Editors’ Insight: Fortnightly,
Project Syndicate editors engage recent PS commentaries to
probe the broader significance of current events.
What Will Trump Do?
The
global shock administered by Donald Trump’s election to the US
presidency continues to reverberate. How will President-elect Trump
represent those who put him in power – and how will his power affect
America and the world?
NOV 13, 2016.-
All
US presidents come to power – and exercise it – by assembling and
sustaining a broad electoral coalition of voters with identifiable
interests. Donald Trump is no exception. Trump’s stunning election
victory, following a populist campaign that targeted US institutions,
domestic and foreign policies, and especially elites, was powered by
voters – overwhelmingly white, largely rural, and with only some or no
postsecondary education – who feel alienated from a political
establishment that has failed to address their interests.
So
the question now, for the United States and the world, is how Trump
intends to represent this electoral bloc. Part of the difficulty in
answering it, as Project Syndicate’s contributors understand
well, is Trump himself. “The US has never before had a president with no
political or military experience, nor one who so routinely shirks the
truth, embraces conspiracy theories, and contradicts himself,” notes
Harvard’s Jeffrey Frankel.
But, arguably more important, much of what Trump has promised – on
trade, taxation, health care, and much else – either would not improve
his voters’ economic wellbeing or would cause it to deteriorate further.
This paradox lies at the root of some unsettling scenarios. As Princeton University’s Jan-Werner Mueller points
out, “[t]here is substantial evidence that low-income groups in the US
have little to no influence on policy and go effectively unrepresented
in Washington.” But Trump’s claim to represent his voters is not based
on “demanding a fairer system.” Instead, says Mueller, Trump “tells the
downtrodden that only they are the ‘real people,’” and that (as Trump
put it during his campaign), “the other people don’t mean anything.” By
persuading his supporters “to view themselves as part of a white
nationalist movement,” Mueller argues, a “claim about identity is
supposed to solve the problem that many people’s interests are
neglected.”
In
this respect, Trump is hardly unique. As Mueller points out, framing
representation in terms of the “symbolic construction” of the “real
people,” rather than in terms of a pluralist conception of equal
citizenship under a shared constitution, is a hallmark of populism
everywhere. In Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Venezuela, and elsewhere (even,
to some extent, in the United Kingdom since June’s Brexit referendum),
populist leaders have felt authorized by their claim to represent the
“single authentic will” of a “single, homogeneous people” to erode
constitutional and legal constraints on their power.
Can America avoid a similar fate? Project Syndicate contributors
agree that the election’s outcome has badly tarnished America’s global
image, and that Trump’s foreign policies are likely to imply serious
risks for Asia, Europe, and Latin America. But there is reason to
believe that his domestic policies will disappoint many of his
supporters. That may tempt him to double down on identity politics,
fueling division and possibly civil unrest. But it may also create an
opportunity for his opponents to reshape the self-conception of those
who voted for him.
Trump vs. the Constitution
Throughout
their country’s history, most Americans have viewed the US Constitution
as the ultimate guarantor of their freedoms. And, since the election,
Trump’s opponents have indeed taken some comfort in the idea that the
Constitution’s “checks and balances,” as well as other constraints built
into the US political system, might inhibit Trump’s more wayward
impulses. The US Constitution, after all, ostensibly places real
boundaries on the president’s freedom to maneuver. This is particularly
true for domestic policy, because it is the US Congress that must
allocate the funds needed to pay for any presidential initiative.
But
the idea that the US Constitution will protect the country from a fate
similar to that of Hungary and Poland, where populist leaders have
politicized state institutions, may not be as rock solid as many
Americans believe. As Columbia University’s Alfred Stepan points
out, the Republicans already control both houses of Congress, and
“checks and balances generated by the judicial branch are certainly in
danger.” This is partly because the Republicans “have a good chance of
creating a conservative majority on the nine-member Supreme Court that
could last for decades, especially if they win the presidency again in
2020.”
And
the Court “may continue to erode democratic checks, such as the
campaign-finance limits that were dealt a devastating blow by the 2010 Citizens United decision.”
