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http://interaffairs.ru
Author : Armen Oganesyan
Editor-in-Chief of International Affairs
"THE AMERICAN DREAM is dead, but I will bring
it back" is the slogan with which Donald Trump liter-
ally burst into the presidential election race.
Donald Trump surely has his trump cards, and one of
them is his financial independence, something he con-
stantly stresses. The Bush-Clinton elite, encumbered
with its clienteles, will never make America great, it has
no chance of it, he tells his supporters. The Americans,
who usually assume that all presidents have had lobbies
behind them that financed their election campaigns and
have largely controlled their policies, have been pleas-
antly surprised by Trump's uninhibited rhetoric, although he says he needs work more than rhetoric.
One distinctive feature of Trump's campaign is his assumption that one way to make America pros-
perous is a new foreign policy based on the notion of the "good deal." That is the positive aspect of
his foreign policy doctrine.
One more pet target of Trump's is big U.S. corporations that locate their manufacturing facilities abroad
to hire cheaper labor. He threatens to slap import duties of up to 30% on the goods they bring to the
United States.
"One of the things that I heard for years and years: Never drive Russia and China together; and Obama
has done that," Trump said. In talking about a visit to Russia two years ago, he said he would be able
to "have a great relationship" with Putin and "get along" with the Russian people. Trump appears to be
deliberately avoiding the Ukraine theme, and thereby obviously winning points from his fellow Amer-
icans, who are scared of anti-Russian rhetoric with increasingly frequent belligerent overtones.
Trump was against the war in Iraq and deplored the United States' human and financial losses in it. He
doesn't believe that leadership necessarily means participation. He considers leadership a source of spe-
cific economic, mainly financial, benefits, among other things a skill to obtain lucrative deals through
tough negotiations.
Critics claim that Trump's foreign policy views can scare voters instead of attracting them. "Maybe,
but perhaps they don't understand the American people in the way that Mr. Trump does," says Jeremy
Shapiro of Brookings Institution. "He has tapped into a deep well of populist anger that runs through
much of the Republican electorate. People are tired of the same old elites peddling the same old solu-
tions, while the working class suffers through economic loss and cultural decline. They do not want
any more efforts to explain away their anger in politically correct terms."
Nevertheless, Trump will have a job to do trying to win ground from his eminent rivals, and the billions
of dollars on his bank account can't do all the work. Both the Republican leadership and, naturally, the
Democratic elite may close ranks against him. But both Bush and Clinton have rivals within their own
parties, and at some point Trump may invoke his good deals theory and clinch a deal with some of
them.
Is Mr. Trump the Next U.S. President?