The US According to Gerstle

 
Gary Gerstle, the Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Cambridge, has been on the podcast circuit for weeks.  American and British media seek out his perspective and analysis of the seismic shifts in economic and social policy in the US, especially relevant since the start of the second Trump administration in January.  Gerstle’s four decades of study, teaching, and writing in the US and abroad inform his insightful answers to questions about the dramatic policy decisions reshaping American life and redefining its relationship to global issues.
 
On May 21, 2025, Professor Gerstle will appear at a live Cambridge in America event in Boston, where he will take part in a wide-ranging discussion entitled Decoding Trump: Power and Chaos.
 
In anticipation of the event, Gerstle sat for a brief interview.
 
During your distinguished career you’ve spent years in the UK, studying at the London School of Economics, teaching for a year at Oxford and a decade teaching at Cambridge, what led you to the UK?
 
When I attended Brown University as an undergraduate, I got very interested in American labor history at a time when very little had been written on the experiences of working people in the US. When I learned that this field of study in Britain was far more advanced than in the US, I resolved to go to the UK for my junior year of college to study British labor history. In 1974-75, I enrolled in the London School of Economics.  It was a terrific intellectual and personal experience for me, which piqued my interest in someday returning to the UK for further study and living. 
 
After your year as Visiting Professor of American History at Oxford, what led you to Cambridge?
 
I experienced a different kind of intellectual culture in Britain than I had known in the United States in the sense that intellectuals were much more woven into public discourse than was the case back home. I enjoyed my time at Oxford, and I thought, if I had the chance to experience more of this, I would. The opportunity came up at Cambridge and I began a ten-year career there in 2014. I have taught at six universities and, of the six, the University of Cambridge was, for me, the best experience I’ve had. I found at Cambridge a deeper commitment to a shared intellectual life than what I encountered at any American university. Cambridge brings together the small college experience with a research-one university. The demands on faculty are very high and can be difficult to fulfill. But it makes for an extraordinarily dynamic intellectual environment.

Did your time away from the US, living and working among the Cambridge community, influence your thinking about modern American history?
 
It did. My book, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, was entirely written while I was in the UK. It was conceived there, it was researched there, it was written there. My time in Cambridge overlaps with the Trump phenomenon. I started at Cambridge in 2014. He arrived on the scene in 2015 and 2016, and my book is really meant to explain how a development long deemed inconceivable—Donald Trump as president—became possible. From the start, I recognized that this was not just an American story, because the year that America embraced Trump (2016) was the year that Britain embraced Brexit. I believed from the start that those were, in a sense, similar events, shocking and unexpected revolts among ordinary people against elites, against global systems of production, exchange and trade, and against cosmopolitanism in the cultural realm.  They both signified a retreat into a kind of angry nationalism. My book is focused on the United States, but my understanding that events in America were part of a broader phenomenon made me more sensitive to the international causes of what was happening. My ability to situate American events in an international context has given the book a global reach that none of my other books has achieved. I attribute the book’s reach to the advantages conferred on me by thinking through, discussing, and writing this book at Cambridge, and in the UK, far from US shores. 
 
Most recently the Trump administration policies have raised many questions. What concerns you most about the current moment?
 
The United States has a president who does not accept what the Constitution stipulates: namely, that federal power be distributed among three branches of government (the Executive, Congress, and the Judiciary).  This ‘separation of powers’ is meant to spare America from the scourge of tyranny, understood as one branch of government or one person accumulating absolute power and stripping Americans of their liberty.  Trump wants to rule like a king, by decree. He expects Congress and the Courts to submit to his authority. If he succeeds in this ambition, he will undermine the Constitution and thus imperil the Republic that it breathed into existence in 1789. 

Other than the looming constitutional crisis, what has gotten your attention in the last month? 

During the first month of its administration, Trump 2.0 seemed to be much more disciplined and strategic than Trump 1.0. But then came tariff recklessness.  A tariff regime can work if it is implemented carefully, systematically, and competently. That has not happened; instead, Trump 2.0 seemed to have reverted to the chaos of Trump 1.0.  I don’t see the degree of skill and steadiness required to achieve the transformation in the international system of trade that the Trump 2.0 team desires.  The risks to the US and world economy have increased accordingly.
 
What do you hope your event with CAm will bring to the alumni audience, some of whom may support President Trump? 
 
I regard alums as an integral part of the Cambridge community. I enjoy my interactions with them as much as I have with my Cambridge students and colleagues.  I expect to be challenged by them and to learn from them. As for the Trump phenomenon: As much as I disagree with him, I regard his rise as an indication that we—the United States and the world—are at an inflection point in history.  We are heading to a different place than where we've been, both domestically and internationally, both economically and culturally.  Trump is a change agent, who has profoundly shaken up accepted ways of living and thinking. The destination to where we are heading, however, is not yet clear, which makes discussions of the sort I hope we can have at this alumni event all the more important.