Likewise, with the Senate under Republican control, “Trump can now
rapidly fill vacancies” on lower federal courts – which had risen to a
half-century high during President Barack Obama’s second term, owing to
Republican obstructionism – with “conservative judges who may well erode
checks and balances further.”
Nor
is Stepan optimistic that state governments will provide a check on
overweening federal power. “Republicans now control an all-time high of
68 out of the 99 state legislative chambers and 33 of the 50
governorships” of America’s 50 states, he notes, and this has serious
consequences for the ultimate checks on government: effective political
competition and free and fair elections. The state legislatures, after
all, create the US House of Representatives legislative districts, which
have already been gerrymandered to reinforce the Republicans’ majority
there.
Worse,
the threat to America’s democracy is stalking its grassroots. As Stepan
notes, “Since 2013, when another close Supreme Court decision gutted
the Voting Rights Act, many, if not most, states with Republican
majorities in both chambers have enacted laws and regulations that
suppress voting” in non-white areas. A Republican Party that is almost
entirely dependent on white voters – and increasingly dependent on white
identity politics – is likely to continue on this path.
It
is not only American democracy that is at risk, but also the
geopolitical West constructed by the US in the years after World War II.
And, as Oxford University Chancellor Chris Patten points out, that
construction “long provided the foundation for the global order –
probably the most successful such foundation ever created.” Under US
leadership, “the West built, shaped, and championed international
institutions, cooperative arrangements, and common approaches to common
problems,” Patten says. And, by helping “to sustain peace and boost
prosperity in much of the world, its approaches and principles attracted
millions of followers.”
Trump’s
election, “threatens this entire system,” Patten continues. If he “does
in office what he promised to do during his crude and mendacious
campaign, he could wreck a highly sophisticated creation, one that took
several decades to develop and has benefited billions of people.” After
all, as Harvard’s Joseph Nye notes,
throughout his election campaign, “Trump challenged the alliances and
institutions that undergird the liberal world order.” And, although, as
Nye remarks, “he spelled out few specific policies,” concepts and
loyalties that have long been taken for granted, both by America’s
allies and by its foes, no longer can be.
For starters, says Mark Leonard,
Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, “American
guarantees are no longer reliable.” And that is true worldwide. “In
Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, Trump has made it clear that America
will no longer play the role of policeman; instead, it will be a private
security company open for hire.” Not only has he “questioned whether he
would defend Eastern European NATO members if they do not do more to
defend themselves;” he has also suggested “that Saudi Arabia should pay
for American security” and “has encouraged Japan and South Korea to
obtain nuclear weapons.”
Moreover, says Gareth Evans,
former Australian foreign minister, given that he has “little or no
hard knowledge of international affairs, Trump is relying on instincts
that are all over the map.” As a result, his rhetoric “combines
contradictory ‘America first’ isolationist rhetoric with muscular talk
of ‘making America great again.’” And Trump’s incoherence, Evans
suggests, will not be compensated by his supposed business acumen (which
he touted during his campaign). On the contrary, “while staking out
impossibly extreme positions that you can readily abandon may work in
negotiating property deals, it is not a sound basis for conducting
foreign policy.”
Evans
is not optimistic. “Trump’s dangerous instincts may be bridled if he is
capable of assembling an experienced and sophisticated team of
foreign-policy advisers,” he notes. “But this remains to be seen.” In
any case, the danger to global stability is compounded by the fact that,
whatever remaining checks and balances Trump might face at home, in
foreign affairs “the US Constitution grants him extraordinary personal
power as Commander-in-Chief, if he chooses to exercise it.”
Of course, some will benefit from the confusion that Trump is likely to sow. As former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt puts
it, “authoritarian rulers around the world” will no longer hear “harsh
words from the US about their regimes’ contempt for democracy, freedom,
or human rights.” On the contrary, the longstanding “goal of making the
world safe for democracy will now be replaced by a policy of ‘America
first,’ a sea-change in US foreign policy that is already likely
arousing jubilation in Russian and Chinese halls of power.”
