Donald Trump: The First Post-Cold War President

The coming return of President Donald J. Trump has signaled numerous major shifts in American politics, in more ways than one.

He has indeed started a new era in the political landscape, from his powerful new coalition, to his revolutionary anti-mainstream media strategy of podcast blitzing in the final weeks of his campaign, as well as the seismic shift in even mainstream media polls depicting his approval ratings as being higher than ever before.

But perhaps his biggest contribution in drastically shifting the Overton Window goes beyond our borders, and finally forcing one of our two major parties to let go of a half-century-long conflict that had been allowed to shape their outlook for far too long.

A Fair Trade

Even though the nearly 50-year conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union ended in the early 1990s, the clash of civilizations remained fresh in many Americans’ minds at a cultural and political level. And for the GOP, the fight between capitalism and communism never really ended.

This Cold War lens through which most Republicans continued to view the world saw them apply this increasingly obsolete dichotomy onto all modern problems, both domestic and foreign. Many key policy positions were dictated not by pragmatism or relevance to today’s world, but instead by how they fit into the false binary of capitalism vs. communism.

For example: the Republican Party’s stance on trade, from the disastrous North American Free Trade Agreement to a nearly 40-year opposition to any form of tariffs and protectionism. Even the most ostensibly conservative institutions in the United States complained about the tariffs enacted in President Trump’s first term, continuing to insist that completely unfettered trade was the only option. And this despite the fact that, as President Trump himself has pointed out, tariffs were the original source of American revenue for the longest time, dating back to the Founding Fathers; long before income tax existed, America made its national profit through tariffs on imported goods.

This self-defeating love of “free trade” was born purely out of opposition to any form of perceived “government intervention” in the free market, since that is allegedly something that only communists do. Tariffs and other protectionist measures do indeed constitute a form of restriction and control over economic activity, but for good reason. On this issue in particular, President Trump has been infinitely more consistent than anyone else in the political class; that is why videos of Donald Trump talking about America getting ripped off on trade date as far back as the 1980s.

At the most impactful intersection of this outdated view on trade, through the lens of the dead and buried boogeyman of global communism, is China.

According to the Cold War lens, the real problem with China is that it is a communist nation. And while that is true, it is far from the only problem with China and is arguably not even the biggest problem. China may technically be a communist country, but it has risen to dominance through the most ruthlessly capitalist actions taken by any country in the world today: They exploit such free trade mindsets to export their cheaply-made products and import jobs from their would-be competitors.

No country has felt the brunt of this economic drain more than the United States. The gutting of American manufacturing, particularly in the Rust Belt, in favor of Chinese-made products was explained perfectly in Vice President-elect J.D. Vance’s iconic memoir Hillbilly Elegy and served as perhaps the most powerful driving force behind the first Trump coalition back in 2016.

As a footnote, the painful irony of the China problem must also be pointed out as a reminder of the poorly-aged wisdom of Cold War-era decisions: The relationship between the United States and China was started as an effort to weaken the Soviet Union by driving a wedge between Russia and China. If only our leaders of the time had the foresight to see that China would become just as much of an existential threat to us as the Soviets were, perhaps we could have entered a truly peaceful post-Cold War era much sooner.

“Workers:” From a Bad Word to a Platform Pillar

Sometimes, such a monumental shift can best be represented by the return of a single word in our political discourse, which can be even more powerful than any policy proposal. For President Trump and his historic two presidencies, no word has proven more important for this purpose than the word “worker.”

The Cold War lens tells us that “worker” is a dirty word, a rallying cry for the Reds, made (in)famous by the Communist Manifesto’s slogan “Workers of the world, unite.”

Back in 2016, then-candidate Trump proved how important this word was to him and his worldview when he boldly declared in an interview with Bloomberg that the Republican Party would, in five to ten years, become “a worker’s party.” This led to absolute hysterics from some in the conservative punditry class, proverbially frothing at the mouth as they declared that this made Trump a socialist in the same vein as Senator Bernie Sanders.

In that same interview, candidate Trump reaffirmed his support for major welfare programs in the United States such as Social Security, uprooting yet another longtime Republican Party tenet born out of a Cold War-based opposition to any and all forms of welfare. While decried by conservative pearl-clutchers as not being the “principled” stance, Trump was unapologetic and remained consistent not with any ideological worldview, but instead with his own love and respect for America’s workers. This support for the working class does not end with their retirement, nor should it.

