Now things are different. He received more votes than his opponent. His cabinet supports his radical agenda. He has control of both houses of Congress and of the Supreme Court. Despite what some critics say, the situation is not the same as Germany in 1933. But it is a rightist revolution, nevertheless.
It is unprecedented for the US. Trump’s election threatens to dismantle the country’s liberal democratic institutions and lead to further global political instability. Trump will reverse policies and undo agreements to inhibit climate change.
One way or another, we are all going to be affected. The world we have occupied, and the things that many of us have taken for granted since the Allied victory over fascism in 1945, could be profoundly challenged.
How did the US come to elect a convicted felon accused of trying to overturn an election? And what does the new Trump era mean for the world economy? Is he simply just the latest manifestation of the 1980s neoliberal “greed is good” political motto? Or will his extreme nationalism and isolationism put him on a collision course with other world powers?
I have been an economist for five decades. My research in economics has also led me to consider the roots of authoritarianism, the limits of socialism and the crises of left-wing politics. Since 2019 I have also been involved with colleagues, including political scientist Gerhard Schnyder, on a research project looking into the growth of populism.
One question that’s vital to understanding the current situation is whether neoliberalism led to the rise of Trump. The difficulty is that the word neoliberalism has been stretched enormously in meaning, to cover many leading politicians, including Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Tony Blair, Emanuel Macron, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Trump himself. The leaders of the Hungarian, Yugoslavian, and Chinese Communist parties, who introduced more markets into their planned economies (after 1956, in the 1950s and 1980s respectively), have all been described by prominent academics as neoliberal. Seemingly, anyone who supports some markets is neoliberal.
Since the late 1970s, I have supported a mixed economy with a private sector and markets, alongside public regulation, strategic planning and a strong welfare state. Some of the prominent critiques of neoliberalism seem to reject a mixed economy. Yet mixed economies with strong welfare states are among the best performing systems in the world.
Trump’s economic protectionism contrasts with the free trade rhetoric of Reagan and Thatcher, which was inspired by influential Chicago economists such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. Instead of using an overstretched term, we should identify more specific forces and events. Here, the rise of Chicago style economics, and the election of Thatcher in 1979 and Reagan in 1980 are highly relevant.
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For the full article by Professor Geoffrey Hodgson visit the Conversation.
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