Trumping the Global Order
So
just what form will an “America First” foreign policy take? How Trump
deals with Russia, Nye suggests, will be a telltale early sign of the
seriousness of his foreign policy. “On the one hand, it is important to
resist [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s game-changing challenge to
the post-1945 liberal order’s prohibition on the use of force by states
to seize territory from their neighbors,” as he has done in Georgia and
Ukraine. “On the other hand,” Nye says, “it is important to avoid
completely isolating a country with which the US has overlapping
interests in many areas: nuclear security, non-proliferation,
anti-terrorism, the Arctic, and regional issues like Iran and
Afghanistan.”
Likewise,
effective US leadership in Asia, which has become both the center of
the world economy and the scene of growing friction between the world’s
two most powerful countries – China and the US – requires a capacity for
nuance that Trump has yet to reveal. America, says Evans, “undermines
itself when it noisily asserts its regional primacy, while ignoring
China’s legitimate demand for recognition as a joint leader in the
current world order.” At the same time, “when China overreaches, as it
has done with its territorial assertions in the South China Sea, there
does need to be pushback.” And here, Evans notes, “a quiet but firm US
role remains necessary and welcome.”
Like Evans, the Vietnamese geostrategist Le Hong Hiep has
little confidence in the US president-elect. As a result of Trump’s
election, the “strategic rebalancing toward Asia that [US President
Barack] Obama worked so hard to advance may be thrown into reverse,
dealing a heavy blow to Asia and the US alike.” Success depends largely
on regional countries’ participation in and support of the US-led
regional security architecture. But, given that Trump may “focus
overwhelmingly on domestic issues,” he could well ignore “strategic
engagement with ASEAN and its members,” Hiep says, thereby “causing
their relationships with the US to deteriorate.”
And,
like Bildt, Hiep believes that “China may welcome the election’s
outcome.” To be sure, Trump has accused China of “stealing American jobs
– and even blamed it for creating the ‘hoax’ of climate change.”
Nonetheless, “he may take a softer stance on China’s strategic
expansionism in the region, especially in the South China Sea, than
Obama did.”
Others,
too, appear to have glimpsed – at least initially – something positive
in Trump’s victory. “Trump,” says Palestinian analyst Daoud Kuttab,
“attracted the support of the enraged and frustrated, and Palestinians
feel even angrier and more hopeless than the working-class white
Americans who supported him.” More important, because “Trump is a
political outsider, with few ties to [America’s] foreign-policy
tradition or the interest groups that have shaped it,” many Palestinians
believe that “he could upend conventions that have often been damaging
to Palestine, transforming the rules of the game.”
But
Kuttab pours cold water on this hope. “Israelis,” he points out, “seem
at least as hopeful that Trump’s presidency will tip the scales further
in their favor.” Trump has already strongly hinted that he will move the
US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – something all US
presidents have refused to do for 49 years. And, given that “inciting
hatred against Muslims was a staple of his campaign,” there should be no
“illusions that Trump will be the arbiter of fairness, much less a
peacemaker, in the Israel-Palestine conflict.”
Latin
Americans haven’t the slightest expectation of fair, or even civil,
treatment from Trump. In fact, says former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda,
“Trump’s election is an unmitigated disaster for the region.” Indeed,
Castañeda calls Latin America the “one world region that cannot possibly
adopt a forward-looking attitude.”
Mexico
has more reasons than most countries to distrust Trump, given his
promise to “deport all six million undocumented Mexicans living and
working in the US, and to force Mexico to pay for the construction of a
wall on the US-Mexican border.” Moreover, Trump has vowed to
“renegotiate the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), scrap the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and discourage US companies from
investing or creating jobs in Mexico.”
But
Trump’s proposals would adversely impact much of the region. “Every
Central American country is a source of migration to the US, as are many
Caribbean and South American countries,” Castañeda notes. Likewise,
“Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic,
Ecuador, and Peru all have large populations of documented or
undocumented nationals in the US, and they will all feel the effects of
Trump’s policies, if they are enacted.” Then there are “countries such
as Chile, which negotiated the TPP in good faith with the US, Mexico,
Peru, and Asian-Pacific countries,” all of which “will now suffer the
consequences of Trump’s protectionist stance.” And NAFTA is not the only
bilateral free-trade agreement – the US has some ten FTAs with Latin
America countries – which Trump might target.
