Paul Krugman says Trump will dominate US politics for a while

President Donald Trump may have lost the presidential election, but Trumpism is here to stay, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and historian Niall Ferguson.

Former Vice President Joe Biden is expected to have won the presidency following elections earlier this month and may be on his way to securing 306 electoral votes. That total would amount to what Trump described as a “landslide” victory four years ago.

The result was expected to coincide with a so-called “blue wave,” with Democrats in a rush to win the White House, retain control of the House of Representatives and secure a majority in the Senate.

Instead, the Republican Senate and House candidates have outperformed, and Trump’s popularity among his grassroots has proven surprisingly resilient. The 74-year-old won more votes for president than any other candidate in history except Biden.

“Trump will loom above his party and the American political scene,” Paul Krugman, professor of economics at the Graduate Center at the City of New York University, told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick at the conference virtual ADIPEC 2020.

The economist, whose research focuses on macroeconomics and international economics, won the Nobel Prize in 2008 for his analysis of business structures and the location of economic activity.

“No president in the United States has ever been less transparent about his personal finances, but it seems highly likely that Trump is bankrupt. I mean… let’s be frank about it, he got a source of income, in part because people funneled money to his businesses, ”Krugman said, without giving further details.

“So does a Donald Trump who is forced into bankruptcy have the same weight? Or can he do something? Can he create a media empire that keeps him afloat?”

Last month, The New York Times published an analysis of Trump’s tax records that allegedly showed more than 200 companies, special interest groups and foreign governments funneled millions of dollars to Trump’s properties while reaping the benefits of the president and his administration.

The White House reportedly dismissed the analysis as “just more fake news.” A spokesperson declined to comment for this article.

“Trumpism, the movement is sustainable,” Krugman said. “It turns out that it taps into deep resentments.”

Trump refused to accept the November 3 presidential election result, falsely claiming via Twitter on Saturday that he had “won this election, by many!”

Trump and his campaign have filed lawsuits in half a dozen closely-contested states in a move many see as an attempt to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Biden’s victory. Legal experts dismissed the allegations of electoral fraud as baseless.

Separately, in his first speech as president-elect this weekend, Biden called for unity among Americans.

“Now is the time to heal in America,” Biden said Saturday in Wilmington, Delaware. He added that it was time to “let this dark era of demonization in America begin to end, here and now.”

He has since described Trump’s refusal to concede as “an embarrassment.”

“Donald Trump is coming off with pretty bad grace, but he is going. Trumpism, which is really his contribution to conservative politics, is not going anywhere,” said Niall Ferguson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, to Joumanna Bercetche of CNBC at the UBS Virtual European Conference.

“And that’s because Donald Trump tapped into a range of issues that Central America, to use a general term, felt quite strongly and still felt firmly. That is to say, liberal immigration policies, free trade policies, the power of liberal elite ideas and institutions, from universities to the media, all these questions are still relevant ”, Ferguson said.

“And you can say that thanks to the strength of the support, President Trump and the Republican Party were still able to come together in the midst of a pandemic and a pretty severe economic crisis,” he added.

Biden and his vice president Kamala Harris, who made history as the first black woman and the first Asian American woman to be elected vice president, acknowledged the seriousness of the work ahead, but insisted the fact that they were up to the challenge.

“I think the future of the Republican Party is inseparable from Trumpism. Because the old ideas, the neoconservatism of the Bush years, or, or the economic liberalism of the Reagan era, you know, when it came to free- trade, it was about liberal immigration, it was about free markets and tax cuts, that kind of conservatism just isn’t going to win the election, ”Ferguson said.

“So Trumpism is really with us, even as Donald Trump himself is heading for political exit.”

– CNBC’s Christina Wilkie contributed to this report.