Whatever his grievous shortcomings, President Trump has succeeded in one thing: smashing the once imposing edifice of neoliberalism. His presidency rejects the neoliberal globalist perspective on trade, immigration and foreign relations, including a penchant for military intervention, that has dominated both parties’ political establishments for well over two decades.

Some of Trump’s actions, notably the proposed tariffs, may be crude and even wrong-headed but other moves, notably focus on China’s buying of American technology assets, expose the fundamental weakness of the neoliberal trade regime. Trump’s policy agenda would never have risen if neoliberalism was able to improve the lives of the vast majority of citizens rather than promote stagnation and downward mobility for a large portion of the population.

The geography of neoliberalism

Neoliberal policies have worked well for those in the upper economic, academic, bureaucratic classes and the cosmopolitan places where they predominate. But what works for Manhattan or Palo Alto, as well as Goldman Sachs or Apple, does not help so much residents of declining industrial cities, small towns and villages which suffered millions of lost jobs due to China or NAFTA.

Trump’s support in these locations reflects a broader global phenomenon. Like the Midwestern and southern towns recently denounced by Hillary Clinton as looking “backward,” neoliberal policies have been rejected by similar geographies in the United Kingdom, as seen in the Brexit vote, and powered nationalist parties in such varied places as Germany, Russia, Slovakia, Hungary, Sweden, Poland and the Netherlands. Most recently Italians, including in the impoverished south, voted largely for anti-immigrant, nationalist and populist parties.

Neoliberal embrace of draconian climate change policies represent one irritant. These tend to hurt natural resource and industrial pursuits that power many smaller city economies. Establishmentarian intellectuals tend to have little regard for the prospects of such places and those who remain in them. Neoliberalism is also associated with uncontrolled mass immigration, which threatens both more conservative cultural norms and the economic prospects of those outside what urbanist Saskia Sassen calls the urban “glamour zone.”

The rise of illiberal neoliberalism?

To save themselves, neoliberals increasingly embrace ever more illiberal ideas. China’s progressively authoritarian dictatorship has completely undermined the neoliberal assumption that economic growth would eventually promote the rule of law and democracy. Now China’s approach elicits hosannas from new wave authoritarians, such as Jerry Brown, who see China, easily the world’s greatest greenhouse gas emitter, as a role model for its ability to impose harsh regulatory policies.

Progressive theorist like Harvard’s Yascha Mounk identify Donald Trump, and his European admirers, as latent fascists. But in Trump’s sometimes brutish authoritarian posturing and constitutional ignorance has been broadly stymied by judicial, social and political forces, some even within his own party. In contrast, few progressives, in or out of government, seemed all that concerned when Barack Obama, who knew the Constitution, resorted to rule by his pen and phone. Generally, progressive pundits also support the European Union’s bureaucratic rule, which lords over the continent with very little input from the grassroots.

The neoliberal commitment to ideological free trade, however ignored by other countries, is also weakening, in part due to the success of Trump. President Obama’s trade friendly policies have been rejected by much of his own party, not only by socialist Bernie Sanders but also in 2016 by his own former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. The fact that Conor Lamb, the impressive Democrat elected earlier this month in a pro-Trump Pennsylvania district, embraced the president’s tariffs suggest that, in much of the country, free trade, one key pillar of neoliberalism, is no longer saleable.

What the future holds

Despite initial economic success, President Trump is unlikely to succeed, as much a reflection of his unappealing personality and ideological incoherence than policy failures. Over time, opposing forces like the media, much of Wall Street, the tech oligarchy and academia will likely turn back right-wing nationalism. But neoliberalism as we have known it seems largely finished.

So what will replace neoliberalism? Most likely the next iteration will be an increasingly autocratic one, reflecting the increasingly concentrated nature of the world economy, and facilitated by the growing control over information by a handful of tech oligarchs. For many, China may prove not just an alluring market, but a role model for a capitalism that, notes analyst Sami Karam, is ever more dominated by rent-seeking and “cronyism.”

Immigration may turn out to be an even greater challenge for the old neoliberal coalition. To combat what they see as nativism, including any unfashionable attachment to western civilization, the progressives who run Facebook and Google have allied with the politically correct left’s thought police. Kumbaya values will be packaged in schools, the media, the arts and fashion, shaping the views of the next generation while the last America-centric generations die off.

Ultimately the successor to neoliberalism will not be the resurgent nationalism of Steve Bannon’s fantasies but an autocratic one manufactured in Beijing, Manhattan, Silicon Valley and the academy. Largely unappreciated today, we someday may look back at the waning neoliberal era with some nostalgia, lamenting the failure of a noble idea that failed.

Joel Kotkin is the R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism (www.opportunityurbanism.org).