Now that he has returned to his perch in the Oval Office with a massive public mandate—winning both the popular vote as well as the electoral—he seems to have lost nothing of his vigor to keep the impression of unpredictability and suspense about his policy moves - BusinessLIVE

 

Trump Presidency Is All about Suspense?

By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

It would certainly not be an exaggeration to say that Donald Trump, who has just been sworn in as the 47 th President of the US, has the world in a tizzy.

Trump’s first stint in the White House as the 45 th President of the USA had left an indelible imprint on all those watching him, in what’s, without doubt, the most powerful executive office in the world; what defined the man and his actions were unpredictability and uncertainty.

Any pundit would be going out on a limb if he were to hazard a guess about what Trump could, or couldn’t, be expected to do, this time around, in his second innings at the head of the US.

That Trump is flippant is as good as a maxim truth, and he gave ample evidence in his first presidency to lend credence to this impression of him.

Now that he has returned to his perch in the Oval Office with a massive public mandate—winning both the popular vote as well as the electoral—he seems to have lost nothing of his vigor to keep the impression of unpredictability and suspense about his policy moves.

So, he has inaugurated his second stint in the White House, by signing as many as a hundred executive orders, translating into them many of the pledges he’d made during his election campaign. But Trump wouldn’t be Trump if he didn’t snare things for the man who was in office before him, Joe Biden.

In his inaugural address at the oath-taking ceremony in Washington’s Capitol building, he took an undisguised swipe at Biden by announcing that he would be canceling and annulling as many as 78 of Biden’s executive orders. He wouldn’t stop at that but went on to intone that the last four years had been one of the worst, if not the worst, era in US history.

Besides whitewashing Biden’s doings, Trump has come up with a potpourri of his own cut and thrust into policy decisions to herald his second term as President. However, in sync with his character and track record of his first stint in power, his package of what he’s going to unleash on the US and the world beyond its shores conflates good and bad, positive and negative.

He has declared a ‘National Emergency’ on the southern border of the US with Mexico to “repel,” in his declaration, a “disastrous invasion of the US.”

This had been his mantra—in reference to would-be migrants from Latin America seeking a better life in the US—throughout his election campaign. He would constantly describe these economic migrants as ‘criminals.’ Trump has also vowed to end birthright US citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. But he may not clinch it because the 14 th Amendment of the US Constitution has granted birthright citizenship to any child born on US soil. Besides, opinion polls conducted in the wake of his initiative, 51 % of Americans oppose his move to deny birthright to children of illegal immigrants.

While shutting the doors on economic migrants, Trump has pardoned more than 1,500 of those rioters, who’d invaded the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, after he’d lost the 2020 election to rival Joe Biden. His empathy for the rioters couldn’t be disguised as he moaned that those sent to prison had their “lives destroyed.”

Amongst those of Joe Biden’s orders Trump lost no time in rescinding, is sanctions imposed on those extremist settlers in the Occupied West Bank of Palestine who have been involved in acts of violence and arson against the Palestinians.

Trump has also decided to abandon the World Health Organization (WHO), which has been the mainstay of healthcare support in Gaza and the West Bank. It’s notable that the US has been the largest donor to WHO and US assistance accounts for 60 percent of the body’s budget. Trump’s arbitrary decision puts WHO in a tailspin as far as its budgetary woes are concerned.

In keeping with his vociferous disdain for climate change, Trump has walked out on the Paris Climate Accord.

But Trump’s appetite for disdain, if not hostility, to global concerns on climate change doesn’t just stop at abandoning the Paris accord. True to his campaign rhetoric, he has decided to pull all stops from drilling, off-shore, for oil. “Dig, baby, dig” is his mantra to Oil and Gas corporations, one of his prominent supporters.

Trump may garb it as essential to “make America flourish again.” But shorn of sophistry, it underlines his camaraderie with America’s corporate culture, of which he’s himself a product. Prominent among the galaxy of elites assembled at his inauguration ceremony were prominent figures of America’s corporate firmament. His team to transform his agenda into reality is Elon Musk, the richest man in our world.

But Musk has, perhaps unwittingly, heralded Trump’s second presidency on an embarrassing note. At the celebrations marking Trump’s ‘second coming’ Musk unabashedly sported the Nazi salute of Heil Hitler. Social media, around the world, has denounced Musk for his daring. But, in retort, Musk remains unapologetic and unrepentant.

Amongst the moves that could be classified as ‘positive’ of his moves, is his unequivocal rejection of America’s flourishing LGBTQ culture. He minced no words in declaring that there would be only two genders in the US: male and female.

Trump also seems on the right foot in declaring drug cartels as ‘foreign terrorist groups.’

Interestingly, while declaring war on immigrants “invading” the US, in his words, from the southern Mexican border, Trump didn’t mention, at all, the northern neighbor, Canada, in his inaugural address.

Later, however, he declared that he may impose a 25 % tariff on all imports from Canada, with effect from February 1. This is in keeping with his infuriating rhetoric against Canada since winning the election last November. He denigrated Canadian sovereignty by suggesting that Canada would be better off becoming the 51 st state of the US.

Canada, however, is refusing to accept his bluster and bullying lying down. Across the Canadian political spectrum, every leader worth their salt has vowed to give back as well as Trump tries to pile on Canada. Besides, the Canadian economy isn’t weak or vulnerable to buckle under Trump’s arm-twisting and threats. PM Justin Trudeau has vowed to retaliate “dollar for dollar” against any arbitrary Trump move to blackmail Canada.

If anything, Trump’s second presidency promises to be a more robust and raucous rehash of his first: in other words, a roller coaster ride for everyone impacted by his moves. What stands out, conspicuously, is his aggressive behavior. As a harbinger of that, he has, arbitrarily, named the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, which may not be welcome to any South or Central American state.

The bottom line is that Trump’s second term in office promises to be as unpredictable as his first. ‘Never a dull moment’ may be the hallmark of Trump’s second coming! At the very least, it promises to be as full of suspense as a stereotype Bollywood thriller, a la an Alfred Hitchcock vintage movie. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)