Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America

by Stacey Abrams

By succumbing to the lure of populism made real by a combination of the Electoral College and voter suppression, we now have the most reckless foreign policy that we’ve had in modern history. I may have disagreed with George W. Bush and George H. W. Bush and Clinton and Obama on things, but I never disagreed fundamentally with the position the United States held in the international order. I do now. The persistence of Trump’s style of populism has an effect on how safe we are as Americans, both physically and economically. For example, during most of 2018 and 2019, the U.S. president launched the largest trade war in a generation. Though played out through goods and services rather than bullets, a trade war has a real effect on everyday lives. The U.S. consumer bears the majority of the costs passed along to businesses and hidden in the prices we pay. Economically struggling Americans feel the results in daily life, especially those who face stagnant wages that have not grown despite having the lowest unemployment we’ve ever had. The average American cannot recover from a trade war with the same resilience that a corporation can. The only solution will be to actually engage in trade policy that is not based on populist brinksmanship, which is what we’ve seen play out for the last few years. As Trump positions China front and center, our country is also embroiled in trade battles with historic allies such as Germany, Britain, France, and Canada. As with trade, our immigrati...