Trump's curious rise

OR THE VAST majority of political analysts, Donald Trump's success in winning the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 was a complete surprise.

- ATANU BISWAS

OR THE VAST majority of political analysts, Donald Trump's success in winning the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 was a complete surprise. However, in his 2016 book, The Rise of Trump: America's Authoritarian Spring, Matthew Mac Williams argued that Trump's quick ascent through a confused Republican Party hierarchy was not an exception but rather the latest manifestation of a persistent theme in American politics—the propensity and temptation towards an ascriptive politics.

Before running for President three consecutive times, Trump was the US' most flamboyant billionaire. He started hinting at a presidential run by 1987. He considered running as a Republican in 2012 after briefly considering doing so in 2000 with the Reform Party. When he publicly announced his intention to run for President in June 2015, Trump declared that the American Dream was dead but pledged to "bring it back bigger and better."

Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential election was one of the most startling upsets in American electoral history. The racial and ideological convergence that has changed the American voters since the 1960s, however, was largely responsible for it.

Subsequently, as President, Trump withdrew from important trade and climate agreements, prohibited travel from a number of Muslim-majority countries, imposed strict immigration laws, launched a global trade war, implemented record tax cuts, reshaped Middle Eastern relations, and has now started an unprecedented battle against the American universities—the foundation of American supremacy. Trump's economic protectionism stands in stark contrast to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher's free trade rhetoric, which drew inspiration from economists like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.