The case study wants to use the political-strategic approach to populism to explain the phenomena of Trump’s trade policy and the outcome of populists and therefore republican vote share to understand the impact on the 2018 mid-term election results for the republican party. With the focus on the 2018 mid-term elections, is it essential to limit the time span for this case study from Trump’s inauguration until the mid-term election 2018.
Followed by this introduction is the chapter about the theoretical theory for this final paper, the political-strategic approach to populism by Kurt Weyland, followed by the empirical chapter about Trump’s trade policy until the mid-term elections 2018 and the impact on populists and therefore republican vote share, followed by the impact on the republican election results in the mid-term elections 2018. The last chapter presents the research results and a conclusion and implications for further research. Therefore, it is necessary to lay out the theoretical foundation of this paper, the political-strategic approach to populism in the next chapter as a starting point for this research to determine if Trump’s trade policy was successful.
1. Donald Trump’s brake with Americas foreign policy traditions
When Donald Trump became president in 2017, he had no experience or knowledge of foreign policy and therefore no connection to the foreign policy establishment in Washington D.C. His lack of experience did not hold him back from promoting his divergent opinion on foreign policy, like bringing back jobs from overseas, avoiding new wars, securing the borders and putting “America First” in his foreign policy (Nelson 2017: 114).
One of the most important topics from the beginning on of his presidency was trade policy, especially the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA): “Trump also called [...] (NAFTA) “the worst trade deal in history,” and he threatened to abrogate the act if Mexico and Canada did not agree to give the United States better trade terms” (Powaski 2019: 241). He also withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) negotiated under Obama (Powaski 2019: 241). Almost two years later, in the mid-term elections 2018, he made the elections a vote about him and his politics, where trade policy played an important role: “President Donald Trump, who as a candidate warned that he alone could fix the nation’s ills, is making the midterms a referendum on the one thing he appears most comfortable talking about: himself (Cadelago 2018: 1).
These attempts by Trump to make the mid-terms elections 2018 a vote about himself and his politics led to the research question for this final paper: Did Trump’s trade policy have a positive resonance within populist voters in the 2018 midterm elections and therefore an positive impact on the republican election results? The research question is driven by the theory that when Trump’s foreign policy had a positive resonance within populists voters, the republican party should have gained or held power through an increased vote share in the midterm elections 2018. The research question and thesis are driven by the assumption that most of the republican voters are populists who vote for Trump and are therefore important for the Republican Party, which will be explained later.
One of the important books mentioned in this paper is the Oxford Handbook of Populism which is the most important source for the theoretical framework for this final paper. Other important sources especially for defining populist voters are news articles from The Guardian and the British Broadcasting System (BBC) who analysed the exit polls from the 2016 presidential election. This paper relies also heavily on the research paper written by Olga Chyzh and Robert Urbatsch who analysed the impact of Trump’s foreign policy on the republican vote share in the 2018 midterm elections. For the empirical analysis it is also important to mention the work by David P. Fidler, Robert D. Blackwill from the Council on Foreign Relations and Peter Gibbon and Jakob Vestergaard from the Danish Institute for International Studies who analysed Trump’s trade policy.
The method used in this final paper is the single case study, because case studies are often extensive to conduct, the final paper therefore will focus the research on one single case, Trumps trade policy, because more case studies would be overstretch the circumference of this paper. The case study wants to use the political-strategic approach to populism to explain the phenomena of Trump’s trade policy and the outcome of populists and therefore republican vote share to understand the impact on the 2018 mid-term election results for the republican party (Behnke/ Baur/ Behnke 2010: 82). With the focus on the 2018 midterm elections, is it essential to limit the time span for this case study from Trump’s inauguration until the mid-term election 2018.
Followed by this introduction is the chapter about the theoretical theory for this final paper, the political-strategic approach to populism by Kurt Weyland, followed by the empirical chapter about Trump’s trade policy until the mid-term elections 2018 and the impact on populists and therefore republican vote share, followed by the impact on the republican election results in the mid-term elections 2018. The last chapter presents the research results and a conclusion and implications for further research. Therefore, it is necessary to lay out the theoretical foundation of this paper, the political-strategic approach to populism in the next chapter as a starting point for this research to determine if Trump’s trade policy was successful.
2. Theoretical overview
2.1 The Political-Strategic Approach to Populism
When using the concept of populism and the apply on Trump’s trade policy, is important to note that populism as a concept is: “notoriously hard to grasp and has long been one of the most ‘contested’ concepts in the social sciences” (Weyland 2017: 67). The theoretical framework of populism that this paper uses is the political-strategic approach to populism by Kurt Weyland. Weyland defines populism as: “a political strategy through which a personal leader seeks or exercise government power based on direct, unmediated, uninstitutionalised support from large number of mostly unorganized followers” (Weyland 2017: 50).
