The Bhutanese Leading the way.
The victory of President Donald Trump offers important lessons for all countries across the world, including Bhutan, and it is thus important to understand why he won, especially since USA is the sole superpower on the global stage.
The victory of Trump is a clear backlash to unrestrained globalization since the 1980s which picked some winners but also too many losers.
For all intents and purposes, the policies of President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s followed in some measure or other by subsequent Presidents of both parties transferred wealth from the middle class to the rich.
Generous tax cuts were given to the rich, big companies were allowed to fire American workers and outsource jobs abroad, changes in the stock market paid heed to shareholders value above all else, the now discredited theory of trickle-down economics was followed, minimum wage was kept low, companies refused to share the benefits of increased productivity with workers, etc.
As a result, America saw its middle class shrink rapidly and wealth was pushed upwards and concentrated there with more billionaires than ever.
America had come out of its Robber Baron age in the first half of the 20th century but the mixture of money, lobbying and politics in the modern age ensured that a range of special interests ran the House of Representatives and the Senate. Sometimes, even laws were written by lobbyists.
Ironically, the Democratic Party whose original base included workers lost them to Trump first in 2016 as the party refused to recognize and act on the growing inequality and wealth gap and again in 2024.
Americans after the Second World War till the 1980s and even 90s could afford a single income household, but that is rarely the case now. Owning a home is now an impossible dream.
With all of the economic pain above, and given how special interests ran Washington, many Americans lost faith in mainstream politicians and they turned to populism embodied in Trump.
The 2020 race pulled things back but the bad luck of the inflationary effects of the pandemic and the Ukraine war ensured that Americans were paying more for grocery. They felt nostalgic for the lower prices of a pre-pandemic era under Trump and most voted on this basis.
While inflation was the main issue, other issues were immigration and border management, culture wars, gender, race and polarization made worse by echo chambers of the social media.
There is also a return to American nativism and isolationism that always bubbled under the surface.
For Bhutan, the impact of a Trump return, on the positive side, will be the value of Bitcoin going up, but the downside will be climate deals to limit global warming failing and how potential trade wars could impact the global economy and thus, us too.
“To win the people, always cook them some savoury that pleases them.”
Aristophanes