Such
deals are particularly vulnerable because trade is the area where
Trump’s “America first” foreign policy instincts meet his promise to
bring high-paying manufacturing jobs back to America. Here he is likely
to meet stiff resistance, not only from an increasingly self-confident
China, but also from Mexico, whose leaders would not survive politically
were they to cave in to an American president who has, says Castañeda,
“dismissed Mexico’s national interests and maligned its people’s
character.”
But NYU’s Nouriel Roubini thinks
that Trump, having “lived his entire life among other rich
businessmen,” will end up being more pragmatic. His “choice to run as a
populist was tactical, and does not necessarily reflect deep-seated
beliefs.” Whereas a “radical populist Trump would scrap the TPP, repeal
NAFTA, and impose high tariffs on Chinese imports,” a pragmatic Trump
will probably “try to tweak [NAFTA] as a nod to American blue-collar
workers.” Moreover, those who “bash China during their election
campaigns” often “quickly realize once in office that cooperation is in
their own interest.” In fact, “even if a pragmatic Trump wanted to limit
imports from China, his options would be constrained by a recent World
Trade Organization ruling against ‘targeted dumping’ tariffs on Chinese
goods.”
If
Trump did press ahead with a protectionist agenda, he would meet
resistance not only from America’s trade partners, but also from
economic reality. The “case for tearing up free-trade agreements and
aborting negotiations for new ones,” Patten notes, “is premised on the
belief that globalization is the reason for rising income inequality,
which has left the American working class economically marooned.” In
reality, trade is no longer the culprit in displacing manufacturing jobs
from the US.
Instead,
Patten notes, the “sources of American workers’ economic pain are
technological innovation and tax-and-spend policies that favor the
rich.” And, unlike free trade, which has increased American households’
purchasing power, “the current wave of technological innovation is not
lifting all boats,” notes Alex Friedman,
CEO of GAM notes. “Even as the likes of Uber and Amazon, and, more
fundamentally, robotics, add convenience, they do so by displacing
working-class jobs and/or driving down wages.”
But
what today’s protectionists fail to acknowledge is that America is no
longer competitive in industries like coal and steel – and shouldn’t try
to be. For policymakers, Friedman notes, “the problem is that it may
take a decade or longer before robotics and the like” diffuse
sufficiently to “feed a broader rising tide that lifts all boats.” But
repealing free trade certainly would not help. Were Trump to do so, the
jobs would not return, and import prices would rise, thereby reducing
Americans’ purchasing power – and thus, in Patten’s words, harming “the
very people who voted for him.”
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz agrees.
“Technology,” he says, “has been advancing so fast that the number of
jobs globally in manufacturing is declining.” As a result, “there is no
way that Trump can bring significant numbers of well-paying
manufacturing jobs back to the US.”
How,
then, is Trump to satisfy his supporters? One possibility, of course,
is an option that Obama had embraced – clean tech and green energy. What
are needed, says Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs,
are “massive investments in low-carbon energy systems, and an end to
the construction of new coal-fired power plants.” It needs similarly
sized “investments in electric vehicles (and advanced batteries),
together with a sharp reduction in internal combustion engine vehicles.”
Moreover, a “carbon tax,” says Stiglitz, “would provide a welfare
trifecta: higher growth as firms retrofit to reflect the increased costs
of carbon dioxide emissions; a cleaner environment; and revenue that
could be used to finance infrastructure and direct efforts to narrow
America’s economic divide.”
But
as Stiglitz notes, “given Trump’s position as a climate change denier,
he is unlikely to take advantage of this opportunity.” Indeed, he is
already staffing his transition team with similarly minded officials,
and the Republican congressional caucus has deep ties to traditional oil
and gas firms.
This implies that Trump is more likely to embrace large-scale infrastructure investment. British economic historian Robert Skidelsky notes
that Trump has “promised an $800 billion-$1 trillion program of
infrastructure investment, to be financed by bonds, as well as a massive
corporate-tax cut, both aimed at creating 25 million new jobs and
boosting growth.”
