Elon/Trump/The billionaire class see AI replacing jobs, wholesale. The current trade based world order where commerce is a source of economic prosperity will vanish as large parts of the world's population rely on state welfare handouts (UBI). There won't be much trade happening if there's not much consumption.
The only real wealth will be hard assets - natural resources like oil, Gold and the reserves in the Arctic.
Hence Trump doesn't mind upsetting his allies in Europe and Canada if the US can control the resources in Venezuela, Canada and Greenland to start. He doesn't even care about projecting power worldwide, just the Americas is enough for now.
He doesn't mind that it costs America's position as a preferred trade partner eventually.
Not only that he doesn't mind, in fact he wishes to [devalue the dollar](https://fortune.com/2026/01/18/dollar-euro-reserve-currecy-us-debt-trump-tariffs-nato-greenland/), so that the US debt of $38 trillion turns worthless. A final rug pull.
Then he can switch to some bitcoin like currency - a new era of the digital dollar.
Getting rid of migrants is essential because they will become future UBI recipients too.
In fact, DOGE was trying to automate most of the work of the government with AI too, but it was too early to attempt it.