Contributed by Joe Montero

It may seem that United States politics and the battle between Donald Trump and Kamela Harris is a long way from Australia. Geographically maybe. But what happens there has major repercussions here. This is how tightly bound Australia is to American economics and politics.

The key feature of the presidential election campaign is that the contenders are both dependent and beholden to a group of billionaires. They control who stands for election, are the key determinant of who wins, and the policies to be applied by the victor.

Kamala Harris

While taking as a given is that Harris’s campaign follows this form, this article focuses on Donald Trump. Not because he is the worst of two bad choices. This isn’t clear in any case. Trump may prove to be marginally better in foreign policy. He could hardly be worse. Trump is often accused of being a threat to liberty. True. But is Harris much less of a threat? The reality is that there is no huge difference between them.

Both represent the decline of the United States and the reaction from Wall Street. The differences are that they are expressions of different factions of Wall Street using distinctive styles. Trump is for the most brutal, connected to the world of finance and Silicon Valley, and Harris is for old money, more focused elsewhere.

The spotlight here is on Trump. Despite all the bad press lately, he remains the most likely to become the next president.

What is telling is not just that a particular group of billionaires are in control of the strings, and Donald Trump is the marionette dancing to their tune. The fact that they concentrate in the least productive and most parasitic part of the world of finance in critically important.

We are concerned here with the 12 biggest donors. They head the private equity industry. This is the business of funding the takeover of other businesses, where the big fish swallows the smaller one. They are involved in real estate, where they have pocketed a fortune out of real estate speculation. They are up to their elbows in the fossil fuel industry, including coal seam fracking.

Image from Bloomberg/Getty

This dirty dozen is behind certain think tanks. One of them, Phil Dunn, controls one called the American First Policy Institute, and has a huge voice in the Heritage Foundation, which created Trump’s “Project 2025” 900-page policy blueprint, according to a well-researched article published by Rolling Stone. Other bodies created, funded, or just influenced by this group are Preserve America PAC and the Federalist Society.

These billionaires put their attention and money to generating the ideology and politics that Donald Trump parrots in his own unique style. They are business operators, in it for what they can get. Donald Trump must deliver what they want.

Best known of all is Elon Musk, the current richest man in the world. Reported in the media to be the great inventor and genius, he happens to be somewhat less. Elon used daddy’s money to buy out the business from those who really built it. Being a venture capitalist is his real line of work. Elon’s successes have been dependent on takeovers and receiving lucrative government handouts and contracts. By 2015, Musk had received an estimated $4.9 billion in government support and has had much more since, according to an investigation by The Los Angeles Times.  It helps to know the right people.

Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP: Elon Musk

Elon Musk is a newbie to the Trump bandwagon and brings with him a special brand of Libertarianism, based on no tax for the extraordinarily rich and the cutting out of government programs for everyone else, while maintaining support for huge government handouts for people like him. This is what he wants Donlad Trump to deliver.

Musk’s pollical world view comes from his mentor and former business partner Peter Thiel, who happens to be a Silicon Valley high tech mogul in his own right. In July, Thiel launched “America PAC” with other members of the dirty dozen. Besides being a move to control funding for Trump, the PAC finances a program to recruit an army to find voters to disenroll in main battleground states. Central to this, is the data surveillance and analytics company (Palantir), which counts the government, military, and intelligence bodies of the United States, and a list of foreign equivalents as its clients.

Theil brokered Silicon Valley associate JD Vance to be Trump’s vice-presidential running mate.

Next is Stephen Schwarzman, founder, chair, and CEO of Blackstone, the world’s biggest venture equity company. Blackstone is the major shareholder in Blackrock, and this has enabled expansion into everything from being a key player in the banking and finance sectors, to real estate, oil, mining, and the weapons industry.

Photo by Daniel Leal/WPA/Getty: Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman

Schwarzman sits over $12 trillion worth of assets

Paul Johnson is involved in hedge funding and made his fortune by speculating on the housing market and credit swaps. He has been hosting multimillion fundraisers for Trump, which also served to recruit the fabulously rich to the cause.

