Progressive movements globally should be preparing to resist Trump Presidency
By John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus (US)
He faces multiple indictments. He has to pay over half a billion dollars in fines for criminal misconduct. He has even been removed from the Republican Party ballot in Colorado.
And yet, Donald Trump continues to lead the race in the Republican Party primary, having won every state so far and knocking out all but one opponent. In head-to-head polls with President Joe Biden, meanwhile, Trump is running even or even a few points ahead. Young people, who helped Biden win in 2020 but are furious with many of his policies, particularly over the war in Gaza, are increasingly favoring Trump.
It’s not a foregone conclusion that Trump will win in November. He could land in jail. He could lose several important swing states—Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania—and go down to defeat in the Electoral College in another nail-biter of an election.
But progressive movements the world over must nevertheless prepare for a Trump victory. Even if he loses his bid for re-election, Trump’s MAGA supporters will continue to have an impact on U.S. policy, particularly in conjunction with a resurgent far right elsewhere in the world.
If Trump does win in November, the greatest damage will perhaps be in the realm of climate justice as the new president moves to reverse as much as he can of the Biden administration’s policy on renewable energy. Oil and natural gas lobbies, smelling a return to federal influence, are pouring money into Trump’s reelection campaign. Whatever modest gestures the Biden administration has made in the direction of addressing global carbon emissions, including the Global South’s energy transition, will be thrown out as soon as Trump takes office.
Trump and his allies have lambasted “globalists” in an attempt to win favor with working people in the United States. But whether it’s oil company executives, billionaire donors who are slowly shifting away from the other Republican candidates, or wealthy oligarchs like Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Saudi leader Muhammad bin Salman, Trump is most comfortable among rich people who flatter him in exchange for policy influence, as casino magnate Sheldon Adelson did around Israel policy prior to the 2016 election.
Incredibly, Trump’s allies have also advanced him as a peace candidate, someone who, as Republican Senator J.D. Vance put it in The Wall Street Journal, “won’t recklessly send Americans to fight overseas.” Although Trump famously was unhappy with U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan and is skeptical of U.S. commitments to Ukraine, he shows no inhibitions around sending Americans to fight overseas. As president, he contemplated wars with Iran and Venezuela and made reckless threats against China and North Korea. The blueprint for his next term, Project 2025 created by Trump-aligned movements and thinktanks, emphasizes the importance of confronting China, increasing military spending especially around nuclear weapons, and shifting from a “defensive” to an “offensive” footing in cyber and space capabilities.
Climate, global economy, and peace: these are the issues that Trump and his allies hope to distinguish themselves from President Biden and the Democrats. They are the issues around which Trump is the most hypocritical and, in fact, most vulnerable. These are also the issues that progressive forces have detailed alternatives that can appeal to the constituencies most receptive to Trump’s messages.
On climate issues, Trump and the far right in Europe have portrayed clean energy alternatives as elite-driven. The German far right has boosted its popularity by complaining about the cost of heat pumps while Trump has referred to renewable energy as “a scam business.” Progressives have a golden opportunity not only to stress the urgency of addressing elevated temperatures and rising waters but to emphasize all the new jobs associated with the economic shift. The Inflation Reduction Act, alongside its more ambitious European Green Deal, means money in the pockets of working people. That’s potentially an election winner.
By linking Trump to real globalists and demonstrating how his policies have boosted the fortunes of his rich friends, progressives can put forward a set of economic policies that appeal to the very folks that have been left behind by globalization and have, as a result, been most receptive to Trump’s messaging.
And progressives have worked to establish real constrains on the overseas military campaigns of the United States. We have demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and we have supported a just peace in Ukraine that is predicated on an immediate withdrawal of Russian occupation forces. We have campaigned for reductions in nuclear arsenals and the reallocation of military dollars to human needs.
These are the campaigns that form the core of a new internationalism. Activists will be coming together in London on March 23 to strategize on how to build links across issues and across borders. Donald Trump is far from the only extremist threat. Far-right forces have won elections recently in The Netherlands, are poised to return to power in Austria, and expect to capture a majority of the seats in the European Parliament in the June elections. The far-right has taken power in Argentina. It expects to hold onto power in India and Russia in elections this year.
The far right, in other words, is rapidly building up its own illiberal internationalism. It’s time for progressives to come together to build an alternative not only to the far right but to the tepid policies of the center. Join us on March 23 to shape a global movement that can save the planet.
- John Feffer is Director of the US-based Foreign Policy in Focus.
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