The U.S. presidential election is still in a tug-of-war between the two camps over various controversies. Due to vote counting anomalies in Democratic-held swing states such as Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as questionable mail-in ballots, the Trump camp claims to have found evidence of fraudulent use of counting machines by foreign powers, which may be inconclusive until the last minute. So far, however, Trump has received more than 10 million more votes than he did last time, with both African-American and Latino votes up considerably.
For years Trump has been criticized for his populist agenda, which is generally associated with being anti-establishment, anti-elite, and anti-intellectual. Even the Chinese-language Wikipedia claims that many of Trump’s ideas “have been perceived as resorting to populism, including the deportation of over 11 million illegal immigrants (mainly from Mexico and Latin America), the construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, and a travel ban on Muslims entering the country” (President Trump issued an executive order on January 27, 2017 to (banning citizens of six Muslim countries on national security grounds, ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court) in order to win the support of grassroots white voters.”
Politicians have been questioned about going populist to get votes, and the policies Trump is pursuing to fulfill his political promises are certainly for votes, but for him, doing the right thing will naturally lead to votes, and what is the right thing? Providing more jobs and assistance to relatively disadvantaged Americans allows Americans to enjoy a more secure life and, most importantly, allows American families to be better off. Before the Chinese Communist virus hit the world, the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent, the lowest level in decades, and in November 2019, the income of the lowest 25 percent of Americans grew by 4.5 percent, outpacing the 2.9 percent income growth of the country’s highest-paid workers.
According to a Gallup poll released on October 7, 56% of Americans say they are better off now than they were in 2016, the highest level ever recorded in a presidential election year since the survey was conducted. It’s worth noting that the survey was conducted at a time when Wuhan pneumonia is still rampant in China, and no president who has successfully sought re-election in the past three decades has had a correlation figure higher than 47 percent.
Trump doesn’t want Americans to be the heroes of his core thinking, and one might think it’s natural for a businessman to want to save money. But he saves money because he wants to use it to help the less fortunate, and the well-being of the middle and lower classes and minorities has been a concern of his since his youth. Over the years, Trump has occasionally appeared on famous live talk shows and mentioned some of his political arguments in favor of the lower middle class.
In the 1980s, when the Japanese economy was booming and Japanese people and businesses were buying up property in the United States, Trump published a story in 1987 criticizing the government’s prolonged spending on the military to protect its so-called allies, such as Japan and Saudi Arabia, and later, in separate live interviews with Larry King and David Lettermen, he said that he would save money to protect his rich allies. The firm view that the underprivileged can be taken care of. In many of his visits, Trump has pointed out that Americans are full of potential, and that with the right policies, he can harness the enthusiasm of the people.
This attitude has not changed, as he has seen that Americans have always been at a disadvantage under multilateralism, and since China’s entry into the WTO, Trump knows that the source of the new problems is China. The out-migration of companies to China has led to a considerable loss of jobs in the U.S., thanks to U.S. or other Western corporate investment, the rapid growth of the Chinese economy, which has turned around to make money from the Americans, and the U.S. has had to continue to issue debt, China has gone from being a poor country to one of the largest creditors of the United States. For Trump, this is totally unreasonable. Not only does it drive up the unemployment rate in the United States, but it also forces his own people to buy things made by the Chinese when they could be earning their own money. This mentality of not wanting to be the hero dominates Trump’s policies.
In the case of health care, for example, Trump signed an executive order this year forcing all health care providers to disclose the cost of their services so that Americans can compare and see how much less health care providers are charging insurance companies. In signing the bill, he stressed that no American should be fooled by health care regulations to which they never agreed in advance. The government will now require hospitals to publish their standard charges for services, including the discounted prices they are willing to accept. In addition, the Medicare program was reformed to prevent hospitals from overcharging low-income seniors for medications, saving them hundreds of millions of dollars this year alone.
Trump’s goal, even if it is for votes, is to benefit the majority of Americans, and only by pursuing policies based on the aspiration that people come first will America truly be great again. However, this has provoked a backlash from vested interests inside and outside the system, and they are determined to prevent Trump’s re-election.
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