At his inauguration on January 20, 2025, Trump affirmed his desire to recreate a “new American Gilded Age.” A few days later, he made this unexpected reference to the period from the 1870s to the 1890s, known as the Gilded Age  : “The United States was at its richest from 1870 to 1913. That’s when we were a tariff-heavy country.”

Trump’s autocratic and libertarian choices thus reflect a desire to resurrect a past. Why this fascination, with Trump going so far as to proclaim his admiration for McKinley (1896-1900), the Republican president who symbolized an aggressive tariff policy?

The Reign of the Robber Barons

For former Labor Secretary Robert Reich , the three decades of the Gilded Age saw an unprecedented and unique economic boom. The US national product increased sixfold; average annual growth was around 4% , despite severe and repeated financial crises. In the 1890s, industrial production in the United States exceeded that of the United Kingdom. By 1913, it was equal to that of the United Kingdom, Germany, and France combined.

By exploiting the immense resources of a conquered American territory, the growth of the railway and steel industries quickly became exponential. The number of kilometers of railway increased sevenfold during this period. Then, driven by technological advances, the emergence of new sectors such as the chemical and mechanical industries, as well as electricity, quickly reinforced an overall dynamic fueled by a constant influx of immigrants and the contribution of foreign capital, most often British.

Beyond these enviable figures, it was above all a period in which, at the heart of an economy protected by very high customs tariffs, the “Robber Barons” – Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan or Westinghouse – built gigantic monopolies.

Inequality according to Mark Twain

Named the “Gilded Age” after the 1873 satirical novel co-written by Mark Twain , this era was one of phenomenal growth in inequality. In 1890, 10% of Americans owned 90% of the nation’s wealth. The Gilded Age saw the rise of the power and ostentatious behavior of a few dozen techno-entrepreneurs at the head of monopolies, on the one hand. On the other, the population’s greater precariousness, very well depicted in the photos of the New York slums by activist journalist J. Riis .

Behind Trump’s flurry of wild statements, his brutal policies and his decrees aimed at societal reforms, there is a constant ideological obsession: the search for the ingredients that make up the Gilded Age .

Imperialist nationalism

Mimicking the isolationist policies of the Gilded Age, Trump’s second term is initially marked by fierce nationalism symbolized by the revival of the slogan “America First.” A phrase uttered by President Woodrow Wilson, who did not want to participate in the First World War. As Trump’s announcements demonstrate, American priorities are non-negotiable. They can also include a highly offensive foreign policy: the imposition of imperialist neo-mercantilism, that is, a logic of bilateral power relations, where trade becomes an instrument of power, or even domination, over other countries.

Illustrations from The Gilded Age , by Mark Twain (1873). Wikimediacommons , CC BY-SA

How can we not see a parallel between, on the one hand, the tenacious desires to “annex” Canada, “purchase” Greenland, and “take control” of the Panama Canal, and, on the other hand, the US military expedition against Spain in February 1898? The explosion of a US Navy ship in the port of Havana triggered a war against Spain. Victorious in Cuba and the Philippines, the United States recovered these territories, as well as the island of Puerto Rico and the Hawaiian archipelago in 1898. With the signing of the Panama Protectorate in 1903, it established itself as a national power capable of imperialism to guarantee its interests abroad, most often in its immediate vicinity. According to André Kaspi , this “little war” constitutes the true birth certificate of American imperialism.

After the threats made against all countries with a trade surplus with the United States, the use of “reciprocal customs duties” applied to the “Dirty 15” is the most visible instrument of this unbridled nationalism. Reaffirming US hegemony as the “master of the game” of a globalized economy, but above all forcing various concessions through the imposition of strong sanctions, has become Donald Trump’s priority.

Plutocracy of techno-entrepreneurs

During the Gilded Age, the “Robber Barons” or “great feudal lords” of capitalism became extremely wealthy monopolistic captains of industry. By 1890, Rockefeller was the richest billionaire in the United States. Standard Oil of Ohio controlled 90% of oil production and refining. Its control of the oil market increased from 4% in 1870 to 25% in 1874 and over 85% in 1880. Ultimately, some twenty Robber Barons completely dominated a politically predatory capitalism  ; a system of widespread corruption where unscrupulous businessmen benefited from political favors and made no secret of it.

