Trump II Returns to the White House

In the recent U.S. presidential election, Kamala Harris became the fourth vice president to lose in a contest held at the end of their presidents’ terms. The previous instances include Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, and Al Gore in 2000, with George H.W. Bush in 1988 being the only exception. These four losses indicate a punitive vote against the administration in which the presidential candidate served as vice president, rather than against the individual themselves. For instance, Nixon was successful in the 1968 election, as was Joe Biden in 2020 after four years of Donald Trump’s presidency.

The pattern regarding Harris’ defeat in both the electoral college and the popular vote is further supported by the fact that the Democratic Party won the popular vote with Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, as well as with Biden. Additionally, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, while Donald Trump secured the presidency through a majority of electoral college votes rather than the popular vote.

It is likely that the economy had the most significant impact on the recent U.S., presidential election. The Biden administration was profoundly influenced by the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which led to a sharp increase in energy prices and resulted in inflation reaching 9.1% in the summer of 2022. This was the highest inflation rate in the United States since 1980, when President-candidate Jimmy Carter lost to Ronald Reagan. At that time, the economy also played a decisive role, coupled with the American electorate’s preference for a hardline anti-Soviet president following the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

Although inflation decreased to 2.9% last summer, prices for energy, food, and housing remained high. The measures taken by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to 5.5% in the summer of 2023 were ineffective. In contrast, such measures had worked for Reagan in addressing inflation, as the rate hikes led to a significant influx of global monetary capital into U.S. banks, accompanied by reduced government spending, as advised by Milton Friedman, a prominent neoliberal economic thinker.

Inflation rose again when Biden adopted the same approach as his predecessor, Obama, who relied on Keynesian prescriptions (named after economist John Maynard Keynes) to increase state intervention in the economy following the 2008 financial crisis, which was attributed to the neoliberal framework.

The voting map reflects this trend; historically swing states such as Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, and Georgia were all lost by Harris. These states have suffered significantly in recent years due to the economic crisis. Additionally, Hispanic voters have recently shifted to predominantly support Republicans, with the majority belonging to poorer segments or the lower middle class.

Observers of the voting map will notice that Republican red is concentrated in the center of the country, while Democratic blue is prominent in the northern half of the East Coast and along the West Coast. The economically weaker states located in the center voted for the Republican right, while the more economically robust states supported the liberal Democratic Party. In recent years, American leftists have increasingly turned to the Democratic Party as a refuge against a rising wave of right-wing politics embodied by Trump – a figure positioned to the right of the traditional Republican Party, much like President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s and Reagan in the 1980s. Both Eisenhower and Reagan combined social and cultural conservatism with an interventionist foreign policy in opposition to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Trump’s rightism represents a return to the traditional American right, which has leaned towards isolationism since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, wherein immigrants to the New World turned their backs on their old world. It is no coincidence that the founding of the United States was marked by a revolt against London, which supported the southern states against Washington, D.C., during the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865.

When the United States broke free from isolationism in 1917 by entering World War I against Germany, President Woodrow Wilson faced defeat in 1920 when isolationists in the Senate voted against ratifying the League of Nations Charter that Wilson had championed just a year earlier at the Versailles Conference.

In this context, Trump can be viewed as the successor to Republican Senator Robert Taft, who opposed President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inclination to engage in World War II. However, two years and three months later, Taft’s position was overturned following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. This isolationist movement was robust, containing both Republicans and Democrats in both houses of Congress.

Taft also opposed the Marshall Plan, the establishment of NATO, and confronting Moscow and Beijing during the Korean War. The ideology of “Taftism” ultimately faded even within the Republican Party when Taft was defeated by Eisenhower in the 1952 presidential primary.

In 2016, ‘Taftism’ reemerged in the form of ‘Trumpism.’ However, Trump’s isolationist impulse differs from that of Taft, who sought to distance himself from the wars and troubles of the Old World. Trump does not view the world through the lens of wars but through the lens of economics. He is the first right-wing politician to stand against economic globalization in the post-Cold War era. In contrast, neoconservatives during George W. Bush’s presidency inherited a tendency from their earlier leftist Trotskyism to spread their principles and global visions through intervention and conquest, aiming to instill the values of democracy and the market economy.

Since the 1990s, leftists around the world have been predecessors to Trump in their opposition to globalization. Through the principle of ‘economic nationalism,’ which he introduced during his 2016 election campaign and later implemented in the White House, Trump believes that free global trade harms U.S. interests and benefits other countries, such as China and even U.S. allies, at the expense of Americans. He argues that this occurs through the ‘theft’ of intellectual property from U.S. products, the transfer of American-made technology for imitation, and the manufacturing of U.S. products abroad by American companies attracted by lower taxes, cheap labor, and fewer environmental regulations in countries like China and India.

Through protectionism, Trump was not only considering the American industrialist, worker, and consumer but also the American industrialist and banker who prefer to invest and work in Mumbai and Shanghai over Colorado and Nevada.