Weyland’s approach does not focus: “not on what populists say, but on what they actually do, unifying bond, the relationship to the followers has a quasi-direct, seemingly personal character. The leader reaches the followers directly, for instance through mass rallies and TV, and largely foregoes clientelistic or organizational intermediation” (Weyland 2017: 50). For Weyland strategy in the context of populism means:” ‘the methods and instruments of winning and exercising power’”(Weyland 2017: 55). The implication for the case study is, therefore, that Trump’s trade policy is a method or an instrument of winning and exercising power for him by positive influencing the populist vote share and therefore the election result for the Republican Party. Another important aspect of Weyland’s approach is that populism is a political strategy that: ’’revolves around and individual politician” (Weyland 2017: 56), who: “seeks to boost its autonomy and power, and contests, pushes aside, or dominates [...] other types of actors, such as [...] and organized political parties” (Weyland 2017: 56). In this case it is Donald Trump who dominated the Republican Party after his nomination for 2016’s presidential election:
“The pattern is also inescapable in the Republican party, now Trump’s party in the eyes of the US media. The Axios website summed up: ‘In 500 days, Trump’s hijacking of the formerly conservative GOP is complete - an astonishing accomplishment. The majority party in America is fully defined by his policies, his popularity with the base, his facts-be- damned mentality, his ability to control and quiet virtually all Republican elected officials’” (Smith 2018: 1). To stay in power, according to Weyland, political actors rely on numbers: “On this dimension, populism clearly prefers numbers. Insisting on the norm of political equality, it criticizes the privileges [...] and attacks elitism. To make numbers count in politics, populism constantly mobilizes ‘the people’, that is, the large majority of the populace. Based on the principle of ‘one person, one vote’, populism seeks to overwhelm its adversaries in the electoral arena [. ] with massive victories at the polls” (Weyland 2017: 56-57).
This insinuates that, in order to sustain his power, Donald Trump depended on the Republican Party to win the midterm elections 2018 and vice versa, because he relied on them to pass legislation in the Senate, House of Representatives and the Republican Party on his voters to win elections. This is the case since he was nominated by the party and the successful win of the presidency, as mentioned earlier, which proves the assumption that most republican voters are Trump voters and therefore populists themselves, shown by a survey from the Los Angeles Times in 2019 with following results: “Asked if the party should “become more populist, stressing issues like strong borders, protecting jobs from foreign competition and standing tough against crime and social disorder” or should “become more traditionally conservative, stressing fiscal responsibility, defense and probusiness policies,” more than four in ten Republicans supported the populist side” (Lauter 2019: 1).
Another important aspect of populists’ politicians is that they utilise polls as a weapon to discredit their political opponents: “Populists constantly commission surveys and brandish their popularity ratings as political weapon. Strong approval bolsters their claim, embody the ‘will of the people’ and helps them delegitimize their adversaries and opponents as ‘enemies of the people’”(Weyland 2017: 57). An example for president Trump is that he frequently uses approval ratings to claim that he acts on behalf of the republican voters and to discredit critical media outlets: “Over 90% approval rating for your all time favourite (I hope) President within the Republican Party and 52% overall. This despite all of the made- up stories by the Fake News Media trying endlessly to make me look as bad and evil as possible. Look at the real villains please!” (Trump 2018: 1).
In order to mobilize voters, populists rely on direct contact and identification with their followers: “ To win, maintain, and strengthen suck backing from large numbers of citizens, ideally the people as a whole, personalistic leaders rely on unmediated, quasi direct appeals. [...] For mobilising such an amorphous, diverse mass, specific programmatic promises have limited effectiveness; diffuse personal appeals that depict the leader as the embodiment of ‘the people’ and it will seem to work better. Leaders therefore promote a direct identification with their followers, which bypasses all form of intermediation, such as [...] party organizations”(Weyland 2017: 58). This explains why Donald Trump made the midterms elections a vote about him and not just a vote about republican candidates for Congress: personalistic leaders like him rely on unmediated, quasi direct appeals to mobilize voters instead of mediation through the republican party, who needs Trump’s support to get their candidates elected for congress because the republican party heavily relies on Trump’s voters.
2.2 Defining populist voters
Before applying the political-strategic approach on Trump’s trade policy outcome on the midterm elections 2018 and their impact on populists voting behaviour, it is critical to define who are populists voters in the USA and how important they are for Trump and the Republican Party. Key statistics from the presidential election exit polls in 2016 show that:
“White voters, who make up 69% of the total, voted 58% for Trump and 37% for Clinton. Non-white voters, who make up 31% of the electorate, voted 74% for Clinton and 21% for Trump.White men opted 63% for Trump and 31% for Clinton; white women voted 53% for Trump and 43% for Clinton.Among non-college-educated whites, 67% voted for Trump - 72% of men and 62% of women.Among college-educated whites, 45% voted for Clinton - 39% of men and 51% of women (the only white demographic represented in the poll where the former secretary of state came out on top). But 54% of male college graduates voted for Trump, as did 45% of female college graduates” (Henley 2016: 1).
