However, we argue a close comparison is 1985-1991: Trump is in many ways an inverse version of former Soviet President Gorbachev.
Both superpower leaders introduced radical structural changes to shake up their political economy. Gorbachev failed badly. Can Trump succeed – and what does it mean if he does or doesn’t?
To answer that, we must briefly compare the key fundamentals of the Soviet and US economies, and what happened to the former.