What is Trumpism without Trump?

During his many campaign rallies, Mr. Trump often crows about the great political movement he has created. At a recent rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota he said, “this is the greatest movement in the history of our country and if we don't win this election our country is finished.” But what, exactly is this movement? He closed the rally by saying, “we will show November 5th to be the most important day in the history of America We Are One movement one people one family and one glorious nation under God and together we will make America powerful again we will make America well again we will make America strong again strong we will make America proud again we will make America safe again we will make America free again and we will make America great great again thank you very much God bless you thank you thank you thank you Minnesota.” But I am still unclear as to how this great movement will achieve all these wonderful outcomes.

A great part of the movement he speaks of is the power of Mr. Trump’s personality, his stage presence, his theatrics. But, although he survived the assassin’s bullet, at some time in the future Mr. Trump will pass away as we all must. He is, after all, an old man. He clearly wants his movement to continue far into the future long after he is gone. But what would this movement be without Mr. Trump and his powerful personality, theatrics and everything else?

Mr. Trump’s policies can be as changeable as his mercurial personality. His vice-presidential pick, J.D. Vance, may have been anointed the MAGA leader in a post-Trump world and Mr. Vance has been very vocal on the lecture circuit about the types of policies he favors now that he is the Apprentice (which appears to be very different from the policies he favored back when he compared Mr. Trump to Mr. Hitler).

I had thought that Mr. Trump had wanted to take the country back to the 1950s when America dominated the world with 50% of global GDP. But now I think he wants to take us back even farther. His foreign policy tends toward the days of the great powers where great nations dominated the landscape and alliances were based strategic advantage and not values or principles as was the rules based order led by the US after World War Two. He views the global economy as a zero sum game which sees lesser powers (which were often colonies of the mother country) as vassals to be used to benefit the great power. Comparative advantage was subordinated to power. This is mercantilism, not capitalism.

Mr. Trump’s economic policies seem to originate in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the height of colonialism and mercantilism. Mr. Trump favors tariffs and protectionism for American industries. He believes our country should be self-sufficient and that the government should subsidize favored industries. But these are policies that lead to wars. Resource poor Japan felt it had to conquer its neighbors in order to get the resources it needed to be a great power. But it was only in the American led rules-based order that Japan prospered. By trading with other nations instead of warring against them.

Argentina during the rule of Juan Peron adopted these mercantilist policies of import substitution and a protectionist industrial policy in order to benefit the working class in that country, much as Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance say their policies will do in America. Before Peron Argentina had the fifth biggest economy in the world and was a major exporter of agricultural products. Thanks to the mercantilist policies of Peronism Argentina now suffers from hyperinflation, a stagnant economy, corruption and a poverty rate of 42%.

So what is Trumpism after Trump. Its Peronism. Ask the Argentines how that worked out for them fifty years after the death of Juan Peron.

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 In the short time since Kamala Harris was elevated from vice-presidential candidate to presidential candidate she has had little time to flesh out her policies, but I think we can assume that they will be pretty much the same as Joe Biden’s platform since she and her progressive left cohorts probably wrote most of Mr. Biden’s program. We can expect a plethora of progressive left programs such as increased wealth transfers, Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, open borders, clamping down on charter schools, etc. In essence anything Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren support Ms. Harris will also support.

At a recent speech at the American Federation of Teachers convention she said, “right now today we Face a choice between two very different Visions for a nation one focused on the

future and the other focused on the past and we are fighting for the future.” I think she is looking to a future where socialism is not such an abysmal failure as it has been in the past. A future where the ever-increasing power of government does not crush every dream of freedom a person might have. A future where a person’s identity determines their future.

We could ask the Venezuelans what kind of future socialism has given them, if they had the time to stop their protests of another stolen election by the socialist dictator disregarding the will of the people. Javier Milei in Argentina and Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, in Venezuela, are trying to change the tragic courses their countries have taken. If they are successful (and we all hope they are) perhaps they will look at America after the election of 2024 and shake their heads saying, “those poor Americans, you would have thought they would learn from our mistakes instead of repeating them.”