Other key aspects of Trumps victory are that he won the majority of rural and sub-urban voters: ”Mr Trump won the rural vote by 62% to 34% and the suburban vote by 50% to 45%”(BBC 2016: 1). He also got a majority in high income voters, who earn more than 50.000$ a year:” Among those earning more than $50,000, it was 49% to Mr Trump compared with 47% to Mrs Clinton” (BBC 2016: 1). Donald Trump voters are also mostly older than 45 years: “Of voters aged 18 to 29, 55% voted for Clinton compared with 37% for Trump. Of those aged 30 to 44, 50% voted for Clinton, compared with 42% for Trump.Some 53% of voters aged 45 and over supported Trump. Meanwhile, 44% of voters aged 45 to 64 and 45% of voters 65 and older voted for Clinton” (Puglise 2016: 1).
The implications from the exit polls of 2016 show which groups of voters Trump had to mobilise for the midterm elections in 2018: rural and sub-urban voters, males, people over the age of 45 years and voters with a yearly income about 50.000$. He also needed to win in the voters group of white males with college degrees and the votes of white voters in general. After analysing the populists voters and defining how populists maintain power it is clear that a positive resonance of Trump’s trade policy in populists voter should show a positive election result for the republican party in the midterm elections 2018 and positive polls for Trumps trade policy because populists politicians like him using polls as a way of legitimating that they act on behalf of the majority or the “will of the people”.
3.3. Analysis of Trump’s foreign policy and the resonance within the republican party voters
3.1 Trump’s trade policy between his inauguration and the midterms elections 2018
To understand the impact that Trump’s trade policy had on populists voters and the midterm election results of 2018, it is necessary to understand which actions Trump took in the field of trade policy. To understand Trump’s trade policy, it is necessary to understand Trump’s foreign policy as an extension of his domestic politics: “His foreign policy is not conceptualized with a grand strategy in mind, other than a conviction that the liberal world order has not worked well for the U.S. Instead, the most important organizing principal is the need to attract and retain the support of his political base.”(Thompson 2017: 4).
This can be seen as a direct proof that Weyland’s assumption that populists constantly have to mobilise people to win and hold power by winning at the polls: “On this dimension, populism clearly prefers numbers.[...] To make numbers count in politics, populism constantly mobilizes ‘the people’, that is, the large majority of the populace. Based on the principle of ‘one person, one vote’, populism seeks to overwhelm its adversaries in the electoral arena [.] with massive victories at the polls” (Weyland 2017: 56-57).
One of the first victims of Trump’s actions in trade policy was the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): “During the 2016 presidential campaign, candidate Trump repeatedly called NAFTA ‘the worst trade deal . . . ever signed anywhere’ andblamed it for the loss of thousands of American jobs.He also statedthat the TPP, the planned twelve-nation trade agreement that wouldhave decreased tariffs in many Asian countries, would be even worse.The Monday after his inauguration, President Trump withdrew theUnited States from the TPP” (Blackwill 2019: 61).
The reason why Trump has such a negative view on multinational trade agreements is due to the fact that he sees current trade deals as a way for foreign countries and other actors in politics violating the American people (Fidler 2017: 3). After the decision by Trump to leave the TTP agreement, he issued an executive order to review all trade and investment agreements by the United States: ”on 29 April 2017 a further executive order on ‘Trade Agreement Violations and Abuses’ was issued,42 tasking the USTR and Department of Commerce with a ‘performance review’ of all US trade and investment agreements and trade preference programmes with a view to identifying all violations and abuses by these by foreign counterparts” (Gibbon/ Vestergaard 2017: 20).
During his campaign and as a president, Trump called the North American Free Trade Agreement(NAFTA) trade deal: “’the worst trade deal . . . ever signed anywhere’ and blamed it for the loss of thousands of American jobs” (Blackwill 2019: 61). Therefore, his plan was to leave the NAFTA Agreement on the 100th day of his presidency but was convinced by his cabinet to remain and instead renegotiate the trade deal with Canada and Mexico:
“President Trump intended to announce U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA on April 29, 2017, the hundredth day of his presidency. However, most of the members of his cabinet (including otherwise pro-tariff Wilbur Ross) urged him not to do so, and after talking with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and then President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico, Trump reconsidered and agreed to begin a renegotiation of the accord instead” (Blackwill 2019: 61).
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