Over the nine years of the Trump era in American politics, Donald Trump has had two major salutary influences on the Republican Party’s prospects and direction: He solidified and entrenched a consensus on the right in favor of immigration restrictionism and border enforcement, and he forged a consensus that views a close relationship and open trade with Communist China as both a grave national-security danger and the cause of a deleterious atrophy of the American industrial base and working class.
Of course, Trump’s influence has had many ill effects as well: He has contributed to a coarsening of our political life and culture; he has welcomed and elevated pseudo-conservative cranks and gadflies; he has rejected any attempts to reform America’s badly troubled entitlement programs; and he has sanctioned the view on the right that a government that runs massive annual deficits and owes an enormous and ever-growing national debt is a problem for later, if ever.
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