With his career having been in real estate, Donald Trump knows a thing or two about the value of working-class Americans. He was built by a city that had been built by workers, and in return, his own workers helped to build—and, in the face of total disaster, rebuild—that very same city. He understands better than any in our anointed political elite that hard hats are more important than graduation caps. And even despite the communists’ attempts at monopolizing the word “worker,” there is no denying that the image of the sweat- and dirt-covered worker is just as significant in American history as it is in Russian history.

That is precisely why President Trump’s signature issue is as pro-worker as can be.

The Cold War lens would tell us that mass immigration to the United States is a great thing; a reaffirmation of the American Dream; immigrants fleeing communist and socialist third-world countries to be embraced by the arms of capitalism; and a chance for even more bodies to be thrust into the machine of the free market, to boost labor and allow employers to save even more money by lowering wages, which will (hopefully) result in even more trickle-down economics.

Ironically, this was once an issue on which then-candidate Trump and Senator Sanders found themselves in complete agreement, at least back in 2016. In an interview with Vox in 2016, the Vermont Senator scoffed at the idea of “open borders,” denouncing it as “a Koch Brothers proposal.”

Surprisingly enough, Sanders was right. For the longest time, the right supported the idea of open borders just as much as the left did, albeit for completely different reasons: Democrats sought to permanently change the demographic makeup of the United States in order to secure an absolute political majority for generations, much like they already have in the state of California. Republicans, like the infamous “Gang of Eight” and other pro-amnesty Republicans like Senator James Lankford, have supported increased immigration for the alleged economic benefits, at the sacrifice of the very identity and soul of America, as well as the cost of American workers being replaced by foreigners. President Trump was the first Republican to put his foot down on this issue and say no, choosing America’s sovereignty and preserving American blood over the GDP.

With all of this taken into account, it is no wonder why President Trump has reached levels of popularity among the union vote that were previously thought impossible. This was best represented by the colossal shift in support among Teamsters members following the great replacement of Joe Biden with Kamala Harris. Single-digit leads for Biden in a matchup against Trump lurched to drastic double-digit leads for Trump against Kamala, ultimately forcing the Teamsters leadership to withhold their presidential endorsement for the first time in decades.

Since his victory in 2024, President Trump has only doubled down on his support for the unions of America with his selection for Secretary of Labor: Outgoing Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a Republican who is far more pro-union than most of her colleagues. The fact that this selection has elicited cries of despair from some of the same pundits who opposed Trump’s candidacy in 2016 is reassurance enough that the soon-to-be 47th President has solidified the GOP’s shift into an unapologetically pro-worker party.

The Red Scare That Isn’t There

One other tired tendency that the Republican Party has refused to let go of due to the influence of the Cold War lens is the cheap tactic of repeatedly referring to their opposition as “communists.”

Not only is this a generally false label to apply to modern Democrats, but it has the harmful added effect of downplaying the true threat that the modern left presents to America. Their utopia is not a communist one where the proletariat rises up against the bourgeoisie; rather, theirs is a dream world in which their handpicked elite continues to rule over a poor and divided lower class that, through cultural indoctrination and a permanent dependence on welfare, has been fooled into thinking that their so-called betters truly know better. This can just as easily describe the Scandinavian countries, which are less about “socialism” and more about democratic liberalism with strong welfare systems, which is most certainly not communist.

Despite playing off of the naivety of bleeding-heart college students who think Marx’s ideals are best represented by the Democratic Party, the thought leaders of the modern left have no intention of disrupting our free market; rather, they aim to simply co-opt it for their own personal use.

Look no further than the Black Lives Matter movement: while BLM may very well follow Marxist teachings when it comes to organization and logistics, theirs is a movement built around black nationalism, not communism. One of their top goals is to force African Americans into a greater number and higher quality of positions in the corporate world, not to dismantle the free market as we know it. This ultimately makes them just as pro-capitalist as most Republicans, which also makes them far more dangerous than actual communists would be.

When Republicans constantly declare that “the commies are coming,” all they succeed in doing is driving younger voters further to the left. For young voters, who have known nothing but a poor economy for their entire lives, the hyperventilation about the specter of communism simply convinces them that the GOP has no solutions to their problems. This perception is solidified anytime a conservative tries lecturing them about how any possible solutions to these problems aren’t worth pursuing because of their alleged similarities to an ideology that died several decades ago.

Thus, the youth of today are more inclined to choose the party that actually offers solutions, however unfeasible they may be, because they do not dwell on the past. This is exactly why more young Americans have shown a greater acceptance of the ideas of communism and socialism than past generations, and this directly correlates to the rise of the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her “squad.”

