by Bill O’Grady

On November 8^th, Donald Trump shocked the country and the world by defeating Sen. Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential race by accumulating a majority in the Electoral College.  Mr. Trump, the first president in U.S. history to gain the presidency without having been previously elected to office or served in the military, is something of an unknown.  In other words, we have little personal history to examine to forecast his geopolitical leanings.  All we really have are his public statements and campaign platform.

However, these sources do offer solid clues as to where he intends to take his foreign policy.  In this report, we will characterize our expectations of Trump’s foreign policy using Mead’s archetypes.[1]  From there, we will examine how we expect Trump to change America’s superpower role, which it has provided since the end of WWII.  As always, we will conclude with potential market ramifications.

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[1] See WGR: The Archetypes of American Foreign Policy: A Reprise, 4/4/16.  In our initial analysis of Trump, we postulated he was more Jeffersonian than Jacksonian.  We have revised our viewpoint in this report, arguing that he is almost purely Jacksonian.