This dominance of techno-entrepreneurs is just as striking today. Like their predecessors, the tech billionaires of the 2020s, such as Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg, fund political campaigns and “receive” favors in return. Elon Musk helped finance Trump’s election campaign . In return, he has received “at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, grants, and tax credits over the years, often at critical times,” according to the Washington Post .

In this quest for a new Gilded Age, plutocracy has a true trademark. Yesterday, it was ideologically combating the idea of ​​a state intervening in the economy; today, it’s conquering it in order to use it, as Musk demonstrates every day.

Violent political climate

In both cases, the establishment of a resolutely violent political climate makes it possible to impose a favorable moral order, but also a favorable social order.

During the Gilded Age, the moral struggle focused on the issue of alcohol prohibition. Socially, strikes were bloodily suppressed, such as the Homestead Strike of 1892 and the Pullman Strike of 1894. Today, the search for a moral order is currently focused on societal issues, particularly gender issues. The social front is not deserted. In 2024, Donald Trump congratulated Elon Musk “for having fired 80% of Twitter’s workforce since he took control in October 2022.” By 2025, in the same spirit, he encouraged Musk to undertake the brutal reduction of the federal government’s workforce.

At its heart, the approach lies in the words of one of the most famous Robber Barons , Cornelius Vanderbilt, nicknamed the Commodore for having built his fortune in shipbuilding:

“The people be damned. Why should I care about the law, don’t I have the power?” (in Frank Browning and John Gerassi, A Criminal History of the United States , New World Publishing, 2015, pp. 277-278).

Crushing public power, the fascination for absolute power of tech entrepreneurs is never far away.

Trump’s Second Gilded Age

What predictions can we make about the success of this quest for a second Gilded Age?

The project remains as naive as it is unrealistic. With the gold standard ending in 1971 , how can we imagine that an increase in customs duties in a globalized economy would allow, as in the “closed” United States of 1890, budget surpluses to appear? How can these surpluses be increased to the point of reducing the government’s debt with a deficit of 37,000 billion dollars? How can we reduce the foreign trade deficit? How can we eliminate the federal income tax, introduced at the end of the Gilded Age? And yet, according to his economic advisor Stephen Miran , Trump already sees himself at the head of a “Tariff Commission” like the one that, in 1887, distributed the surpluses amassed by collecting customs duties!

If it really gained ground, this project to install a second Gilded Age also carries its downfall… within itself. If we follow Mark Twain for whom “history does not repeat itself but it often rhymes”, a second Gilded Age would call for an inevitable reversal, like that carried by the Progressive Era (1901-1920) premise of the New Deal of 1932. The excesses of the Gilded Age directly led to progressivism embodied in politics by the election of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901. At the same time, it was also the emergence of a group of social scientists – Ely, Small – and the relentless work of famous journalists “muckrakers” (“mud diggers”) . The latter favored the transition to a more democratic exercise of power with the cardinal objective of progress for all.

Between the 1890s and 1920s, the first disruptive reforms followed one another, as historian Ian Tyrrell recalls . In 1890, the first federal Sherman Antitrust Act partially banned monopolistic business practices. Laws established worker protection, the election of senators by universal suffrage, with a view to combating corruption, and women’s suffrage in 1920. From 1906, laws strengthened the regulation of labor, union rights, and industry. Theodore Roosevelt’s intervention during the anthracite coal miners’ strike of 1902 was certainly the death certificate of the violent methods installed by the Gilded Age.

Author Bios: Leo Charles is a Lecturer specializing in economic history at the University of Rennes 2, Guillaume Vallet is University Professor at University of Grenoble Alpes (UGA) and Michel Rocca is Professor of Political Economy also at the University of Grenoble Alpes (UGA)