What made Trump unacceptable to the Republican establishment and their corporate backers [...] Trump champions an economic nationalism that rejects central tenets of the bipartisan neoliberal agenda that has impoverished segments of the middle and working classes. Capital was uneasy with Trump’s stance on immigration and the federal debt — he floated the idea of trying to persuade creditors to accept less than full payment on loans to the US government.

The corporate elite is even more disturbed by his ideas about foreign policy and global “free trade.” Trump claims to reject the established US alliance system, in particular nato, that has maintained US dominance since World War II. An advocate of “America First” politics that have been rejected by the US corporate elite since the 1940s, Trump is perceived as an unreliable agent of US capital.