Phil Dunn is a Christian Nationalist and political power broker in Texas. He handed over a $5 million cheque to the Make America Great Again super PAC last December. This is part of Dunn’s $2 billion war chest to support Trump and become a major political player in Washington. He is the founding director of the America First Policy institute.

Miriam Anderson is an Israel-born casino billionaire and a radical advocate for Israel. She is the world’s eighth richest woman according to Bloomberg, thanks to inheriting the fortune from her late husband Sheldon G Adelson. Miriam is said to have donated $100 million to the Trump campaign. and owns the Preserve America PAC. Beyond ensuring ongoing support for Israel in the present climate, Mariam Adelson aims to be decisive in United Sates foreign policy overall, she is also aiming to be a major force in domestic policies.

Timothy Mellon is heir to the Mellon banking dynasty. He is the exception as the only old money among the dirty dozen. In August he gave $125 million to Trump’s campaign, landing him the title of Trump’s biggest benefactor. Before this he had given $54 million towards Trumps’ 2021 Mexico wall.

Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty: Banking fortune heir Timothy Mellon

Steve Wynn is a real estate developer and another Las Vagas casino mogul, plus a sidekick of trump for a long time. He is credited as the originator of the famed gambling strip. Hr has given Trump $800,000 this year alone. More importantly, he is the main go-between connecting trump o other big-time doors.

Harold Hamm is a fracking king and founder of Continental Resources. According to a Reuters report, he was a central figure in a meeting of American oil industry heavyweights at Trump’s Mart-a-Lago resort, where Trump offered removal of carbon limiting laws and initiatives, slashing of tax credits for electric vehicles, and to undermine solar power, in exchange for a billion dollars for his campaign.

Kelcy Warren is another gas mogul and owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline that moves 30 percent of American oil and gas. He is an associate of Hamm and the other oil and gas moguls.

Isac Perlmutter is another Israel born American and has doated $10 million this year to Trump’s campaign. His background is in the entertainment business was as head of Marvel entertainment, with a Background at Disney. He was removed for his aversion to including black actors. Although not as wealthy as the rest of the dirty dozen – he is only worth around $25.6 million, Perlmutter is important because of his close relationship to Trump, a key campaign planner, with a considerable network to draw on.

Robert and Patricia Duggan. Each are major donors to Trump. Rebert committed $326 million to the 2016 campaign and over $500 million this time around. He is the former owner of biotech company Pharmacyclics.

Robert Bigelow is the second least wealthy of the gang, and a real estate agent in Las Vagas and landlord to 15,000 renters of his properties. His importance is that he is a major promoter of tin hat claims sometimes peddled to the Trump bandwagon.

Leonard Leo is the poorest of the dirty dozen. But he still has more than $1 billion for use and he put some of it to ensure the election of friendly judges to the Supreme Court. Leo is a key advisor to Trump, with a network that provides a capacity to raise huge sums of money.

Photo by Erin Schaff/New York Times/Redux: Leonard Leo

He controls several political advocacy and charitable groups that feather the nests of both the republicans and Democrats. This amounts to control over $100 million worth of revenue. He controls the 85 Fund, otherwise known as the Honest elections Project, designed to instigate lawsuits around the claim of election rigging in 2020, and to draw in other big money organisations like the Federalist Society, anonymous donors specialising in dark money donations, the Concord Fund, and Donors Trust.

The control of big money over the Trump campaign is real and it will ensure that everything that Trump does sill serve to meet the desires of this dirty dozen and other Wall Street donors. It means that he is not for the ordinary people.

Under a Trump presidency and administration, business will continue as usual, except that it will likely be more brutal than has been the case so far. The Democrats behind the Kamala Harris campaign are moving in the same direction. Either way the problems of the American economy and society will not be resolved.

Australia will be dragged along by the political reality in the United States. Exactly how, we don’t know yet. But it is certain how; we will follow along a similar economic and political path. We are bound as a prisoner of the United States, lacking in true independence – at least for now.