in flames is just signaling the beginning of the final holy war. So I'd expect some US support for this.
I don't see any mentioned instance where the coalition breaks up in the next couple years. Internal squabbling and occasional reshuffling, sure. But they know they're stronger together. Except the morons, but apart from a few wildcard moron ideas they've been pretty pliable so far.
