During the past two weeks there have been a number of internet postings
attempting to understand and explain the popularity of Donald Trump. The
most insightful have been by scholars and writers who are willing to
look beyond the issue of racism to see the underlying decay of the USA
economy. On the Guardian's website March 7, 2015, Thomas Frank, author of
What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (2004)
, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule (2008),
Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right (2011), and most recently,
Listen, Liberal: How the Party of the People Learned to Love Inequality
(2016), pointed out that Trump actually does not talk that much about
racism. Not compared to what he talks about the most: trade.
It seems to obsess him: the destructive free-trade deals our leaders have
made, the many companies that have moved their production facilities to
other lands, the phone calls he will make to those companies’ CEOs in
order to threaten them with steep tariffs unless they move back to the
US.
The fact that working Americans in flyover country are supporting Trump
as a way of rejecting economic neo-liberalism and free trade, is even
beginning to sink in among conservatives and Republican elites. First
Things editor R.R. Reno wrote on March 4, that Trump's appeal has forced Reno to question
very powerful conservative dogma: Our economic problems will be
solved by an ever-greater market freedom. This means lower taxes for the
rich, those pushing the economy forward. It also means continuing the
liberalization of global markets with free trade agreements, as well as
de-regulation and the end of government supports for businesses (for
example, the Import-Export Bank, subsidies for green power, and other
market-distorting initiatives.) In rejecting this dogma, Trump is unique among Republican primary candidates.
....globalization and ever-freer markets [are] something I’ve long
thought is our
best option as a nation. I half-recognized the real costs to ordinary
people, but I affirmed the homeopathic dogma that still more economic
freedom is the best remedy.... In each instance Trump’s successes at the
polls have forced me to acknowledge a degree of blindness.
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