CNN: Donald Trump's winning streak is transforming America
Trump is advancing post-liberal politics in three key areas. First, a foreign policy that is marked by realism totally undisguised by platitudes or historical sentiments. NATO friends, for instance, have been warned they must contribute more towards the organization's budget. In the Middle East, the United States has thrown its weight behind the unexpected alliance of Israel and Saudi Arabia. And Trump has pulled out of deals that he says weren't working (Iran) or that he doesn't philosophically agree with (Paris climate accord). His withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council is emblematic of his approach. We all know the UN is a joke on human rights (its membership includes dictatorships such as Cuba and China); critics accuse its members of turning the council into a platform to attack Israel. Trump is simply the first President to do the decent thing and walk away.
Second, Trump is pushing forward with what former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon once described as the "deconstruction of the administrative state." This is partly about a deregulation agenda – everything from banking to the environment to repealing the Obamacare individual mandate. But it's also about reversing the tide of what conservatives deride as Obama's "you didn't build that" mentality, with its implication that a big state is an inevitable, benign feature of modern capitalism. Trump, by contrast, is pushing corporate tax down from 35% to 21%, and the majority of tax filers will see a saving this year. The irony is that Trump has proved you can create jobs in the United States with conservative free market remedies, and yet he still insists on imposing foreign goods tariffs that threaten the supply chains and markets of the very workers he wants to help. The age of Trump might be hypercapitalist, but it's also nationalist and traditionalist. Trump seeks to return to being a country that leads in exports, not imports.
He also wants to turn the clock back more generally, which brings us to his third assault on the liberal consensus: social policy. The Trump era will be marked by potentially violent conflict over cultural issues that lawmakers have failed for decades to resolve through compromise.
Immigration is a stark example. The administration's decision to separate families of migrants – many who are refugees seeking asylum – illegally crossing the border has triggered a profound moral backlash that has led to protests, mass arrests and the occupation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities. Trump's supporters see fighting illegal immigration as a matter of enforcing the law; growing numbers of those on the left regard it as an incremental step toward fascism. Conservatives say to liberals, "You never complained when Barack Obama did this sort of thing," but liberals can point out that Trump has applied policy in such an aggressive way that it tips this whole debate into a war over foundational values. And if you think that's bad, just wait until Donald Trump announces his Supreme Court nominee.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/05/opinions/trump-is-definitely-in-charge-opinion-stanley/index.html