The modern liberal order began in the 1930s under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democrats who carried out fundamental reforms to face both the Great Depression and then World War II, changes that lead to American dominance in the West, via NATO, throughout the Cold War and to the establishment of a welfare state, even if a weak one, domestically. The system strengthened in the mid-1960s when Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson in response to the movement for civil rights for Black people passed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act that finally made them full citizens. And in 1970 under Republican Richard Nixon the Environmental Protection Agency were created as the old order reached high tide.

The liberal order began to disintegrate beginning in the 1970s as Japan and Western Europe began to become economic competitors, as did the Asian Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore). In response in the 1980s, Republican Ronald Reagan and Conservative Margaret Thatcher led the neoliberal reorganization of the world economy based on open markets, privatization, and deregulation, together with the weakening of social welfare and attacks on the labor unions. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, seemed to represent the victory for both the United States and world capitalism, but it was short lived. The rise of China to become an economic competitor with the United States, and Vladimir Putin’s decision to attempt to rebuild the Russian empire as a military rival ended American world dominance.

Trump, a brilliant populist who this time won the popular vote in the presidential election, if by a small margin, now proposes to “Make America Great Again” by fundamentally reorganizing the country’s social and economic life and by reasserting U.S. global power. Though he campaigned as the candidate of working people, he has chosen a dozen billionaires for his cabinet and other top offices, and he is putting them in charge. Trumps allies now are tech moguls like Elon Musk of SpaceX, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.

In foreign policy, Trump’s desire to incorporate Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal into the United States is not simply meant to shock, it expresses his plan to reassert U.S. control over the Americas as the foundation for world domination. He alternately threatens and embraces China as he wrestles with the question of how to defeat it. And he seems to prefer Putin to NATO. Thus, the liberal world order is undone.

Domestically, Trump will undo twentieth century liberalism by maintaining his earlier tax cut on corporations and the rich, rounding-up and deporting immigrants, undoing the civil rights laws and ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that promoted fairness in workplaces for all races and genders. Trump has promised to use the Justice Department and FBI to go after his political enemies in the Democratic Party and the press. He is prepared to declare a national emergency and to mobilize the military.

Trump promises to increase oil production and will end all efforts to control climate change.

In the face of all of this, half of the country remains on the broad left, but the mood is one of defeat, resignation, demoralization, and fear. A half a million people protested his election in Washington, D.C. in 2017, this year only about 5,000. What will Trump really do now that he is in power? And how will the American people react? And what is the role of the left?

Dan La Botz