Trump is a symptom of a 400 year old disease.

[Hortensis]

2. It's far older than that and across humanity. Europe didn't import slaves

for the simple reason that throughout the feudal period most people in Europe were slaves who came with the land, importation of more not needed or they would have been. Same for China. Chattel slavery was normal almost everywhere else.

Until the modern era, the various forms of enslaving humans, including the various forms of female bondage, were deeply woven into almost all societies.

Our nation is different from most, and from all in the history of humanity to that point, in that our founding fathers formed a nation based on equality of all men, though some of its new states had been slave colonies for centuries by then with large populations of slaves. Our new nation couldn't have survived if the slave colonies weren't part of it, though everyone was intensely aware of the enormous problem for continuity.

Btw, the agreement that made it possible was that importation of slaves could not be made illegal for 30 years. Almost to the day 30 years later, congress made importation illegal. Formal abolition of slavery took another 47 years, though making it stick took longer. Took another 143 years before we elected our first black president.