Where is the world going? | The Press

To better understand where we are going with Donald Trump, it helps to look at where we came from and understand how past ideas and crises have paved the way for the emerging political order.

Let us take as a guide Gary Gerstle, professor emeritus of American history at Cambridge University and author of The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order.

He defines a political order as “a constellation of ideologies, public policies, and voter groups that shape American politics beyond an electoral cycle.”

Thus, the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that it caused put an end to the economic laissez-faire that had prevailed until then. This classic liberalism was supplanted by the New Deal, the foundation of the American welfare state, established by Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt.

According to Gerstle, the New Deal transformed into a political order when it became transpartisan. Republican Dwight Eisenhower, elected president in 1953, considered it prudent to maintain economic regulation, social welfare, and high levels of public spending in order to counter the influence of communism around the world.

In turn, this political order was hit hard by a crisis, that of the oil shocks of the 1970s, and by the high inflation that followed.

Neoliberalism therefore succeeded the New Deal order during the 1980s, under the leadership of Republican President Ronald Reagan, who denounced the heaviness of a government which restricted the dynamism of free enterprise and slowed down innovation and growth.

This ideology spread with the free movement of ideas, people, capital and goods that it promoted. In the United Kingdom, its high priestess was Margaret Thatcher, the conservative prime minister who imposed privatization, deregulation and tax cuts with her iron fist.

Later, a more moderate neoliberal agenda was adopted by Democratic President Bill Clinton and, across the Atlantic, by Labor Party Tony Blair.

In Canada, it was Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney who signed the first free trade treaty with the United States in 1988 and launched negotiations for the second, extended to Mexico, in 1994. In Quebec, both Liberals and PQists strongly supported this trade liberalization.

The Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, supported by the Conservatives, negotiated the third version of the free trade treaty as best it could, under threats from Trump during his first term.

To varying degrees, the major parties have rallied around the neoliberal order.

According to Gerstle, the financial crisis of 2007-2008 dealt a fatal blow to neoliberalism. In the dock, the deregulation of the financial sector passed by the Democrats under Clinton. Many lost their homes and never accepted that no banker went to prison, while their institutions were saved with billions in public funds. The economy took almost 10 years to recover and income gaps widened terribly, as the French economist Thomas Piketty demonstrated.

In his first term, Trump capitalized on popular discontent to attack two articles of faith of neoliberalism: free trade and immigration.

Then, the COVID-19 containment and the resulting high inflation increased the resentment of those left behind in devitalized regions.

Democrat Joe Biden got their message. He contributed to the emergence of a new order by retaining Trump’s tariffs against China, which the Americans had invited into the World Trade Organization in 2001. He brought industrial policy back into fashion, mobilizing billions for the decarbonization of the economy and the manufacturing of microprocessors. He also increased aid to poor families and reduced irregular immigration.

Gerstle believes that Trump’s second term will be decisive for the direction of the new order which is still being sought, torn between two main trends.

The first, that of populist interventionism in the path traced by Biden, retains the essentials of the welfare state and, in the words of Vice-President JD Vance, places “Main Street over Wall Street”. Protectionism and tight control of immigration would take center stage.

The second trend, darker and more likely, announces unlimited power for President Trump, married to unconstrained freedom for the libertarian oligarchs of Silicon Valley, like Elon Musk.

This authoritarian order would include extensive deregulation and severe cuts to the state. Above all, it would pose an existential threat to liberal democracy, which to date has generally gone hand in hand with various forms of economic liberalism.

Furthermore, it would mark the return of American imperialism subjugating allied countries like Canada.

Historian Timothy Snyder, a professor at Yale University, suggests, in an ironic play on words, calling the second diet trend “Mump,” a portmanteau made with the first two letters of Musk and the last two of Trump. You should also know that “mumps”, with an s, translates to mumps.

I wish you with all my heart a new year without Mump in mumps.

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