Much like how “real communism” has never materialized, so too will the right-wing warnings of “Democratic communism” never come to pass. Thanks in large part to President Trump, who has portrayed the left as less communist and more broadly anti-American and anti-West, the Republican Party has been able to flip the script when it comes to hysterical rants about a long-dead ideology. Now it is the Democrats who have no rhetorical option left but to breathlessly accuse the other party of being the reincarnation of an ancient radical political ideology, replacing the empty “communist” threats with the equally meaningless label of “Nazis.”

Cold War Gone Cold

There are a handful of unfortunate foreign entanglements that persist due to the effects of the Cold War, from the Korean crisis to the quagmire of Afghanistan; both of these have been dealt with far more successfully by President Trump than any other president in modern history.

But nothing represents the stubborn endurance of the Cold War lens more than the ongoing war in Ukraine.

For the left, this war was a chance to not only further spread their ideological interventionism but to wage a proxy war against a foreign leader who had become a crude stand-in for Donald Trump. With the left still overwhelmingly believing the bogus conspiracy theory of “Russian collusion” in 2016, they saw Vladimir Putin as the next best boogeyman after Trump’s first departure in 2021.

For many on the right, the war in Ukraine represented a possible resurgence of the Soviet Union itself. The fact that Putin was once a KGB colonel only fueled this notion that a possible Russian takeover of Ukraine would spark a second Cold War.

In the end, this war may very well have started due to lingering traces of the Cold War, but this is no more likely than a possible Chinese takeover of Taiwan triggering a remake of the Cold War, with the ChiComs as the new Soviets.

As such, President Trump sees the opportunity for diplomacy where all others would take a stance of stubborn refusal to even consider negotiation with the Russians. Much like how Reagan ultimately ended the Cold War with diplomacy, so too could this grand act of peacemaking be the nail in the coffin of the Cold War’s final legacy.

Removing the Red-Tinted Goggles

To this day, the single most powerful explanation of this modern shift away from the Cold War-centric, capitalism-obsessed worldview comes from the debate between Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro in the distant year of 2018. Carlson flawlessly explains how the so-called “free market” is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place.

Whether it’s free trade absolutists surrendering America’s economic sovereignty in the name of reducing the price of cheap plastics by a few cents, or the capitalist machine encouraging young Americans to uproot their lives and leave their hometowns to go live in a big city and become “a cog in the machine,” unyielding fealty to the idea of the so-called “free market” has caused serious damage to the soul of America. It encouraged Americans for many years to sacrifice their own identity and heritage to pursue economic wealth and to place their professional lives ahead of their personal lives. If you wind up not making enough money, or perhaps in debt because of student loans or some other investment that didn’t pay off, then it’s up to you to just “pick yourself up by your bootstraps.”

As Carlson says, “There is no Nicene creed of capitalism.” Capitalism, like any economic system, is not the ultimate end goal of our society; it is merely a tool that should be used to bring us to the best society possible. If there are problems with this economic model, then they must be addressed rather than go unquestioned with absolute, religious obedience.

The free market would let corporations run wild with far-left indoctrination of their workers through such methods as DEI and critical race theory, or allow out-of-control tech monopolies to censor half of the population on a whim. The best solutions to these problems may not be “free market” ideas, but they are the right thing to do for the good of our nation.

Addressing the problems of today with a post-Cold War mindset is the only way to truly shift the conversation in a more meaningful direction, one that will yield actual solutions to help as many Americans as possible. Cold War-obsessed capitalists would ruthlessly slash Medicare and Social Security in the name of “fiscal responsibility;” President Trump aims to keep these programs intact. Those who bow before the idol of the “free market” would let hundreds of thousands of young Americans be crushed by student loan debt; President Trump has shown, and continues to show, a willingness to address even this contentious issue from a perspective that is more sympathetic to the plight of indebted graduates.

The economic woes of today, like many others, are not the result of some communist chimera that has risen from the ashes of the Cold War. They are modern problems that require modern solutions. President Trump, always the pragmatic businessman, understands this better than anyone in the last three decades of the political, commentary, and think tank class.

From immigration to trade, from student loan debt to endless foreign wars, and from empty rhetoric about the “return” of communism to the decades-long worship of Ronald Reagan, the Cold War lens has blinded conservatives for over 30 years. But that lens has finally been shattered by the return of Donald Trump.

At long last, we can finally turn the page on an outdated worldview that has been allowed to hold our country back for long enough.