What happened?

In the end it was a landslide. Trump won the presidency, the popular vote, the senate, and the House of Representatives. After all of the talk about it being a close race, the Republican Party took all seven of the crucial swing states. 

American political commentators will be debating what happened for years, but it the basic reasons why Trump won are clear to us. Primarily the causes are economic. Although all of the markers for the US economy are good, GDP is up, unemployment and inflation are down, people don’t eat abstract numbers. As we have seen in this country, inflation seems higher than the numbers that the news tells you. This is because in real terms in generally is. In times of high inflation, the prices of basic goods that ordinary people buy everyday really do go up faster than the inflation rate. For example, while inflation in the US peaked at 4.2, rents increased by around 30%. For those who don’t own their own homes, rent makes up the largest single expense, and it has increased at a rate over seven times that of inflation. 

The economy hurt ordinary Americans basic living standards. The financial results of COVID, and the following inflation crisis spurred on by the disruption to energy markets caused by the war hurt people’s pockets. Biden was in office during this, and the electorate made the Democrats pay for it. Trump increased his vote count amongst every demographic. Despite all the talk of a backlash against Trump from women over reproductive rights, 48% of American female voters, cast their ballots for Trump, even as they were rejecting his policies on referenda on abortion in various states. Despite all of his racist outbursts, the threats to deport ten million people and a speaker a Trump’s pre election rally in New York describing Porto Rico as an “island of garbage”, 33% of ethnic minorities, a group the the Democrats saw as safely theirs, voted for Trump. 

As we said, the details will be discussed for decades. Trump’s victory is being called the greatest political comeback of all time. Discussions will focus on things such as whether America was ready for a female president. The first female head of state was elected in 1960 in Indonesia. Since then, there have been over 100 elected female heads of state, or government, the UK has had three, and even Turkey has had one. Yet there still seems to have been a huge turnout of, mostly young, men, who were convinced that a woman couldn’t run the country. The ‘woke’ issue was another key reason. The Democrats are seen as being too ‘woke’. In the last three days of the campaign, the Republicans party spent $25 million dollars on a social media campaign aimed at young black and Hispanic men to attract their votes by raising fears of transgender people, particularly in schools. One might have thought given all the shootings that American parents had far more important things to worry about what was happening in schools. 

In addition, the Biden administration’s involvement in two seemingly unenviable foreign wars played against it. Trump, who is a staunch supporter of Israel even managed to increase his vote amongst Arab Americans despite the genocide happening in Gaza. he won in Dearborn, the most Arab American city in the country, and took all of the key state of Michigan. “Even if he will continue this genocide at a 99% chance, I’m going to take that 1% chance that he’s going to stop it, as opposed to the 100% chance that it’s going to continue under Harris”, said a women of Palestinian descent in Dearborn. 

And there is the key to Trump’s victory. People knew that the Democrat government hasn’t been working for them, and they had no trust in it. More and more across the world people are rejecting the sitting government with a feeling of despair. Maybe that 1% chance seems a risk worth taking. When, in addition to this, you have a charismatic populist politician, who despite his billions of dollars somehow manages to convince the voters that he is not part of the ‘elites’ that run the country and the world, you have this sort of historic victory. 

What does it mean for the world?

When we stop to consider what this means for the world going forward, we want to focus on the main issues, first the war in Ukraine, the situation with international institutions, then China, and finally the war in the Middle East.

Trump has promised to make a deal to solve the Ukraine war in 24 hours. This almost certainly won’t happen. Trump will assume the office of the US President on 20th of January, but we can be sure that his team are currently working overtime to bring things together. Nevertheless, we’d be astounded if he can bring an end to the war by the end of his first day. What Trump will do though is to dramatically cut American aid to Ukraine. 

