After all the ballots cast in the 2020 U.S. election were tallied, it became increasingly clear that Joe Biden had successfully rebuilt the “Blue wall” across the Midwest, home to white working-class voters who powered Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016. Peek over the wall, however, and the view is clear: Biden’s narrow victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were made possible by historically high anti-Trump turnout, particularly among Black urban voters. Working-class whites from struggling manufacturing communities doubled down on Trumpism. Voters angry about the deterioration of their communities, anxious about their own economic futures, and uncomfortable with social changes turned out in droves, more excited than ever by Trump’s message of nostalgia, nationalism, and nativism.
Around the world, rust belt regions like these—locked in a difficult and prolonged phase of economic restructuring—are crucibles of neopopulism. Everywhere, former economic powerhouses have become fertile ground for anti-immigrant sentiment and ethnonationalism, nostalgia for an economy and society of yesteryear, and retreat from the international order. Rust belt regions are not the sum total of the geography of populism—rural areas are equally significant—but they represent a uniquely concentrated and intense manifestation of the populist moment, especially in the United States and Europe, which undermines from within support for democracy and, by extension, support for the international political order that has delivered decades of political stability, global security, and economic opportunity.
