Why does Trump win?

Trump's first victory—then an unlikely candidate—was by a narrow margin. His second victory—after it became known what he wanted to do—was uncontested. Now the tariff war and other measures of the Trump administration may surprise us, but it's not credible that American voters are "primary" people who don't understand the consequences of their actions.

At the beginning of the 19th century, in America, it was said that wage labor, working for a boss, prevented a person from having independent judgment, the antithesis of freedom. At the end of the 19th century, fear of the concentration of economic power led to a movement to nationalize the railroads and the telephone. The New Deal regulated banking, promoted collective bargaining, and placed politics above economics. After 1945, only economic growth and repairing the damage from the war mattered, and finance once again dominated politics. At the beginning of the 21st century, capitalism rests on three principles: globalization, finance, and meritocracy. For Bill Clinton, globalization was unstoppable... a force of nature.

Clinton promised during the 1992 campaign that he would stimulate the economy. He didn't. The foundation of his economic policy was to reduce the deficit. Interest rates would be lower, capital would be invested in businesses, and the economy would improve... He trusted the market blindly and deregulated the economy. Globalization destroyed 6 million jobs from 2000 to 2017. The electoral impact of Democratic policies in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina—policies perceived as elitist—gave Donald Trump victory over Hillary Clinton.

Capital could move freely everywhere due to the lack of regulation; labor could not. The consequence was unemployment in the US. Finance gained significantly. Industrial profits came from finance: they rose from 10% in the 1960s to 40% in the 2000s... until the 2008 crisis. Ford earned more from financing the cars it launched than from manufacturing them. The financialization of the economy.

Leaving everything up to the market freed politicians from the difficulty of making decisions. The rhetoric went like this: "It's the market that decides; when buying and selling, individuals act voluntarily on the basis of mutual benefit."

It was more profitable for companies to buy treasury stock than to invest in means of production or new products. Clinton deregulated the derivatives market and repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which required the separation of commercial and investment banking. In theory, it was said, "financial innovations helped the economy by increasing efficiency and reducing risk." This was false. The result was the economic crisis of 2008. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson asked Congress for $700 billion to bail out the financial sector.

Obama arrived at the height of the crisis. He could pursue his progressive agenda or embrace neoliberalism. He recruited economists from the Clinton era, Geithner, and Summers, and opted for finance-based capitalism. The bailout, which cost billions of dollars, was paid for by lower-middle-class citizens, facilitating the resentment of many people who had voted for him and expected him to do what he promised. Frustration helped Trump.

He spent millions bailing out banks, and it's true that he enacted the Dodd-Frank Act to separate commercial and investment banking, but 10 million families lost their homes, and financial managers, despite their disastrous and selfish behavior, didn't see their bonuses reduced. Obama was the screen that protected bankers from popular anger. For him, the crisis was a technical problem; he mistakenly believed it wasn't a strategic issue that needed to be reformed through political force.

In the automotive sector, when he rescued Chrysler and General Motors, he fired their executives and made shareholders bear the losses.

The control of politics by finance did not change. However, after the 1929 crisis, President Roosevelt introduced a profound political change.

Trump came with two-pronged populism: hatred of elites and blaming immigrants. The mistakes of the Democratic administrations that preceded him made it easy to demonize elites, and they helped him win the election. Immigrants took a backseat, but he skillfully replaced them with the world, the entire world, "who for many years have taken advantage of America... which I will restore to its rightful right: Make America Great Again."

It would seem that meritocracy, a basic principle of American culture, will be able to resolve the growing inequalities in society. It won't happen, for three reasons. Giving people the opportunity to climb the social ladder serves little purpose if the steps are too high. Meritocracy doesn't resolve social inequalities in appraisal and appreciation; meritocracy doesn't make society more equal and homogeneous; on the contrary. It's Michael Sandel's thesis.

The United States has two problems: its values are in crisis, and it needs a reformer, which isn't there at the moment. It is currently governed by a narcissist who is unintelligent and very, very self-centered, and who is pursuing the wrong goal: restoring manufacturing in the United States. We must wait for the storm to subside and for a new Roosevelt to emerge. It's not impossible.