Trump's debate win boosts election chances, warns Nobel laureate, Professor Paul Krugman
The echoes of the presidential debate in the USA, where Joe Biden and Donald Trump clashed, have not died down. According to CNN viewers, Trump won the debate. This has increased the chances of the Republican candidate taking the presidential seat, which will be a catastrophe for the world, warns Professor Paul Krugman.
Democratic candidate Joe Biden faced off against his Republican rival, Donald Trump, in the first presidential debate in the USA. In the media, also favouring the Democratic Party, opinions dominate that the incumbent president, who is four years older than the Republican, performed terribly. Meanwhile, the editorial board of the influential liberal newspaper “New York Times” called on Friday for President Joe Biden to withdraw from the battle for the White House in the upcoming presidential election.
Nobel Prize laureate in economics Professor Paul Krugman indicated in an interview that Trump's chances of winning the election increased after the debate. According to him, Joe Biden should withdraw from seeking re-election. “Trump's victory will be a terrible catastrophe. The risk is too great,” the Nobel laureate indicated.
Is the "end of American democracy" approaching?
The professor also pointed out that a possible win by the Republican candidate could mean the "end of American democracy. “Thus, we can expect that America, under a second term of Trump, will turn into an authoritarian regime,” he emphasised in the interview. The Nobel laureate noted, "This is not the end of the tragedies we can expect.”
Trump is not only an economic nationalist but an economic nationalist in a primitive form. Import is bad, export is good, let’s impose tariffs on everything - this is his thinking about the economy. This will be a catastrophe for the entire global economy, explains Professor Krugman.
According to the Nobel laureate, Trump's victory is bad news for Central and Eastern Europe. “Trump openly echoes Russian propaganda claims and probably wants to allow Putin, who personally impresses him, to conquer Ukraine,” explains Professor Krugman. In his opinion, “Europe and Poland must come to terms with the fact that there is a very real scenario of the end of the Pax Americana era,” i.e., that the USA guarantees stability in the world.
For years in the USA, we counted on Europe to mature to the role of being an equal partner to the USA in providing such basic stability, particularly in this region, but also generally in the world. And now we really have to count on Europe taking over this role on its own.
“Europe must, however, first and foremost do everything to be able to secure its interests,” and that involves investing in armaments, where - so far - the Old Continent has been lagging behind, the Nobel laureate explains in the interview.
However, the professor emphasised that the European Union is doing well, and any potential slower growth of the EU “results from worse demographics and the fact that Europeans have much longer holidays.” “GDP growth per working resident will no longer differ,” he points out.
Professor Krugman is not the first Nobel laureate to warn against the election of Donald Trump. Previously, we could read that sixteen Nobel Prize laureates in economics warned in an open letter that “Trump's second term would involve reigniting inflation and causing lasting harm to the US economy.” The elections for the highest office in the United States are scheduled for 5 November at 10:00 GMT.
