More than his first term as president, Donald Trump’s second coming signals an epochal shift in US political culture. What is emerging still lacks clear definition, but it has become clearer what is dying: American liberalism. The demise of liberalism is consequential not just for the United States but for the international order it once purported to lead.
Liberalism has deep roots in US history, with the country’s founding ideas in the late 18th century drawing on enlightenment thinking about sovereignty of the people, the inalienable rights of the individual and the merits of a market economy. Over time it has spawned a broad ideological spectrum, encompassing different understandings of politics, freedom and economic governance.
It was not until the 20th century that modern American liberalism took on the institutional and policy trappings of a dominant ideology, such that the US could be described as a liberal democracy. By mid-century, the term “liberal consensus” articulated a broad belief that liberalism was synonymous with “American values”. It was a belief intellectually cemented by historians and writers keen to provide a national narrative fit for a new global power leading the “free world” against communism – the late American historian Arthur Schlesinger described liberalism as the “vital centre” of American politics.
American liberalism was at its most ambitious in addressing matters of social welfare and equity, evident in the major policy programmes during the New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society of the 1960s, including the advancement of civil rights. However, partly due to such ambition, the liberal consensus began to come apart in the later 1960s and 1970s, and since the 1980s liberalism has struggled to articulate a national story compelling belief or support.
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Towards the end of the 20th century, neoliberalism emerged as an influential political philosophy that drew support from both Democrats and Republicans, and became the principal economic credo of US government. It promoted market efficiency, championing deregulation of the economy and the unleashing of globalisation. It existed in an uneasy tension with liberalism, eschewing notions of justice and equality in favour of individual responsibility and the authority of the market.
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The effects of neoliberal policies that have become apparent in the 21st century – growing inequality, income stagnation for working and middle classes, and loss of jobs due to outsourcing – were a major factor in the populist backlash that directed most of its rage at “liberal elites” and that Trump so successfully surfed to electoral success in 2016 and again in 2024.
Notably, Joe Biden attempted to distance himself from neoliberalism with his support of industrial policies that embraced supply-side liberalism. It was too late though; his investment in the economy was to no political benefit in terms of the electorate’s mood. Biden’s ambitious but belated intervention may be seen as the last hurrah of an outmoded model of liberal democratic politics in the US.
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Following the second World War, the US was a key architect in the creation of a liberal world order, a rules-based system in which international organisations and agreements undergird global co-operation and governance, based in principle on liberal ideas and values such as free trade and the rule of law.
The ending of the Cold War appeared to further advantage US-led liberal hegemony. In 1992 Francis Fukuyama famously proclaimed “the end of history” to connote the triumph of liberal capitalism over communism, with western liberalism envisaged as “the final form of government throughout the world”. The triumph has proved hollow, however, as the backlash against neoliberal globalisation hastened the spread of populist ethnonationalism and authoritarian politics, all undermining liberal internationalism and the very concept of the West as a normative model of global order.
Trumpism remains a nebulous phenomenon; neither an ideology nor a doctrine, it is more a personality cult than a programme for government
In his first term as president, promoting an “America First” doctrine in foreign policy, Trump actively sought to dismantle the liberal world order so carefully crafted and policed by his predecessors. His acolytes readily rejected the liberal myth of “a global community”, averring that policy would be realist, transactional and based on strength, not ideals.
Trump’s second administration will redefine American power in a new era of realpolitik competition and conflict. In doing so it may place the final nails in the coffin of a liberal world order.
Liberalism in the US is exhausted, bankrupt of ideas, leaders and energies, and with no compelling story to tell the American or international public. It cannot constitute a vital centre in American politics when there is no common ground of beliefs and values, or even of truth and reality.
For now, the populist insurgency is with Trumpists who despise liberalism. Collectively peopled by a motley crew of nationalists, libertarians, Christian fundamentalists and techno-futurists, they lack an overarching ideological vision. Perhaps the most prominent idea is “postliberalism”, championed by the new vice-president JD Vance and other conservative leaders, who believe it can be the fuel of a political revolution to secure a nation united around values of faith, family and order.
“Illiberal” is a more apt descriptor and prefix for a transfigured American democracy than “postliberal”, though, as it signifies the challenges to constitutionalism, the rule of law and individual rights entailed by Trumpist populism. Yet, it is easier to define illiberalism by what it opposes than what it stands for. Trumpism remains a nebulous phenomenon; neither an ideology nor a doctrine, it is more a personality cult than a programme for government.
It may be that the US is entering an era of decadence that will be overseen by illiberal oligarchs promising bread and circuses. It is likely to be an era of spectacle in which Trump performs the roles of both tribune of the people and ringmaster.
Trump’s first term seemed like an aberration. His second coming presents him as a transformational figure reshaping his nation’s political culture in his own image. This is America now. Let the show begin.
Liam Kennedy is professor of American Studies and director of the Clinton Institute, University College Dublin.
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