Trump’s biggest economic legacy isn’t about the numbers

In perhaps the greatest reversal of fortune of Donald Trump's presidency, a microscopically tiny virus upended the outsize economic legacy that he had planned to run on for reelection. Instead of record-low unemployment rates, supercharged confidence levels and broad-based gains in personal income, Trump will end his term with rising poverty, wounded growth and a higher jobless rate than when he took office.

Still, despite one of the worst years in recent American history, the issue on which Trump gets his highest approval ratings remains the economy. It is evidence that his most enduring economic legacy may not rest in any statistical almanac but in how much he has shifted the conversation around the economy.

Long before Trump appeared on the political stage, powerful forces were reshaping the economy and inciting deep-rooted anxieties about secure middle-income jobs and America’s economic preeminence in the world. Trump recognized, stoked and channeled those currents in ways that are likely to persist whether he wins or loses the election.

By ignoring economic and political orthodoxies, he at times successfully married seemingly contradictory or inconsistent positions to win over both hardcore capitalists and the working class. There would be large tax breaks and deregulation for business owners and investors, and trade protection and aid for manufacturers, miners and farmers.

In the process, he scrambled party positions on key issues like immigration and globalization and helped topple sacred verities about government debt. He took a Republican Party that preached free trade, low spending and debt reduction and transformed it into one that picked trade wars even with allies, ran up record-level peacetime deficits and shielded critical social programs from cuts.

On immigration, Trump remade the political landscape in a different way. He has accused immigrants of stealing jobs or committing crimes. In doing so, he rallied hard-line sentiments that could be found in each party and turned them into a mostly Republican cri de coeur.

The Democrats changed in turn. Former Vice President Joe Biden has positioned himself as the champion of immigrants, pledging to reverse Trump’s most restrictive policies, while rejecting more radical proposals like eliminating the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Shifts on trade were more momentous. Biden and other party leaders who had once promoted the benefits of globalization found themselves playing defense against a Republican who outflanked them on issues like industrial flight and foreign competition. They responded by embracing elements of protectionism that they had previously abandoned.

No matter who spends the next four years in the White House, economic policy is likely to pay more attention to U.S. jobs and industries threatened by China and other foreign competition and less attention to worries about deficits caused by government efforts to stimulate the economy.