A provocative title? Of course there is much to offend us in President Trump’s pronouncements, along with the character and antics of his various nominations to Government posts. But if we previously assumed that much of what he said was bluster, we now have to face the reality that he means what he says, and consider what the outcomes might be. In particular, what if he succeeds?
This is not a simple question. To start with – what does “success” look like? We often condense that into simple numbers – GDP growth, inflation, stock market indices and unemployment figures. It is certainly possible that by these simplistic measures, and in the short term, Trump might succeed and grow the US economy without runaway inflation. With the world’s reserve currency and largest economy under his control, he has options not available to the UK and most other countries, and if he can bully OPEC into increasing oil & gas production alongside increases in US domestic production, falling energy costs might offset the inflationary effects of import tariffs, along with his programme of deregulation and gutting of Government Agencies tasked with policing and enforcing what regulations remain.
I know what you’re thinking (because you’re reading LDV) – what about the cost? What about climate change and damage to the environment? What about all the lives destroyed when settled yet illegal migrants get rounded up and deported? What about inequality and minorities? What about healthcare and reproductive rights?
And you are absolutely correct, but what will the headlines be? Particularly when the full impact of some of his policies may not be felt until after he leaves office.
The headlines will still be about the economy, and if those numbers are favourable to Trump then we can be certain that politicians from the Conservative and Reform parties, amplified by the right-wing press (and X), will be loudly shouting about how Donald Trump was right and that we should adopt his policies in the UK. We will also have to stomach the sight of former liberal turned MAGA-groupie Liz Truss proclaiming how she was in fact right all along, and was sabotaged by the woke lefty establishment. Even Labour is currently finding the word ‘deregulation’ very seductive, with their ministers undergoing a sudden and discordant change of tune about him.
As Lib Dems, we will understand that behind those headlines will be a litany of short and long-term harms. We know that inflation does not impact everyone equally, and often a benign headline number can mask steep rises in costs that disproportionally impact the poor. Tax cuts will favour the wealthy, and repealing equality and civil rights legislation will impact women and minorities, driving up inequality and feeding social unrest. We know that deregulation can contribute to economic crises or disasters like Grenfell Tower. Under Trump, the US Government is out of the fight against climate-change, a battle we are already on the verge of losing, and he is clear that protecting the environment comes a distant second to extraction and profit. Other countries, and the international organisations charged with maintaining a semblance of world order will choose between bending to his will, or face concerted efforts to undermine them.
Of course he might not succeed by any measure. The tensions and contradictions within his base and amongst his supporters are already starting to become apparent, for example with immigration and the H-1B visa issue. Natural disasters might make his position on climate change untenable, and his tariff and deportation policies might trigger rising inflation and a crash of the arguably already over-valued US stock markets. There may be a backlash against further efforts to limit and punish access to abortion, or cutting funding for education and healthcare.
But voters will always be tempted by politicians who they believe will make them personally better off, and some will dismiss the harms as somebody else’s problem. Our 72 MPs (and indeed all of us) will need to be at the top of our game to move the narrative beyond the toxic and transactional nature of Trumpism. It won’t be easy to make ourselves heard above the gloating of certain British politicians hoping to ride to power on Trump’s coat tails, but if we don’t try – who will?
* Nick Baird is a Lib Dem activist and Chair of the Cheltenham Party. He is writing in a personal capacity.
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9 Comments
Wr are already in an Orwellian world where “War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength”. The utter failure of Trumpism will be simply promulgated as a great triumph (just as Putinism is in Russia) despite its obvious failures to any rational observer – a new Golden Age for America- that leaves the great mass of the population in destitution.
We have to understand that Trump is a reflection of Amercian society. As one commentator noted – “This is who we are – Selfish. self-centred and lacking in compassion for fellow Americans”. That is not just an issue for a big part of American society. The UK is just as susceptible to blaming immigrants for economic woes and looking to demagogues to restore the Great in Great Britain.
The decline in consensual or pragmatic US political norms has been decades in the making. The Obstructionist policies of the Republican party have been prevalent at least since Newt Gingrish in the 1990s and have become incresingly hysterical ever since. Today the tea party movement looks quite moderate compared to the Maga crowd.
The political classes (including that of the UK) have not been able to address the impact of rising inequality and stagnation of living standards since the 1980s. It is not surprising in an era where young adults are poorer and have less future prospects than their parents, that so many tend to write-off poltical parties as all the same and look to populists for answers.
