Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Orban's Economic Model Is Trump's Dream

Hungary's prime minister keeps winning elections thanks to his unorthodox policies in favor of the victims of globalization.

April 13, 2018 at 6:00 AM UTC

By Leonid Bershidsky

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

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Photographer: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images

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Can Donald Trump's dream of beating back globalization and lifting the fortunes of its victims actually work? With a third landslide election victory since 2010, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban proved that it can -- at least for a while.

Orban has been accused of creating an authoritarian government, setting up a Russian-style propaganda machine and playing to citizens' basest xenophobic instincts. But Hungary remains a functioning democracy, and his party, Fidesz, owes its success to an economic policy that grew wages and lowered unemployment.