1. Foreign powers are manipulating trump to weaken US for their own agendas
2. its only about Trump being avaricious and gaining more power. Like going into nice neighbors house and stealing all the gold fixtures and copper wiring. Plus pilfering any funds connected to the house. There isnt any long term planning here. He still has his own place an can bail to anywhere in the world
3. Using said power to manipulate/bully others into paying trump for favors engorging himself more

Take your pick

The rich can afford to take an economic hit and are willing to do so for more power and control.

No, and the effects have not been as noticeable as they should be because too many cowardly CEOs are too afraid of being the first to enrage the Orange Turd by passing on costs to the consumer... but that won't last too long either

You already have a lot of responses, but so far none have included: Trump and some of his top staff are just not that smart. He destroys soft power projection not because he has some thought-out theory about its value, but because he can't follow the effect chain through far enough to understand the benefits. He really believed Ukraine and Russia were continuing to fight because they hadn't talked to a skilled negotiator like him: the underlying geopolitics is completely beyond his grasp. He seems to genuinely believe that the spending cuts to Medicaid in his Big Bill will not make millions lose their health insurance.

There are grifters all through the administration and its outside support with the corrupt motives described by other commenters, and Trump himself is greedy and selfish, but I believe he genuinely lacks the intelligence to understand what he is destroying along the way.

Only thing I can think of is if you liquidate funds or suppress them being impacted while taking bribes like that alleged $2 billion in crypto they got, they ride out everything dropping in price living the high life still, then buy up as much as they can on their way out so they own large portions of companies as they get built back up by the next generation. The laborers and will still exists, and they can build it back with these people owning more and having more say in what happens.

Otherwise... Just power. If no one can say shit about you doing anything you want whenever you want and you can treat everyone else like shit... Some people enjoy it greatly I guess.

Is it so hard to believe that Musk and Putin, two foreign Sociopathic Oligarchs with no loyalty or patriotism, would team up with America's most massive psychopath, and treat America as a rich, fat, lazy, vulnerable target that DESERVES to be ruthlessly and mercilessly exploited and looted?

Without a strong government to defend our nation (thanks to relentless lobbying with a fraction of their massive fortunes), it was inevitable that this would happen, as more and more billionaires meant more and more of a chance of at least some of them using their influence to literally take over the world.

is there any evidence at all of some gains?

Wall street seems to be doing okay. Slower growth, but line keeps going up

I read Bill Browder's Red Notice about how he and others went in after the fall of the USSR. It explains very well how a former superpower was picked apart and the choice bits divvied up to make some future oligarchs very very incomprehensibly rich and powerful. Granted, it was a unique situation at the time since the USSR owned everything and they attempted to "give it back to the people."

It's scary. It's not dry nonfiction. And some of the rich people he learned from, met, and has some insight on, are quite interesting in hindsight. (Ghislaine's father, and Khashoggi family come to mind off the top of my head.)

But between the monopolies and current government trying to control things (like the Tiktok deal, and taking 10% of what was it, Intel?) There's a consolidation of wealth and power happening out in the open.

They are generating revenue from the tariffs but it is not enough to offset the tax cuts and will decrease over time as there are fewer imports.

They don't need to run the world, they only need to run America. It's really that simple. Oh and also Krasnov is a foreign agent.

even though OP is highlighting some losses/tensions, NATO colonies are being conquered hard, and that buys the US empire a few more years of "appearances of existing in a dominant position". For political purposes, elections, you can point to the complete explicit subjugation of colonies as "winning". Job losses, interest rates, currency depreciation, inflation don't matter if you can point to Europe/Canada sycophants doing worse, and paying for entirety US war on Russia. Blame for everything bad goes to someone else, and success measured in relative pace of decline. Make sure no one else is allowed to speak, and third term is secured.

Seriously, I can respect someone having the opinion that you can run a country like a company, but then for their candidate to run the ‘company’ so badly