SONG Guoyou & ZHANG Gan, "Rust Belt and Trump’s Failure,"
Fudan American Review, No. 1, 2021

[Abstract] In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Trump won with a slight advantage by virtue of his political commitment to voters in the Rust State. The failure of the 2020 election was regarded as a referendum that did not fulfill Trump’s promises. his article reviews the tax reform, trade, industry, and energy policies implemented by the Trump administration based on the interests of voters in Rust State, and evaluates the effects of the above policies based on economic data from the three states of the Rust Belt (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan). The policies of Trump administration anchored the demands from the Rust Belt, but the negative impact on the domestic and foreign economic policies of anti-globalization and nationalism was too significant, and it severely undermined the economic interests of voters in the three states of the Rust Belt. This article believes that Trump’s policy system is inherently contradictory and too narrow. Its ignorance of Rust State’s international economic ties and the economic development interests of other countries is the source of its failure.

[Keywords] Trump; Rust Belt; President Election