Donald Trump Is Stuck in the 1980s. Here’s Why That Matters
But will his tariffs take America back to the 1890s?
Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images
In announcing his broad-scale tariffs on Wednesday at the White House, President Donald Trump said this of Lee Iacocca, a businessman he had in the distant past dealt with: “He’s an older guy, real pro, really top guy.”
Iacocca was a legendary automobile executive. He was at the peak of his powers in the 1980s. He died in 2019.
How many Americans under the age of, say, 55 even know Iacocca’s name—much less what he did? 15%? That may be generous.
The point here is not to run down Iacocca. He was legitimately famous for decades! Instead, it’s to note that Trump really is stuck in the ‘80s. With everything from his cultural references to his views of how the American economy works best, he is firmly rooted about four decades ago.
Consider this exchange between Trump and Chuck Todd on Meet the Press back in 2015:
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Chuck Todd: All right. Your slogan, we’re going to hear it a lot today at the fair. “We’re going to make America great again.” When was the —
Donald Trump: Great slogan.
Todd: When was the last time America was great?
Trump: I would say during the administration of Ronald Reagan you felt proud to be an American. You felt really proud. I don’t think since then to any great extent people were proud.
Reagan, in case you forgot, was president for the bulk of the 1980s.
Trump’s cultural references are all ‘80s too. Bob Hope! Arnold Palmer—and his genitals! Lee Greenwood. The late great Hannibal Lecter. (OK, Silence of the Lambs came out in 1991 but still…)
The president’s views on the efficacy of tariffs were also formed—and are stuck—in the ‘80s. Here’s Trump talking about how we were getting ripped off on trade with Oprah Winfrey in 1988:
The problem, as I see it for Trump, is that there’s no way we can go back to the American economy of the 1980s. The globalization genie is out of the bottle. We now live in a world of deep economic interconnectedness. I am very skeptical that Trump’s tariff policies will reverse engineer almost five decades of such expansion. But make no mistake: That’s exactly what Trump wants to do.
He wants to Make the 1980s Great Again.
Want more ball and strike calling—no matter what uniform the batter at the plate is wearing? Check out Chris Cillizza’s Substack and YouTube channel.
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