Many of President Donald Trump’s populist supporters saw his authorization of an air strike on Syria to be a betrayal of the populist, non-interventionist foreign policy on which he campaigned.

Moreover, they believe the reversal to be a result of the influence of the globalists in Trump’s inner circle. Now they fear a similar reversal on Trump’s promises of a populist economic agenda.

Trump has surrounded himself with a variety of voices with a variety of economic opinions — some populist, some globalist, some in-between — and Trump’s entire economic plan could very well depend on which of those voices wins out.

The Populist-Conservatives

Peter Navarro
Navarro is director of the White House National Trade Council, a group created by Trump to advise on trade issues. A staunch economic populist, Navarro — author of the 2011 book “Death by China” — has long been a loud voice railing against China’s impact on the global economy.

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A March profile of Navarro in Politico described him as “perhaps the most extreme advocate in Washington, and maybe in all of economics, for an aggressive stance toward China.”

A Bloomberg profile of Navarro from the same month described Navarro’s beliefs thusly: “The U.S. should be tough on trade, crack down on intellectual property theft, tax Chinese exports, combat Chinese mercantilism, bring jobs home, and yes, make America great again.”

Stephen Miller
If President Trump rode to power on a populist wave, he arguably has Miller to thank. Former communications director for then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, Miller was a, if not the, crucial figure in moving populist-conservatism to the center of the American political debate.

“Whether the issue was trade or immigration or radical Islam, for many years before Donald Trump came on the scene, Senator Sessions was the leader of the movement, and Stephen was his right-hand man,” White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon told Politico last year.

“You could not get where we are today with this movement if it didn’t have a center of gravity that was intellectually coherent,” Bannon said. “And I think a ton of that was done by Senator Sessions’ staff, and Stephen Miller was at the cutting edge of that.”

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Steven Bannon
White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon was the former executive chairman of Breitbart News, the country’s largest conservative-populist political news site. Bannon, who became CEO of the Trump campaign in August 2016, brought crucial new direction and leadership to the eventually successful effort.

If Miller helped lay an intellectual foundation for the rise of populist-conservatism in America, then Bannon helped give it a voice. “The middle class, the working men and women in the world … are just tired of being dictated to by what we call the party of Davos,” said Bannon in 2014.

Robert Lighthizer
Lighthizer, Trump’s nominee for U.S. trade representative, has yet to be confirmed thanks to obstruction from Senate Democrats. If and when he is confirmed, he will be a strong voice for populist economics in the White House. Lighthizer was a deputy trade representative under Ronald Reagan, and has since been one of the lone voices criticizing the modern GOP’s religious devotion to “free trade” deals at any cost.

“The icon of modern conservatism, Ronald Reagan, imposed quotas on imported steel, protected Harley-Davidson from Japanese competition, restrained import of semiconductors and automobiles, and took myriad similar steps to keep American industry strong,” Lighthizer wrote in a 2011 Washington Times article. “How does allowing China to constantly rig trade in its favor advance the core conservative goal of making markets more efficient?” he wrote.

The Globalists

Kevin Hassett
Hassett is on the verge of becoming Trump’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. If approved by the Senate Banking Committee, one can be fairly certain that the CEA under Hassett will not be advising Trump to enact populist economic policies.

Hassett, a former economist for the neoconservative and globalist American Enterprise Institute, is a strong proponent of free trade and mass migration. A recent Axios profile of Hassett identified three comments on the potential CEA chair that veer sharply from the populist tone Trump took on the campaign trail.

Axios reported that “Hassett warned in 2010 that bashing China-U.S. trade policy would bring the U.S. back to the downward spiral in the 1930s.” He also praised globalization, saying that an “absolute prerequisite for long-term economic growth is full participation in the global economy and trading system.” As for immigration, Hassett believes that “economic growth could expand significantly if immigration in the U.S. were expanded,” Axios reported.

Gary Cohn
Cohn is President Trump’s chief economic advisor and director of the National Economic Council. Cohn also happens to be the former president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs — and a registered Democrat.

Reports indicate that Cohn is, along with senior adviser Jared Kushner, seeking to squash the influence of chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Jared Kushner
Kushner is President Trump’s son-in-law who, much like Cohn, is in his position because of his personal relationship with Trump — not his politics. Kushner, the son of a New Jersey real estate mogul, has contributed more than $100,000 to Democratic candidates and causes since 1999, according to federal election records.

Kushner is also said to be the driving force behind the efforts to silence Bannon and dampen his populist influence over the President.

The Moderates

Wilbur Ross
President Trump’s Secretary of Commerce, Ross’s expertise lies in restructuring bankrupt companies, which may explain why he is not a doctrinaire free trader like some of the Goldman Sachs alumni in the White House.

“I am not anti-trade, I am pro trade, but I’m pro sensible trade, not pro trade — that is, to the disadvantage of the American worker and the American manufacturing Community,” Ross said during his confirmation hearing.

“I think we should provide access to our market to those countries who play fair, play by the rules, and give everybody a fair chance to compete. Those who do not should not get away with it; they should be punished, and severely. I think that we cannot afford trade that is inherently bad for American workers and for American businesses,” Ross said.

Steve Mnuchin
While Mnuchin’s Goldman Sachs background leads some to assume him to be in the globalist camp among Trump’s advisers, the Treasury Secretary has demonstrated a noticeably populist tone.

“I know that he’s a former Goldman Sachs-er, and for that reason is usually placed in the globalist camp,” said Alan Tonelson, economist and founder of RealityChek, an economics and national security blog. “But Mnuchin has also resisted efforts at the G20 summit last month to suggest that all the world’s major economies as champions of free trade (when he could have easily knuckled under and rationalized the decision as simply endorsing some harmless boilerplate).”

“And a few days later,” Tonelson told LifeZette, “he gave an interview in which he declared that his G20 action was meant to reinforce the message that ‘as long as we can negotiate deals that are good for us, we won’t be protectionist’ — suggesting, of course, that if such deals couldn’t be reached, we would.”

Reince Priebus
Trump’s chief of staff, Priebus is not known to be a figure tasked with the development of policy details. He does, however, given his former role as RNC chairman, have an instinctive recognition of both the populist message that got Trump elected and the entrenched Establishment interests within the Republican Party, suggesting he could be somewhat of a moderating influence between the globalist and populist factions in the White House.

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Ultimately, while Priebus is a product of the establishment Republican Party, he has clearly recognized the importance of populism, as indicated in his speech at last year’s Republican National Convention. “Americans have had enough of a government that plays favorites to the well-connected,” Priebus said.

“You all know [Trump’s] brought millions of new voters into our party because he’s listening to Americans who are anxious about a country which has lost its way,” he said. “Donald Trump wants to bring jobs back from overseas and hold companies who want to send them abroad accountable.”