US Presidential Election: A New Era

Trump’s election in 2016 ended the age of neoliberal order, and now German politicians must finally face up to the task of shaping the new era.

An era ends, another one is born — and it really makes no difference whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump won the U.S. election.

This is because the old era I’m referring to ended some time ago, along with the election of Trump in 2016. As historian Gary Gerstle noted, the era of neoliberal order had reached its end, a period notably marked by our belief in the strength of the markets. Democracy came second; it either followed suit or didn’t.

And since the 2024 U.S. election is merely a stepping stone, we need to question the essence of this new era. Alongside Great Britain’s Brexit in the summer of 2016, Trump’s election was the turning point of 2016 because it represented a form of resistance against globalization, free trade and the cosmopolitan spirit associated with the principles of the neoliberal era. “America First” was all about this — Trump was the loud comeback of national interests.

The world that Donald Trump pushed back against — calculating, opportunistic, reactionary — was the very world that had emerged in the 1990s.

A Brave New World

Market assumptions increasingly pervaded all aspects of society, and the belief in the possibility of changing existing conditions through politics declined as fast as the stock market soared. The distribution of wealth accelerated while inequality grew. At the time, politicians Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Gerhard Schröder stated that globalization wasn’t something that could be stopped; it was a natural force.

It seemed to go well for quite a while, at least if you chose not to think too deeply or look too closely. But then, as capital migrated in search of the cheapest production conditions, factory workers lost their jobs. Such were the times, and anyway, wasn’t industry the past and information technology the present? And wasn’t the brave new world full of people who could work wherever they wanted because they belonged to the global knowledge economy that was as fast and connected as their internet lines allowed?

Yes, that’s how it was. But in parallel with this, pain worsened, doubt increased and anger escalated, partly because the tools of politics — the shaping of societal conditions — had more or less been abandoned.

The Man with the Crudest Remarks

As a key player in innovation and transformation, the state has lost its energy and credibility. The “failure of the state,” which German mainstream media particularly likes to associate with the subject of refugees and migrants, as seen in 2015, actually began at a time when the state was truly needed as a force for change.

The rage of the people in America’s Rust Belt is very real, as real as the plight of millions of people in the Global South who suffer from the consequences of globalization, namely environmental degradation, growing economic inequality, and poverty. Since politics did not appear to have any answers — the American Democrats and Republicans included — the moment came when the right man with the crudest remarks and the coldest heart said what American voters wanted to hear. And Trump became a system-buster.

The protest was directed against the politics of “broken promises,” as historian Fritz Bartel calls it. His book, “The Triumph of Broken Promises,” is a brilliant and ultimately surprising analysis of the end of the Cold War in the 1980s and how the prerequisites for neoliberal austerity policies of tight money, which Christian Lindner still advocates today, were established at that time. Bartel further explains that the fundamental problem is particularly relevant to the present circumstances.

How can policies be legitimate if they offer increasingly less and are forced to present ever-worsening conditions as a necessary consequence of societal change? The Soviet Union shattered under this contradiction, and their austerity policies — the Perestroika — caused a systemic collapse, followed by a new beginning that fused elements of capitalism with an emerging form of kleptocratic oligarchy. Democracy was consigned to the cheap seats.

We have been living in this new era for eight years now, and it already exhibits strong oligarchic tendencies — particularly, but not exclusively, within the Republicans’ camp, where Elon Musk fully embraces his post-democratic dream in front of his specially curated audience. The question that comes to mind here is: How can we dismantle the power that these men hold? A case in point is Jeff Bezos, who, along with the owner of the Los Angeles Times, decided that his newspaper, The Washington Post, should remain neutral and not give any election recommendations.

But where are the German politicians willing to take on this challenge? Whether the red-yellow-green coalition ends or not, the governing parties are ensnared in entirely different times and structures.

Their childish coalition antics have to stop. It’s time to wake up and get to work on shaping the new era.