Is Trump transforming America?

Personally, I have been a critic of President Trump for his style of governance. of late, I started feeling that Trump has turned the US economy in a big way and must be credited for that. The facts and figures speak for themselves.

President Trump had promised the voters in August 2016 during a speech at Michigan, “It’s going to be a victory for the people. A victory for the wage-earner, the factory worker, a victory for the everyday citizen… and for all the people whose voice hasn’t been heard. It will be a win for the voters… not the pundits, not the journalists, not the lobbyists, not the global special interests funding my opponent’s campaign.”

Looking at America today, US unemployment is falling — down to 4.1% and is close to its lowest-ever recorded level of 3.9% in 2001. The unemployment rate is historically low and wages are growing at a faster rate in recent months. Approval rating within Republican voters remains strong at 88%, suffice to say that Trump has been able to galvanise the vote bank and this factor may help him in 2020.

US stock market has been up by approximately 20% since Trump took over. Trump happily tweeted on June 19, “Since Election Day 2016, Stocks up almost 50%, Stocks gained 9.2 Trillion Dollars in value, and more than 5,000,000 new jobs added to the Economy. @LouDobbs If our opponent had won, there would have been a market crash, plain and simple!”

Over the last three decades, the US economy became interconnected with the rest of the world through a system of outsourcing and offshoring, moving the industry from American mainland to developing countries. While it made the products more economical and marketable for American business community, it took away critical human resource capability and expertise and, less the high-tech industry, the US lost the edge to developing countries like China, India and Mexico, etc. While the rich industrialists and businessmen in America became super rich, the middle class and poorer sections of the society became financially disenfranchised. No wonder the Mid-West and South, which was the bread basket and industrial hub of America, became a third world within the first world.

Just after Trump’s victory in November 2016, Joel Kotkin described the phenomenon in following words in the Forbes: America is a nation of many economies, but those that produce real, tangible things — food, fiber, energy and manufactured goods — went overwhelmingly for Trump. He won virtually every state from Appalachia to the Rockies, with the exceptions of heavily Hispanic Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico. Some of his biggest margins were in energy states where the fracking revolution created a burst of prosperity. Generally speaking, the more carbon-intensive the economy, the better the Republicans did. These states include Ohio, Texas, Louisiana, Wyoming, Idaho, and especially West Virginia, where he won by a remarkable margin of 68% to 27%. The energy industry could well be the biggest financial winner in the election.

Trump’s major achievement in politics has been his social media contact with the Republican voter, right from his first campaign in 2016 to the Trump2 campaign for 2020, Trump has surpassed his peers and predecessors in social contact with the people, making him an enviable leader. He regularly tweets, at times stating policy decisions on Twitter and gets instant response and feedback from his friends and foes alike. Trump is a people’s leader and speaks from his heart. He has made sure that he has his fingers on the pulse of people and it is very obvious from the thundering response he got from his voters when he opened his campaign for Trump2 at Orlando.

Trump has tried to convince the American public about his policy on key international zones and countries. He promised to get out of Afghanistan, and Afghan peace process has made tremendous progress in past one year or so. On Iran nuclear deal and JCPOA, Trump has stuck to his narrative and has applied all the non-kinetic means at the disposal of America. With North Korea, Trump was the only President who very boldly engaged the leadership and paved the way for a possible solution.

One of the main pillars of Trump’s foreign policy was to ask the international community to share the burden of global security, whether it be the EU, Japan, the Arab world or American partners in the developing world, Trump is the first president to have openly ask for sharing this humongous burden. This aspect cannot be measured in terms of dollars and guns, however, it has reduced the burden on American taxpayer and Trump has been able to sell the idea to Republican voters.

Although White House remained an Achilles heel for Trump administration and I have regularly written about Trump’s inability to make his key staff and aides to pull along with his style of working, no hell has fallen so far and Trump seems to have consolidated his grip on White House. Trump has also been able to negotiate different scandals and inquiries, like the Mueller Report and is now focusing on his campaign.

In a nutshell, Trump has begun a process of transformation of America and despite his idiosyncrasies and shenanigans (some thinkers may give him margin in a post-truth environment) as well as the hullabaloo and fake news gossip on mainstream media, Trump may have set the tone for epoch-making changes in how America is governed and run. Trump has come out of clouds and shines like an Emperor with a mission to transform America for the good of American people.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 27^th, 2019.

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