Furthermore, foreign products entering the U.S. market compete at lower prices with American goods, leading to factory closures and rising unemployment. Notably, the U.S. trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2018 resulted in the loss of more than three million American jobs. In line with this principle, Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement immediately after taking office and imposed protectionist tariffs on Chinese imports and global exports.

Trump’s economic viewpoint described the European Union as “a poor, diluted version of China.” His criticisms of NATO members stem from the belief that they do not contribute to the alliance’s military expenditures, placing the financial burden on Washington. He expresses a paradox in considering his European, Japanese, and South Korean allies: “How do you protect a military ally that does not share in military expenses, especially when you also experience a trade deficit with them?”

Through protectionism, Trump was not only considering the American industrialist, worker, and consumer but also the American industrialist and banker who prefer to invest and work in Mumbai and Shanghai over Colorado and Nevada. His intention was to bring them back to America. While he resented their global cosmopolitanism, he also held disdain for the managerial and cultural elite in Washington and New York, feeling a sense of alienation during his four years in the White House. It is likely that he would feel similarly if he returned to office.

Trump struggled to tolerate John Bolton as the U.S. National Security Advisor for more than a year and five months, from 2018 to 2019, despite their political alignment on issues regarding China and Iran. In his memoir, the Yale graduate mocks Trump’s ignorance, recalling how, after outlining his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Trump asked if “Finland was part of Russia?” (Bolton: What Happened in That Room, Simon & Schuster, New York 2020, p. 118). However, the working-class voters who supported Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024 do not share Bolton’s perspective; they believe Trump offers an economic strategy that can shield them from poverty and unemployment.

The obstacle for Trump will persist in Washington, where the Department of Defense and the intelligence community do not align with his views on Russia, Iran, and the U.S. military presence in the Middle East.

Trump perceives the main contradiction with China through an economic lens, believing it poses a threat to America’s global supremacy. He views international affairs from this military-political-economic perspective, positioning Beijing as Washington’s primary competitor – similar to how leaders during the Cold War identified Moscow as the principal adversary, but from a military-political standpoint.

Through this lens, Trump intends to keep Russia and North Korea at bay while attempting to diminish Iran’s role as China’s access point to the Middle East. Notably, he shares Obama’s perspective on the Chinese threat and the need to appease Russia to prevent its alignment with China. However, he diverges from Biden and Harris, who are more inclined to categorize both China and Russia as major threats and advocate for appeasing Iran, continuing the Obama administration’s approach toward Tehran.

Trump’s stance contrasts with Biden and Harris, particularly regarding their alignment with the U.S. Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community’s views, as outlined in the U.S. National Security Strategy released in late 2017. This strategy identifies China and Russia as the primary threats to U.S. national security (pages 46 and 47), followed by North Korea, while notably excluding Iran – except to mention that its expansion is one of five destabilizing factors in the Middle East (p. 48). It is significant that then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis, a retired Marine general, opposed Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and rejected the notion that Tehran constitutes a major threat to U.S. national security.

Now that Trump is back in the White House, he seems to reflect the Trump of the 2016 and 2020 elections, based on his campaign indicators for 2024, albeit with a more pronounced ideological agenda likely bolstered by the significant share of votes he received, representing a vocal American social majority. However, the international environment is more complex now than it was during his first term, particularly with the crystallization of the Sino-Russian-Iranian alliance in the context of the Ukrainian war. This development complicates his task of isolating Moscow from these partners, even with potential U.S. concessions to Russia in Ukraine and Syria.

It remains uncertain how he will navigate relations with Ankara, especially given its significantly deepened ties with Moscow and Tehran over the past four years. Additionally, North Korea’s deployment of troops to support Russia in Ukraine, with the tacit approval of China, suggests that Trump may find it challenging to repeat past efforts to court the North Korean leader.

Conversely, his task of containing Tehran appears somewhat easier in the wake of its diminished position in the post-October 7, 2023 world. This could be approached by leveraging this weakness to promote an “Iranian Gorbachev,” similar to Reagan’s strategy with the Soviet Gorbachev, or by permitting Israel to strike Iran as part of a third phase in the ongoing conflict that began on October 7, following operations in Gaza and Lebanon. Such actions would take place against a backdrop of a new regional balance that has eroded many of Tehran’s sources of power.

Most likely, NATO partners would not oppose such strategies.

In light of the economic crisis precipitated by the Ukrainian war, a potential settlement with Putin could be envisioned. Bolton relayed that during preliminary discussions ahead of the Helsinki summit in summer 2018, the Russian president stated that Obama had indicated to him that “the Ukrainian confrontation can be resolved if Russia does not extend beyond its annexation of Crimea in 2014” (Bolton: p. 121). This settlement could involve granting Russian autonomy in the Lugansk and Donetsk regions alongside Ukrainian neutrality.

However, the main obstacle for Trump will remain in Washington, where the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community do not share his vision regarding Russia, Iran, and the U.S. military presence in the Middle East.