Ukraine is losing the war. There is no doubt about this now. Slowly, day by day, the Russian frontline creeps further and further forward. It’s clear that Ukraine does not have the manpower, or, now, the money or weapons to hold the line. Zelenskyy was probably the most worried person as the ballots came in. When Trump starts to decrease American spending on the Ukraine war, there will be calls from many European politicians for ‘us’ to step up and plug the gap. President Macron in France has already started to talk along these lines. We can expect more European leaders to follow him. Of course, the money will have to come from somewhere, and it seems more than likely that it is ordinary workers who will bear the costs with cuts in education and healthcare spending almost inevitable. Even if the European states can come up with the money for Ukraine to continue the war, it won’t solve the manpower problem. Ukraine needs at least another half a million men to throw into the slaughter, and that is something that Europe won’t provide. Even though a lot more people will invariably die, the result of the war is no longer at all in doubt. Russia has won. The question remaining is how much they will win. 

One would imagine that Russia will want confirmation of its annexation of the Crimean peninsula, and the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, including the parts of them that it doesn’t yet control. Alongside this they would want a commitment that Ukraine would not be allowed to join either NATO or the EU. Ukraine and many of the European states will, of course, not be happy about this. It will be a humiliation for the entire western alliance. Ukraine and the European countries will try to delude themselves that defeat can be avoided, and Russia has no need to make a quick settlement. Their tanks are rolling onwards. In time they will win. 

The Trump government will not be too unhappy about this though. We expect to see America enter a period of isolationism. This will mean a withdrawal from international institutions. America won’t of course leave NATO, but it will become less active in the war against Russia, and will demand that other countries up their contributions, and military spending. The fact that the US is paying the bill for European defence is a longstanding American grievance. We can expect too that America will pull back from other international commitments. Those present at the current climate summit in Azerbaijan can reasonably expect that any American commitment to any action on climate to be absolutely worthless. In his first term, Trump tore up international agreements, such as the Iranian nuclear deal. What the Biden administration says in its last days is worthless. 

The economic side of this policy of isolationism will be the raising of new tariff barriers, particularly against China, which is seen by many of the American political class as their main enemy today. China certainly won’t take this lying down. It will of course retaliate and introduce tariffs of its own. The increased tensions that this brings about, and the fact that America will abandon its ally in Ukraine will not make a clash between America and China over Taiwan any less likely.  

In Tel Aviv Netanyahu is certainly celebrating. He was the first world leader to congratulate Trump, and on Israeli news, presenters paused the show to drink a toast to Trump’s victory. This is with good reason. We should expect Trump to be an even stronger supporter of Israel’s genocidal war that Biden was. Support for Israel is a vote winning issue with key portions of the Trump demographic, and after America has abandoned Iran, it won’t want to be seen as abandoning another ally. Rather Trump will back Netanyahu in a more aggressive approach against Iran and its proxies in Lebanon. His idea of bringing peace to the Middle East is to ‘get the job finished and destroy Hamas and Hezbollah’. We should be expect no peace in the Holy Land this Christmas, and quite possibly the next. 

Back in the USA 

Back home in America, we will see business as usual. Despite the predictions of many American left commentators, we don’t expect to see fascism installed tomorrow. Of course the rich will get richer. Elon Musk a strong Trump supporter is reported to have made $50 billion from the increase in the value of his stocks after the election. The Dow jumped by 300 points to hit his higher ever point. The dollar too saw large increases. Musk’s appointment to head the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ will be the start of attacks upon the social wage. ‘Smaller government’ means cuts in things like libraries and education. 

Trump talked of expelling millions of illegal immigrants. The numbers sound unreal to us. After all, Trumps wall never got built. There will be an increased number of expulsions and a new anti-immigrant campaign though, and it will increase fear in immigrant communities, and lower the price of illegal immigrant labour. 

Attacks on reproductive freedoms will continue, just as they did under the Biden regime. Right wing forces in America will feel emboldened by Trumps victory. This ideological war against women’s rights and immigrants is nothing new in America though. Despite all of his bluster, Trump didn’t manage to deport as many immigrants as Obama did. The trends in American society have continued under both parties. 

After four more years of this, with continuing war, and living conditions decreasing for working people, it’s quite likely that the incumbency bias will have turned against the Republicans, the Democrats will have come up with a more acceptable candidate. With Trump not being allowed to run again, we will quite possibly see a Democrat back in the White House.