Donald Trump at a rally in Las Vegas. Flickr/Gage Skidmore. Some rights reserved.Confounding all predictions (including my own), on 20 January 2017 the chief justice of the US Supreme Court will give the oath of office to president-elect Donald Trump. The shock of the unexpected has brought forward instant commentary from across Europe.
For Jeremy Corbyn the Trump victory represented an “unmistakeable rejection of a political establishment and economic system that simply isn't working for most people”. In a right-wing version of “a better world’s in birth”, Marie Le Pen tweeted “Their world is collapsing. Ours is being built”.
The regrettable truth is that Le Pen will prove closer to reality. Corbyn is correct to point out that Donald Trump played to the fears and anxieties of those Americans suffering from the many ill-effects of globalisation. However, the likely consequences of Trump’s victory will be a strengthening of the neoliberal vision of a world economy dominated by corporate capital.
