Trump’s success explained by economic losses and racism
- Carolina Oliviero
- May 30, 2024
- 4 min read
Society and experts have been sharply debating the reasons and triggers for populism's rise, which is evident in the election of former (and maybe soon-to-be-re-elected) President Trump. One line of argument focuses on economic causes, and the other on social causes. As complicated as the world is, it is not solely one thing or the other but their historically unique combination.
The common narrative about populism’s and particularly Trump’s success, is the economic outpacing of the former middle class. “The rustbelt feels neglected by mainstream politicians and represented by someone like Trump” is a very common argument. And it is not wrong.
First and foremost, globalization has left its traces on the economy and society. The diverse effects of globalization are strongly connected to multiple spheres through which the economic reality of life has changed for the worse for many American citizens. Firstly, important sectors that guaranteed economic prosperity for the big middle class diminished. Globally, the US steel and car industry has lost importance due to cheaper production in uprising economies like China. As a result, the American middle class feels this decline in their daily lives. Production plants are closed, people lose their jobs, whole industries disappear, and being a steel worker or employee in a car plant is no longer seen as something worth achieving. Secondly, economic deregulation, which was especially promoted by Republican US administrations starting with Reagonomics, has neglected the needs of the average citizens. The Financial Crisis of 2008 was only the tip of the iceberg, leaving middle- and lower-income households behind with financial damage they will probably never recover from. People have not forgotten nor forgiven the US administration for the fact that a crisis like this could happen in the very first place, nor how they were left abandoned in the aftermath. These two effects of globalization, the fall of domestic industries and the damage through financialization, present triggers for political uproar. Rodrik illustrates that globalization shocks have always led to populist movements, fostering a division between the “good people” and the “corrupt elite” (Rodrik, 2018). Therefore, the success of populism cannot be explained by purely economic decline but must include the emerging disconnect between the middle class and the political elite in this moment of (economic) crisis.
As a second cause, connecting the economic with the social sphere, Mutz addresses the status threat hypothesis (Mutz, 2018). Based on poll data, she argues that many Trump voters are not motivated by an actual economic loss they have suffered from but by the pure fear of finding themselves in economic hardship soon and the associated loss of status. According to this argument, economic changes do not directly cause the success of populism since, according to the poll data, those who currently already find themselves in economic hardship and downturn do not vote for Trump. Rather, citizens who are currently still doing well but living in conditions on the edge of economic downgrade are motivated to vote for Trump. This motivation is based on the psychologically and socially rooted concern of being affected by economic changes in the future. Therefore, this study illustrates that we cannot divide economic causes from social causes, but both spheres strongly intersect and interact.
As a third factor, the nature of human beings comes to light, especially in dark moments of crisis. As Sherif exemplified in his study among a group of students in the 1950s, humans tend to identify themselves with a social group and, further on, favor the well-being of their own group over the others, leading to inter-group conflict (Sherif, 1988). In the real world, this can lead to an uprise of discrimination and racism, especially in a country where skin color highly correlates to income. Therefore, the economic causes can serve as a trigger for racist motivations.
This inter-group conflict is especially fostered in the US due to its highly segregating structures. Many parts of life in the US are determined by income. To name a few examples, the attendance of public or private schools, colleges, and universities, the membership in country clubs, the life in saver (gated) neighborhoods, the dependency and reliance on public transport, the places where free time is spent (free of charge in public parks versus cafes and bars charging you) highly determine which people you encounter, who the people are you surround yourself with and finally, the bubble you find yourself in shaping your personal reality of life. As Kaplan argues, the infrastructures and neighborhoods Americans live in define highly homogenous social groups (Kaplan, 2023). As a result, in the case of the US, the somewhat natural inter-group conflict occurs among the racially traceable income distribution, reinforcing lines of division between the rich and the poor and thus the black and the white parts of the population. Consequently, the conflicting parties are not just identifiable by income (economic factors) but also by ethnicity (social factors), explaining why Trump voters are not just economically but also socially and ethnically motivated to vote for him.
On a final note, this stark intersection between income and racial division also explains the rise of identity politics. After all, identity politics are nothing else but a regular and justified political demand for economic and social policies, however, framed by interests based on identity. As such, identity politics connects the economic and social intersection between financial and social inequality and addresses the interests of social groups that are overlappingly divided by economic conditions and ethnicity. In this context, Trump’s success exemplifies a case of identity politics, which is anchored in economic and ethnic social structures and boosted by populist strategies. It explains the rise of Trump and populism and its attribution to both economic causes and racist tendencies in the US system.
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Kaplan, S. D. (2023). Fragile neighborhoods: Repairing American society, one zip code at a time (First edition). Little, Brown Spark.
Mutz, D. C. (2018). Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(19). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718155115
Rodrik, D. (2018). Populism and the economics of globalization. Journal of International Business Policy, 1(1–2), 12–33. https://doi.org/10.1057/s42214-018-0001-4
Sherif, M. (Ed.). (1988). The robbers cave experiment: Intergroup conflict and cooperation (Reprint). Wesleyan Univ. Press.
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