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Abstract In November 2016, Donald Trump was elected as the 45th president of the United States, which was widely recognized as a populist victory in the United States. The research based on the data of the World Values Survey provides a new perspective to verify or discover the roots of the current wave of populism in the United States, which contributes to revealing the intrinsic relationship between the change of peoples values and the rise of populism. By examining aspects in American peoples values such as political trust, perceptions to economic disparity, and positions of political stance, which are closely related to populism, the paper finds that peoples political trust has undergone a marked change. Americans remain highly confident in democratic systems, while their trust in political parties has weakened significantly, and the rise of Internet media has led to a decline in the American publics trust for traditional media. Despite the continuous improvement of the macroeconomic situation in the United States, the American people are still highly dissatisfied with their own economic conditions. Vertical and horizontal comparisons of polarization degree of the American peoples political stance reveal that the level of social and political polarization in the United States is not enough to lead to the rise of populism.
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