The economy again

THE economy, stupid. With those words, political adviser James Carville honed a campaign strategy that would sweep Bill Clinton to the presidency in 1992. A quarter of a century on, and Donald Trump used a simple economic message to win the White House.

Trump swept Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin – traditional Democrat states that had voted twice for Barack Obama – with a simple message. He promised to stop jobs heading overseas, to close borders, to trash the free trade deals signed by his predecessors. He didn’t even need to explain how. To quote a Harvard Kennedy School paper, he “peddled a melange of xenophobic fear tactics [against Mexicans and Muslims], deep-seated misogyny, paranoid conspiracy theories about his rivals, and isolationist America-first policies abroad”.

Trump mobilised an underclass that felt forgotten by what it sees as the country’s ruling elite. He won on the back of the rust belt, once great manufacturing states that have seen high unemployment and stagnant wage growth amid the decline of American industry.

These are the steelworkers, car industry workers and coal miners who have seen their once comfortable livelihoods evaporate.

It’s a lesson our own political leaders must heed. Within the term of the Andrews government, Victoria will witness the end of the Australian car industry.

Gone, too, is the Hazelwood power station in the Latrobe Valley, while the future of SPC Ardmona’s cannery in Shepparton and Alcoa’s aluminium smelter in Portland hangs in the balance.

Tens of thousands of jobs are expected to be affected.

Like America, we are grappling with the lowest rate of wage growth in almost two decades

Such seeds of discontent have given rise to populist movements around the world.