Tim Wolters 
Trump’s trade policy. A successful Strategy for winning the midterm Elections 2018? 

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject Politics – International Politics – Region: USA, grade: 1.0, University of Passau, course: The US in 2020. Political Turmoil, Elections and a divided people, language: English, abstract: The case study wants to use the political-strategic approach to populism to explain the phenomena of Trump’s trade policy and the outcome of populists and therefore republican vote share to understand the impact on the 2018 mid-term election results for the republican party. With the focus on the 2018 mid-term elections, is it essential to limit the time span for this case study from Trump’s inauguration until the mid-term election 2018.

Followed by this introduction is the chapter about the theoretical theory for this final paper, the political-strategic approach to populism by Kurt Weyland, followed by the empirical chapter about Trump’s trade policy until the mid-term elections 2018 and the impact on populists and therefore republican vote share, followed by the impact on the republican election results in the mid-term elections 2018. The last chapter presents the research results and a conclusion and implications for further research. Therefore, it is necessary to lay out the theoretical foundation of this paper, the political-strategic approach to populism in the next chapter as a starting point for this research to determine if Trump’s trade policy was successful.