I have just been listening to TRIP USA. And they had a good article explaining the rise in populism in the USA which has been mirrored in the U.K. and other countries in Europe.
Put very simply.
Beginning with Bretton Woods, where many renowned economists met - including a Keynes - aiming to reconstruct the world economy and trade - the zeitgeist of the time argued after two devastating world wars, that countries who traded together did not go to war. The USA at the time had 2% of the total worlds population but 50% of the worlds trade, so of course Bretton Woods was certainly constructed to advantage the USA, but it also enabled other countries through trade relatively free from tariffs etc to develop and expand their own trade.
This was when many of the rules enabling free-ish trade were constructed. The USA dollar was pinned to gold during the initial period. So the 50s in the USA and Europe was a period of manufacturing, high employment and growing living standards, particularly in the USA where the working classes achieved a level of income and living standard un imagined during the 1930s.
There were notable exceptions to this - China being one country, constrained by a full communist economy, however when Xi took the chairmanship, he was ready to open up the Chinese economy to world capitalism, and Nixon decided that a lot of manufactured goods produced in the USA could be made far cheaper in China. “What about our jobs”? Said the w/c. Don’t worry they were told, you will be re-trained in the new technology etc
Nixon then allowed China to tie its currency to the us$. The global market took off with China becoming the workshop of the world, the city elite in the west becoming ever more wealthy but the result was devastation in many areas of the USA and U.K. This was the Reagan and Thatcher period, where wealth inequality grew like Topsy. Unions were hollowed out and whole towns were boarded up and emptied of working class jobs.
The promised re+training never happened, and people’s living standards stalled.
Things began to pick up for the w/c during the 2000s, and in the U.K. public services supported by the government - schools the NHS and other services thrived better than they had done for years.
Then came 2008 and the world economy came crashing down. People lost their homes and jobs and were back to square 1.
Governments seem to flounder with little answer to the unemployed and ill-housed.
Enter Trump -stage right. He “got” the grievances of the working class, who saw the elite getting wealthier and wealthier each year that passed, and immigrants willing to do the w/c jobs at a much cheaper rate than the indigenous w(c were either willing or able to afford.
“Make America Great Again” harks back to the period of the 50s and 60s when the w/c had good manufacturing jobs in all sorts of industries and the wealth inequality was at a reasonable standard.
This TRIP USA argues is why populists like Trump (and I think in the U.K. and wider Europe) has won the vote with the siren call of more jobs, crushing the elite snd stopping immigration.
Of course we know that in the end it will all come crashing down, but I think it is a pretty convincing argument as to why populism has taken such a hold on the (particularly) w/c population.
Sorry this is rushed and simplistic, but hopefully you get the drift of their argument.
