Now that the Republican Party has chosen its candidate and the Democratic Party is on the verge of doing so, I am creating a space here for discussion. The USA is the most powerful country in the world militarily and economically, so we are all affected by what happens there. American views and issues impose themselves and become the medium through which many issues of value and culture are filtered. Whether this is a good thing or not is a matter of opinion, but we cannot avoid the facticity of it.
As a general introduction, I will make a few remarks, but these are by no means final - more a matter of opening up important questions.
Firstly, this does seem to be a rather unusual election. Speaking very broadly, we tend to think nowadays of the Democrats as being on the left and the Republicans on the right and on many issues this does seem broadly accurate. However, the Republican candidate's primary appeal seems to be to working class (white) people and his policies imply considerable social change whereas the Democratic candidate, relatively speaking, assuming that it is who most people think it will be, seems more to represent the status quo.
Secondly, this is starting to look as if it may turn out to be the most racially polarised election for a long time, even exceeding the one that brought Obama to the presidency. This says something about two big issues - (a) the changing demographic balance in the USA where 50% of under fives are non-white and (b) the worldwide issue of migration and refugees. When we look back through history and 'pre-history', times of great migration have been times of great change and not always for the better.
Thirdly, the issue of international trade is going to be a big topic. Ever since the Second World War the world has been moving more and more in the direction of free trade and globalisation of money. Now this is coming into question. Again, it is interesting that the anti-globalisation cause has, until recently, been a rallying point of the left and is now being advanced with considerably more likelihood of result by the right.
Fourthly, there is the military question. It is quite difficult to get clarity on this. Hilary Clinton is generally thought to have been on the 'hawkish' side in the Obama administration, but within the general frame of how US policy has been for many years. Trump is suggesting some completely new departures, some of which point one way and some another. He intends to increase expenditure on the military and destroy ISIS, but he also talks a lot about closing overseas US bases and withdrawing from pledges to protect some allies and ceasing to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. All in all this looks to me to be more isolationist than expansionist. Certainly he does not see the US going on being the world's policeman.
Fifthly, very interestingly, in today's news, Trump is reported as saying that the USA is in no position to lecture other countries about civil rights, democracy, law and order and so on.
Whether one likes what he says about them and the language that he uses or not, Trump does seem to be putting his finger on a lot of real issues - demographic change, over-extension militarily and financially, globalisation, migration, and the position of the ordinary working person. Both candidates are going to have to address these issues one way or another. One is left with the impression that whoever gets elected some real changes are in the offing.
A key issue at the heart of all this is one of the truths of classical economics, which is that free movement of capital does not work unless you also have free movement of people (labour). This, incidentally, is the same issue that has created and will continue to create problems in the Brexit issue. Further, there is a political implication. If you have free movement of labour and capital, the whole idea of nation states starts to break down, since they cannot control activity (capital) and do not represent fixed groups of people any more. So the issue of globalisation is also the issue of whether the idea of nation state sovereignty can survive and if it did not what then? It seems to me that the world is running up against these contraditions: globalisation vs nations and the fact that you cannot have free movement of capital without free movement of labour. A reaction is setting in. Is this a new direction or is it a temporary pause in an inexorable process? Modern technology makes it quite difficult to resist globablisation, yet popular feeling makes it difficult to adapt to it. Which is going to give? The American election will be an arena in which some of these issues will get an airing.
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