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ps88 Win or Lose, Trump Has Already Won
Whether or not Donald Trump wins this electionps88, he has already won a broader debate about whom our political system is supposed to serve.
In policy terms, Mr. Trump’s victory is especially clear on his two signature issues, trade and immigration. But what he has accomplished goes beyond any narrow matter of policy. Adopting his approach to those issues involves a change in the way political obligation is understood: It entails a clearer realization that it is permissible, and often essential, to give priority to one’s fellow citizens over those of other countries.
When Mr. Trump descended the golden escalator to announce his first presidential candidacy in 2015, his argument that free trade and mass immigration were hurting the United States was out of step with leading opinion in both political parties and with the academic consensus. But in the nine years since, with the help of these two issues, he has transformed American politics, not only remaking the Republican Party in his image but forcing Democrats to move in his direction as well.
Mr. Trump has noted this dynamic. Even as he paints Kamala Harris as a radical, he has joked that she has lately adopted so many of his policies he plans to “send her a MAGA cap.” He could say much the same about the Biden administration, with its continuation of his tariffs on Chinese goods and its recent efforts to project a tougher image on immigration, not least in the bipartisan border bill.
Even some experts are coming around. During the 2016 presidential campaign, a group of 370 economists, including eight Nobel laureates, signed a letter accusing Mr. Trump of ignoring “the benefits of international trade” and of exaggerating the “modest” role that immigration has played in the stagnation of working-class wages.
But in March of this year, one of those economists, the Nobel laureate Angus Deaton, offered a much more negative assessment of free trade and immigration. “I used to subscribe to the near consensus among economists that immigration to the U.S. was a good thing, with great benefits to the migrants and little or no cost to domestic low-skilled workers,” he wrote. “I no longer think so.” He added that he had also become “much more skeptical of the benefits of free trade to American workers” — and even of its role in reducing global poverty.
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