After Brexit, a Trump Path to Victory

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

After Brexit, a Trump Path to Victory

Some of us have long predicted the breakup of the European Union. The Cousins appear to have just delivered the coup de grace.

While Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU, England voted for independence. These people, with their unique history, language and culture, want to write their own laws and rule themselves.

The English wish to remain who they are, and they do not want their country to become, in Theodore Roosevelt’s phrase, “a polyglot boarding house” for the world.

From patriots of all nations, congratulations are in order.

It will all begin to unravel now, over there, and soon over here.

Across Europe, tribalism, of all strains, is resurgent. Not only does the EU appear to be breaking up, countries appear about to break up.

Scotland will seek a second referendum to leave the U.K. The French National Front of Marine Le Pen and the Dutch Party for Freedom both want out of the EU. As Scots seek to secede from the U.K., Catalonia seeks to secede from Spain, Veneto from Italy, and Flemish nationalists from Belgium.

Ethnonationalism seems everywhere ascendant. Yet, looking back in history, is this not the way the world has been going for some centuries now?

The disintegration of the EU into its component nations would follow, as Vladimir Putin helpfully points out, the dissolution of the USSR into 15 nations, and the breakup of Yugoslavia into seven.

Czechoslovakia lately split in two. The Donbass seeks to secede from Ukraine. Is that so different from Transnistria splitting off from Romania, Abkhazia and South Ossetia seceding from Georgia, and Chechnya seeking separation from Russia?

After World War II came the disintegration of the French and British empires and birth of dozens of new nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. America returned the Philippine islands to their people.

The previous century saw the collapse of the Spanish Empire and birth of a score of new nations in our own hemisphere.

In Xi Jinping’s China and Putin’s Russia, nationalism is rising, even as China seeks to repress Uighur and Tibetan separatists.

People want to rule themselves, and be themselves, separate from all others. Palestinians want their own nation. Israelis want “a Jewish state.”

On Cyprus, Turks and Greeks seem happier apart.

Kurds are fighting to secede from Turkey and Iraq, and perhaps soon from Syria and Iran. Afghanistan appears to be splintering into regions dominated by Pashtuns, Hazaras, Uzbeks and Tajiks.

Eritrea has left Ethiopia. South Sudan has seceded from Khartoum.

Nor is America immune to the populist sentiments surging in Europe.

In Bernie Sanders’ fulminations against corporate and financial elites one hears echoes of the radical leftist rhetoric in Greece and Italy against EU banking elites.

And as “Brexit” swept the native-born English outside of multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual London, populist-nationalist Donald Trump and antiestablishment Ted Cruz swept the native-born white working and middle classes in the primaries.

In Britain, all the mainstream parties — Labor, Tory, Liberal Democrat, Scottish National — supported “Remain.” All lost.

Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party alone won.

In the past six months, millions of Democrats voted for a 74-year-old socialist against the establishment choice, Hillary Clinton, as Bush-Romney-Ryan Republicanism was massively repudiated in the Republican primaries.

As Trump said last week, “We got here because we switched from a policy of Americanism — focusing on what’s good for America’s middle class — to a policy of globalism, focusing on how to make money for large corporations who can move their wealth and workers to foreign countries all to the detriment of the American worker and the American economy.”

Yesterday, news arrived that in May alone, the U.S. had run a trade deficit in goods of $60 billion. This translates into an annual deficit of $720 billion in goods, or near 4 percent of our GDP wiped out by purchases of foreign-made rather than U.S.-made goods.

In 40 years, we have not run a trade surplus. The most self-sufficient republic in all of history now relies for its necessities upon other nations.

What might a Trumpian policy of Americanism over globalism entail?

A 10 to 20 percent tariff on manufactured goods to wipe out the trade deficit in goods, with the hundreds of billions in revenue used to slash or eliminate corporate taxes in the USA.

Every U.S. business would benefit. Every global company would have an incentive not only to move production here, but its headquarters here.

An “America first” immigration policy would secure the border, cut legal immigration to tighten U.S. labor markets, strictly enforce U.S. laws against those breaking into our country, and get tough with businesses that make a practice of hiring people here illegally.

In Europe and America, corporate, financial and political elites are increasingly disrespected and transnationalism is receding. An anti-establishment, nationalist, populist wave is surging across Europe and the USA.

It is an anti-insider, anti-Clinton wave, and Trump could ride it to victory.


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starfcker
starfcker

Pat likes him some maff.

kokoda
kokoda

Don’t get giddy or your panties wet over Brexit – yet. The fat lady has yet to sing.

Anonymous
Anonymous

But it will be very interesting to see how it goes down when she does, one way or the other.

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

Kokoda is right, it isn’t over til the fat lady sings and the Dow is at 5800.

Dow is up +182 and rising…….Brexit not that big of a deal so far. Just the usual suspects fleecing the usual victims.

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

“Remainers” in the UK lament that Brexit was passed by older voters. An advantage of being old is that you remember stuff that younger people don’t and comprehend some things better than those for whom even recent history is merely an academic exercise. “Made in Japan” was not so long ago synonymous with “cheap crap”. Countries like Korea and China were so poor it made American kids join the Clean Plate Club. Now Asia has bullet trains and we have bridges falling into the river. Other countries rise while we aspire to mere stagnation. Some of this would have happened no matter what – we were in a uniquely lucky position after WWII and assembly line work couldn’t perpetually pay UAW wages, but a lot of our relative lagging in prosperity is due to trade that unfairly favors other countries. Only 4% of the Japanese auto market is imported cars. It’s not like BMW, Mercedes, Saab, Audi, etc don’t build cars that Japanese would like. It’s non-tariff trade barriers that make selling imported autos – to name just one obvious product – there all but impossible. As Trump says, “we’re led by stupid people” (or venal people). We need our government to look out for Americans and stop letting the US be a dumping ground for other countries’ manufactured products – and their uneducated and unskilled people.

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

If you look at this situation the right way, it makes sense that the UK would exit before the other EU countries were stripped of their sovereignty in an all powerful Superstate lorded over by Brussels.
The UK did not use the Euro for several years after the EU was established and they kept their own currency (British pound) for the duration. They will keep their immunity from the next phase and it seems the mooslim influx was to prompt this vote last Friday. Starting to make a lot of sense.

MuckAbout

It seems that TPTB got big surprises in the “Leave EU” vote in Britain and in Trump gaining the popular vote for the Repubs in the USA. Whether Trump is the Repub candidate remains to be seen and the fat lady is singing lustily in both situations at the moment.

The Repubs and PTB are thrashing around desperately searching for an alternate and the Brit Parliament is trying to figure out a way to over-ride the British popular vote to leave the EU.

So no, the chubby female is still singing, off key and strident at the moment and the final outcomes remain to be seen.. Interesting times..

Muck

Westcoaster
Westcoaster

Hitlery is behind the Brexit. Here’s why. All the refugees pouring into the UK are a result of wars we started in Syria and Libya during Hitlery’s reign as Sec State.
Had the good people of the UK not suffered from this migration, there would never have been a Brexit. They’re looking for a way to shut the immigration gates and reclaim their right to govern their own country.

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