The Seventh Broadyard Workshop (博雅工作坊) of the Institute of Area Studies, Peking University (PKUIAS), on the theme “The Donald Trump Phenomenon and a New Understanding of the US”, was held at PKU on June 2. Ten experts and academics from PKU, Tsinghua University, Renmin University of China, University of International Relations, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and several other research organizations participated. From the perspective of politics, history, culture, international relations, and media, they held cross-disciplinary discussions on the superficial features, connotation, public opinion foundation, system support, ideology, and the domestic and international background of the “Trump phenomenon” and “Trump-style politics.”
The academics said that, in recent years, the US has seen increasingly stronger appeals from the public calling for reforms in the social safety net, though without any agreement on how such reforms should be undertaken. Meanwhile, liberal internationalism is on the wane while realism is gaining ground, and right-wing populism is gradually rising in the US, all of which played an important role in helping Trump win the presidential election. Trump is not a traditional politician who has a fixed political stance. As a businessman, Trump makes decisions on foreign and diplomatic affairs with a businessman’s thinking model and judges the relations between the US and other countries in terms of predictable interest, even trampling on regulations and tearing up deals.
As for what kind of effect “Trump-style politics” will have in the US, the workshop participants opined that the unpredictability created by Trump will erode the credit of the US and harm American hegemony in the long run. It is more likely that Trump is trying to adjust the gap between American policies and the nation’s capacity than he is against globalism, they said. Since its involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has met problems caused by overexpansion. In that light, Trump’s emphasis on “contraction” now is probably a sensible choice.
About 200 audience members from different walks of life also attended the workshop, and, at the Q&A section, the discussants answered questions from the audience.