We are (supposedly) an evidence-based party. If any of Trump’s policies succeed, then we should look at the evidence (putting aside our distaste for much of what Trump says or does), ask ourselves why those policies succeeded, and whether there are any lessons in them for what the British Government should be doing or whether we should modify any of our policies in the light of that new understanding. That’s particularly so if any policies succeed where we’re not expecting them to succeed, since that would imply something wrong with our current assumptions/analysis.
Same thing if his policies fail: Figure out why they failed and if there are any lessons for us there (but since most LibDems are probably already expecting most of his policies to fail, there may be fewer surprises there).
You raise a very important point. Thanks. My view is that the issue all comes down to what people mean by success.
Thus, even if GDP falls, unemployment rises, inflation rises and crime increases, Trump could still be a ‘success’ if the people who voted for him – over 77 million – are convinced that it would have been worse without him as president. And any actual success he achieves, such as drastically reducing illegal immigration into the USA, will be amplified greatly.
Might the headline grabbing cruelties and short-term selfishnesses of Mr Trump and his teams, American and other, encourage us to promote and demonstrate the kindly, sustainable, world-stabilising and world life prolonging benefits of Social Liberalism?
The key question that needs answering before we can even attempt to answer the question implied by the title of this Article is – What do we mean by the word ‘work’ here.
Work could mean at least three very different things:-
1) “Work for Trump” i.e. achieve Trump’s personal objectives which could for example include ‘Change the constitution so that a presidential limit of two terms is increased.’
2) “Work for America” i.e. the abuse of arbitrary American financial and military muscle leads to a massive swing in purchasing power for US citizens almost certainly at the expense of much of the rest of the Free World
3) “Work for Us and the World” i.e. make the substantial majority of the both noticeably better off”
To my mind
1) is not as impossible as we might wish. Step 1 – Totally corrupt the electoral system, Step 2 – whatever you want. Somehow, I don’t we would find adopting that acceptable.
2) could occur, it depends on how the rest of the West react. For example there is a clear case that Europe haven’t paid their fair share of the costs of NATO in a long time and the threat of US withdrawal is significant. However, Britain hasn’t had the muscle to impose that for about a century.
3) In totality, vanishingly unlikely, but possible in parts. For example, anyone who has been a councillor knows that it is very difficult to reduce the bureaucracy.
So why not?
He is a showman and as we have seen he can make black look white to a good many people.
This time round there are no “adults in the room” to talking him out of his madcap ideas, so lets consider what is likely to happen.
Trade wars are likely to lead to inflation and we saw what that did to Biden. Crypto currencies have a record of being unstable and I don’t see any reason why they wont crash again.
I think Trump will get what he deserves as president
“Other countries, and the international organisations charged with maintaining a semblance of world order will choose between bending to his will or face concerted efforts to undermine them.”
Trump is starting to use tariffs to ‘persuade’ other countries to accept illegal migrants back to their countries, and it seems to be working. If he succeeds with that, he will use it to persuade other countries to accept other conditions and trade deals on his terms. It is worth reading the article on Trump 2.0 by Laurie Macfarlane on openDemocracy. That spells out that China and immigrants are not the problem, but massive inequality is what turns people to support populist solutions. Macfarlane claims that we should treat the Second Coming as a wake-up call the world so desperately needs.
It’s no longer about the economy, it’s about feeling good. As the chances of fulfilling the American Dream recede for many, American Hope takes over. Nobody will know whether Trump’s growth policies worked until he’s out of office (unless he changes the rules to run again). Keir Starmer is in danger of being our Biden: one gloomy term before the simple arguments of extremists take over. My Liberal hope for Britain is that the feel good approach our party adopted during the election can be spun into something more compelling than the go-to argument of blaming other people for our woes that is common to both extreme right and extreme left.
As others have said, a lot hinges on how we define whether a policy “works” or not. Most acceptable methods of establishing this may become harder over the next few years as reporting is restricted. We also need to decide quite what we mean by “policy” too – a Truth post or Executive Order probably shouldn’t count.
The problem is that even if Trump keeled over tomorrow (he’s neither particularly young nor particularly good at looking after his health, after all), much of the wider ecosystem around him would persist. So Liberal solutions to tackle the ludicrous levels of inequality might be a productive place to start.