Rise of American Populism and its Role in Reviving the Jacksonian Tradition in Trump’s Foreign Policy

Abstract

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 Presidential Elections firmly established the fact that populism was the new reality of American politics. This research explores the basic factors driving the populist tide which also led to the election of Trump as American president. It was not only the increasing economic inequality and lack of employment opportunities which resulted in strengthening the populist tide, but also the perceived lack of status by the American middle class and their fear of becoming a minority in their own country which drove them to Trump’s camp en masse. Trump also fully exploited the public’s discontent with the elite and promised them that he was their best chance of restoring America’s dignity and breaking it free from the ‘disastrous’ economic deals that his predecessors had signed which were supposedly the primary cause of the country’s economic woes. This research shows that most of Trump’s foreign policy decisions were in line with his populist rhetoric and the Jacksonian tradition of American foreign policy. This research takes a deeper look into some of Trump’s populist foreign policy decisions in the light of Jacksonianism.