Trump as FDR: Generation-Defining Systemic Change
Geopolitical expert George Friedman sees what's happening now as an institutional shift as great as the New Deal.
NOTE: Last week I published George Friedman’s “Crisis and Rebirth: America’s Dangerous Decade Ahead”. In it, George describes the magnitude of the Crisis facing us, as for the first time in American history, both the Institutional and Socio-Economic Cycles he identifies end at exactly the same time.
As I said then, I’ve spent a good bit of time talking and writing about the cycles that exist within linear history. Most ancient cultures assumed that history was cyclical, and thus that no progress was possible. The idea of linear time and historical progress is distinctly Christian, though it has been taken up since by others. This is the correct view, but it does not negate the existence of cycles, a facet of reality that the ancients saw without realizing it was merely part of a greater whole.
I have particularly focused attention on Neil Howe’s work (see my short review in “My 10 Favorite Books of 2024”), but George Friedman here posits two different cycles whose ends are about to converge, with each other and with Howe’s. The latter speaks of an ekpyrosis, the ancient Greek term for “Crisis” or general conflagration. Past Crises include the Great Depression-World War II era, the Civil War, and the American Revolution: three moments of existential danger, producing new, starkly different eras after.
Coming from different models, George and Neil both believe (as do I) that we are in the midst of exactly that Crisis: the Ekpyrosis. The worst, as well as its resolution for good or ill, is still to come.
One new development, fascinating to me at least: both George and Neil have believed until now that whoever was elected in 2024 would be a transitional figure like Carter, doomed to failure, while his 2028 successor would preside over the founding of the new era. George now believes that transformative figure will actually be 2024’s Donald Trump. — RDM
Trump as FDR: Generation-Defining Systemic Change
by George Friedman
February 8, 2025
In my books The Next 100 Years and The Storm Before the Calm, I introduced a model of U.S. history consisting of political cycles and socio-economic cycles – the former tracking presidential elections, the latter explaining a 50-year process that coincides with the election of new presidents. These cycles included broad social, economic and geopolitical evolutions.
I will now lay out the sixth cycle expectation for the next 50 years. My purpose is to link the evolution of U.S. politics to the general social and economic patterns we anticipate.
In the United States, a new socio-economic cycle shows its hand, its flaws and its power over time as a president, sometimes heedless of the emerging reality, manages the political system that will govern it and, in turn, be reshaped by it.
It’s important to remember that the president of the United States presides. He does not rule. His power rests in a profound awareness of the spirit of the nation and the forces that will shape it, ranging from the domestic economy to global interests. It is these forces and the president’s grasp of them that define the presidency, but the forces — be it technological innovation or unforeseen economic calamity — are not of the president’s own making. He presides over and facilitates the necessity that emerges and faces the inevitable.
President Ronald Reagan politically engineered the financial foundation of our current cycle by creating a climate to increase investment capital and oversaw the founding of a new financial and social order following one of the models that new presidents employ on taking office: the ruthless and even reckless overthrow of the old.
The old order dated back to before World War II. Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933 amid the Great Depression and the coming of a great war. He did not know how to solve the problem; he just knew that national security required an economic and social shift in American society.
He set himself a target, which appeared reckless to his enemies and supporters, of creating a program for ending the Depression. To do that, he had to break the economic orthodoxy that had dominated political thought, an orthodoxy that essentially argued that a balanced budget, among many other things, was the key to prosperity. He undertook what was seen as a wild, haphazard and reckless set of shifts in how the government and the financial system worked.
He did not end the Depression right then, but his supporters believe he set the stage for solving it, challenging and wrecking the orthodoxy, and opening the door to a fundamental shift in the U.S. economy that in turn set the stage for reshaping the way the world worked. The opposition was appalled, but the public was relieved that someone had at least grasped the magnitude of the crisis.
Deliberately or not, President Donald Trump has followed the Roosevelt model. Roosevelt set about signaling that the old order was exhausted and that all that had been solid had to be overturned. He recognized what his opposition did not: that the system was broken and that something had to be done.
Roosevelt faced great opposition, from those who denied that the Great Depression was the result of a systemic failure that would solve itself, from those who thought his plans too mild, and from those who thought the intent of the 100 days laudable but were convinced that caution was still essential.
Roosevelt’s solutions were not eternal. Many eventually fell with the coming of the cycle ushered in by Reagan, but they saved and shaped the country by creating a middle class and financing a global war. Although his opponents never conceded and continued to revile him, Roosevelt and his heirs made no concessions.
Trump is now in his 100-day period. Roosevelt’s goal was to strip the old order of its power to rule by moral principles made obsolete and harmful. The current apparent randomness, unpredictability and recklessness should be seen in this light. Roosevelt’s goal was to shatter the old elite blocking evolution.
That is Trump’s goal, albeit expressed radically differently. For Roosevelt, the elite represented the old orthodoxies on economics and the inevitable inequality that followed. Trump’s main antagonist is an ideology, which for the sake of argument I will call hyper-egalitarianism, that was, in his mind, demonizing the country and its citizens, and imposing an order on cultural institutions and values to solve the inequities of the old order. It was also redefining moral obligations and even medical norms.
In a real sense, Trump’s goal is not to restore the country to what it was but to lay a new framework, which, I suspect, he has yet to devise. He is, for now, presiding over apparent disorder rather than aligning with what had been normal.
What will follow is a new economic cycle, shifting now as it has every 50 years. Each cycle was anchored in a new technology based on necessity. Andrew Jackson saw the creation of canals to bind the nation’s economy together. Rutherford B. Hayes presided over the railroad revolution, Roosevelt over the automobile revolution and the emergence of the middle class, and Reagan over the new financial order that would give way to what I call the microchip era.
Each of these technologies had its roots in economic and social necessities and was accompanied by many other innovations, but they are symbols of unheard-of solutions that are the essence of America. Crucially, once a president presides over the transformation, the nation is not bound by any president but proceeds to solve and create new problems on its own accord.
The era being created under Trump will also have pivotal technologies reshaping it, many of which I can’t imagine. I’m confident that they will relate to the coming demographic crisis. The number of elderly Americans is growing while birthrates are falling. The elderly need to be taken care of, physically and financially.
That means that a revolution in medicine and its understanding is indispensable, not only for certain diseases but also for the structure of life. If life is essential, then a new medical culture and technology will emerge, causing the usual anger and pain.
But that is not all that is needed. The declining workforce will need to be supported by new technologies that combine genuine artificial intelligence with a new material science so that the constant reinvention of America, both a cultural and economic necessity, can take place. This will also require a reconsideration of all that was obvious in the past — that immigration may not be essential for a shrinking workforce that is supplemented by sufficient technology.
It is now the task of the president, as it was of all presidents, to preside over the process, clear the pathway for others to solve problems and duel with the inevitable enemies in battle. Presidents do not rule, but they clear the ground. The historical probability is that consistent successes in cycles since the founding, and allowing for the inevitable conflict, will continue.
— This essay originally appeared at Geopolitical Futures.
First of all, it's hard to buy the rule that these transformations occur every 50 years, "like clockwork". Roosevelt's first term was almost a century ago. And many of his policy initiatives, during the Depression and the war, were stupid and counterproductive. Still and all, quite a few historians agree that WWII saved his reputation (even if he died before it was over, leaving big messes for Truman to deal with, in eastern Europe and next in Korea.)
Aside from that, Friedman seems careful to avoid specifics in his prognostication. That may be a wise policy, given that back in 1991 he published an apparently well-documented book titled "The Coming War With Japan".
I thought that Trump was Reagan of our times, but people say he is also Roosevelt. Wow.