Jim O’Neill,
a former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management and former British
Treasury minister, sees little alternative to what Skidelsky calls “a
modern form of Keynesian fiscal policy.” As O’Neill puts it, “[w]ith
monetary activism past its sell-by date, an active fiscal policy that
includes stronger infrastructure spending is one of the only remaining
options.” At the same time, as eager as the Republicans are to slash
taxes for the few, “policymakers cannot ignore the high levels of
government debt across much of the developed world.”
The
same argument that is made for spending on infrastructure can be made
for technology. “Shockingly for a country whose economic success is
based on technological innovation,” Stiglitz notes, “the GDP share of
investment in basic research is lower today than it was a half-century
ago.” But it is hard to imagine Trump becoming the kind of technology
cheerleader that Obama became during his presidency. His estrangement
from the US technology sector, whose leaders overwhelmingly opposed his
candidacy, is one factor. Nor does his stance on immigration bode well.
As Roubini points out, one of Trump’s proposals would “limit visas for
high-skill workers, which would deplete some of the tech sector’s
dynamism.”
Although
Republicans have not favored large-scale government infrastructure
spending since Dwight Eisenhower was president, they will most likely go
along with it in exchange for tax cuts. This will undoubtedly result in
some job creation. But, as Frankel points out, “income inequality will
likely start widening again, despite striking improvements in median
family income and the poverty rate last year.” Moreover, “budget
deficits will grow.”
That
presents a problem for Trump, given that he plans to finance
infrastructure investment by issuing bonds. “Market participants,” says
Harvard’s Martin Feldstein,
“are watching the [US Federal Reserve] to judge if and when the process
of interest-rate normalization will begin.” And “historical
experience,” says Feldstein, “implies that normalization would raise
long-term interest rates by about two percentage points, precipitating
substantial corrections in the prices of bonds, stocks, and commercial
real estate.”
This
suggests an early clash between Trump and the Fed. Trump may try to
bend the Fed to his will; but, as Roubini points out, there is one
independent force that he will find impossible to control. “If he tries
to pursue radical populist policies,” building up massive debt without
any plans to pay for it, the response from international markets “will
be swift and punishing: stocks will plummet, the dollar will fall,
investors will flee to US Treasury bonds, gold prices will spike, and so
forth.”
What Should the World Do?
Back in May, Bill Emmott, a former editor of The Economist, contemplating
the prospect of a Trump presidency, argued that countries “must hope
for the best but prepare for the worst.” Above all, they must bolster
“their alliances and friendships with one another, in anticipation of an
‘America First’ rupture with old partnerships and the liberal
international order that has prevailed since the 1940s.”
That
moment, Leonard argues, has now arrived. Europeans must “try to
increase leverage over the US,” whose new leader “is likely to resemble
other strongmen presidents and treat weakness as an invitation to
aggression.” And, whereas “a divided Europe has little ability to
influence the US,” when “Europe has worked together – on privacy,
competition policy, and taxation – it has dealt with the US from a
position of strength.” Guy Verhofstadt,
a former Belgium prime minister who currently heads the Liberals in the
European Parliament, goes further. “The EU can no longer wait to build
its own European Defense Community and develop its own security
strategy,” he says. “Anything less will be insufficient to secure its
territory.”
With
liberal democracy, as Verhofstadt puts it, “quickly becoming a
resistance movement,” his is a refrain now heard around the world.
Australia, says Evans, “should have learned by now that the US, under
administrations with far more prima facie credibility than
Trump’s, is perfectly capable of making terrible mistakes, such as the
wars in Vietnam and Iraq.” Facing the prospect of “American blunders as
bad as, or worse than, in the past,” he says, “[w]e will have to make
our own judgments about how to react to events, based on our own
national interests.”
Patten
calls for a more robust diplomatic response as well, praising German
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s response to Trump’s election, in which she
upheld bilateral cooperation on the basis of shared “values of
democracy, freedom, and respect for the law and the dignity of man,
independent of origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation,
or political views.” That “eloquent and powerful” statement, says
Patten, makes Merkel “one leader who seems to recognize how quickly the
collapse of US leadership could bring about the end of the post-1945
global order.” And, he adds, it “is precisely how all of America’s
allies and friends should be responding.”
All
is not lost. Stepan is right that the traditional checks and balances
of American politics are under severe threat. But, as Roubini reminds
us, markets are not the only barrier if policies go off the rails. The
executive branch of the US government that Trump commands “adheres to a
decision-making process whereby relevant departments and agencies
determine the risks and rewards of given scenarios, and then furnish the
president with a limited menu of policy options from which to choose.”
Indeed, “given Trump’s inexperience, he will be all the more dependent
on his advisers, just as former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W.
Bush were.”
In
addition, says Roubini, “Trump will also be pushed more to the center
by Congress, with which he will have to work to pass any legislation.”
Trump’s election, after all, culminates his hostile takeover of the
Republican Party, and now he will have to bring about a rapprochement
with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Republican leaders, who, Roubini
notes, “have more mainstream GOP views than Trump on trade, migration,
and budget deficits.” Moreover, “the Democratic minority in the Senate
will be able to filibuster any radical reforms that Trump proposes,
especially if they touch the third rail of American politics: Social
Security and Medicare.”
Likewise,
notwithstanding Stepan’s well-founded fears, institutions can fight
back against populist subversion, as we have seen in the British High
Court’s recent decision upholding the authority of Parliament to
scrutinize and vote on the government’s decision to trigger the UK’s
exit from the European Union. No one can be certain – least of all Trump
– that all of the conservative members of the Supreme Court will march
in lock step with his abasement of US democracy. His proposal to ban
Muslim immigrants, Frankel notes, “would be struck down even by a
right-wing Supreme Court.”
There
is also the constraint of constitutionally protected citizen action,
already seen in well-attended anti-Trump demonstrations held around the
country in the days since the election. Protests are likely to continue,
suggests IE Business School’s Lucy Marcus,
in the wake of “a surge in hate crimes, including an alarming number of
incidents being reported at schools and on college campuses.” If Trump
“hopes to be anything remotely close to a responsible leader,” Marcus
says, “he must move urgently to address the deep divisions that he so
enthusiastically fueled during his campaign.” Equally important,
“community leaders must not allow their constituents to be manipulated
or goaded into behavior that risks dangerous knock-on effects.”
The
long-term challenge posed by Trump, however, is to find the means to
decouple white identity politics, in which the Republican Party has
become deeply invested, from economic grievance. As Mueller argues,
members of “today’s Trumpenproletariat are not forever lost to
democracy, as Clinton suggested when she called them ‘irredeemable.’”
Mueller quotes George Orwell: “If you want to make an enemy of a man,
tell him that his ills are incurable.” Instead, anti-populists must
“focus on new ways to appeal to the interests of Trump supporters, while
resolutely defending the rights of minorities who feel threatened by
Trump’s agenda.”
Skidelsky
agrees: “it is economics, not culture,” he says, “that strikes at the
heart of legitimacy.” In other words, “it is when the rewards of
economic progress accrue mainly to the already wealthy that the
disjunction between minority and majority cultural values becomes
seriously destabilizing.”
Trump
ruthlessly exploited that disjunction, and, in doing so, “obviously
made a successful claim to represent people,” says Mueller. “But
representation is never simply a mechanical response to pre-existing
demands,” he notes. Instead, “claims to represent citizens also shape
their self-conception,” which is why it is now “crucial to move that
self-conception away from white identity politics and back to the realm
of interests.”
Whatever
happens, Americans should be mindful of what they have lost – perhaps
forever – by electing Trump. His victory has “deeply undermined the soft
power the US used to enjoy,” says Shashi Tharoor,
chairman of the Indian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, by
bringing “to the fore tendencies the world never used to associate with
the US – resentment and xenophobia, hostility to immigrants and
refugees, pessimism and selfishness.” In the world’s eyes, “fear has
trumped hope as the currency of American politics,” laments Tharoor. And
in the world’s eyes, “America will never be the same again.”
