The contours, content and consequences of Trump’s foreign policy may be different, but the whole world looks forward to it with bated breath
Suresh Chandra Sarangi
Hillbilly Elegy, a book written by America vice president-elect Vance is a 2020 American film based on the book of the same name that portrayed America in a different light and became a game changer. This book, an instant success and a New York Times bestseller speaks about the stagnant American class mobility that paved the way for Trump’s rise from political novice to the president of the USA.
Trump actually capitalized on the message of the memoir and focused on blacks, workers, laborers, mine workers & construction workers and thus, a new class of people, hitherto unorganized politically, became a powerful force to be reckoned with. The new political equation worked well for Trump till George Floyd was brutally forced to death his last due to asphyxiation and thereafter, Trump fell from grace. This followed mind-blowing violence, loot and carnage, a disturbing development in American society.
Trump’s meteoric rise and fall from grace is a chequered career, like losing everything in business after being bankrupt. A mercurial president who had to face the indignation of being charged with impeachment twice, assassination bids twice, facing the worst black outrage did not deter him. Again in the 2020 presidential election, he lost marginally to Joe Biden to come back as president of the United States of America in the November election. What made Trump a hero again and a comeback that has been witnessed in American history, so far as Republicans were concerned?
Huge Mandate
The mandate is huge with a strong message to Trump and let us understand how Trump delivers peace ushers on the world stage. Too early to predict anything. The contours and content and consequences of Trump’s foreign policy may be different, but the whole world looks forward to it with bated breath. Despite pool forecast, this election of 47th president of the USA, which everyone predicted to be a nail-biter, became, finally, a decisive election mandate in Donald Trump’s favor.
In his victory speech Trump’s philosophy of ‘America first’, no to war between nations, stopping the ongoing war, controlling influx from neighboring countries with strict border vigil and restoring American preeminence in global geopolitics, would be the prime mover of the Administration’s policy objectives. During electioneering, Trump put his strategy straight by telling those countries who put high tariffs on America’s goods, will be charged high tariffs as well and threatened to put a 200% tariff on some imported commodities and services.
Trump is very critical of China’s ascent on the international horizon as a superpower, with economic clout and his policy may have a belligerent overtone. He does not want Chinese companies to own or construct real estate and infrastructure businesses. He thought to curtail the ‘deep state’ which means a bureaucracy that follows its agenda. He wants to root out corrupt workers in bureaucracy and recalcitrant people who are securing positions in the national order.
With the help of Elon Musk, he wants to construct a government efficiency panel that would control fraud and improper payments. Trump pledged to issue a national emergency declaration to boost production and enterprises, estimate energy sufficiency and increase the use of fossil fuels. He shall again pull the US out of the Paris accord on climate change and climate action. He may roll back Biden’s electric vehicle mandate and other policies to reduce emissions, as per the election manifesto.
Social Welfare
Trump, before the election, had spoken that he would limit jobs, a federal regulation that limits job creation. As an economic agenda on the tax front, he has pledged to keep in place, broadly tax cuts that he signed in office in 2017. Reducing corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% for companies that make their products in the US. Creation of a sovereign wealth fund that would spend money on projects such as infrastructure and highways. But a different strategy on the social welfare front, opposite to his earlier stand, wherein he has promised to maintain the status quo and shall not cut expenditure on medical health care and social security. He may provide cushion to crypto currencies, diametrically opposite to the view for regulating crypto. Illegal border crossings would be curtailed with a change in immigration policy.
In matters of foreign affairs, Trump has been critical of US support to Ukraine and shall bring policies about NATO’s policies and guidelines. He had objected to US help of 61 billion to Ukraine. But he is affirmative in US support to Israel, against Hamas. He is dead against Mexico’s drug cartel. He has said to build an iron dome – a massive missile defense shield – over the continental United States. In front of education, his views are crystal clear that it should protect American interests and defend American interests and civilization. On the crime front, his tough utterances would torment the drug peddlers and human traffickers but shall pardon those who attacked Capitol Hill.
Political analysts observe that due to the policy infirmities in the Biden Administration and the incumbency factor, inflation and loss of touch with female voters, Kamala Harris was a party to it. This paved for Donald Trump’s victory. The dynamics of politics will undergo a sharp change, the global politics as well. Donald Trump, the mercurial president, is a disruptor and it is expected that the disruption would be total this time. The Americans have seen much the trouble during COVID period, the confidence in society was on the decline, the inflation was too high to maintain the status quo of extended policy rate for a long time, the gap between rich and poor was increasing, with the concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich and powerful.
Trump perhaps capitalized on these high rising prices, violent crime, increasing immigrants and a deep state that was gradually firming up. Despite Kamala Harris’s claim for ‘change’ was very feeble, borrowing the concept from Barack Obama, in a campaign that was left withdrawn in the middle, when Biden withdrew from the contest and a weak candidate Kamala Harris, suddenly jumped onto the bandwagon? Serious concern over the rising public deficits, a huge increase in public debt, both national and international, with elevated inflation and the hue and cry over spending money in fighting a proxy war in Ukraine over the fact that democracy must be saved was perhaps not going well with the American public.
With Vance becoming the vice presidential candidate, the importance of the common man, Aam Aadmi played a crucial role in developing a swing in Trump’s favor. From the election manifesto, it was clear that Trump would lift the economy with tax cuts, a republican way of bringing in laissez-faire, free market and neoliberalism, with enterprises swelling up and the type of trade policy that shall help the American race to flourish in a world, where China is the greatest disruptor. As BRICS posed challenges as an alternate world economic order that challenges the global hegemony of the dollar, Trump is fixed and has to defend the dollar. Trump has a binding faith in minimum state and maximum governance. The victory has come at a time when geopolitically the world is fractured with two wars having greater ramifications underway.
China Policy
With China’s eye on Taiwan the geo-strategic role to be played by America in promoting peace and disengagement from war calls for strong leadership. Trump and Putin are good friends, Trump and Modi are real friends and this axis of a triangle may firm up the American relationship with the world, and may provide alternate policy imperative to the Chinese ambition of neo-colonialism and expansionism. Trump has said that his policy would be to end war and bring peace among nations, which would be tested in the crucible of international politics when the Trump administration manages the Israel – Palestine conflicts more prudently.
Trump’s slogan of rejuvenating the American dream and again goodbye to the Paris accord speaks that globalization as a force is receding and each nation would pursue its naked national self-interest. The immediate challenge, however, for Trump would be to manage the public deficits at home. The recent thaw in American inflation management policy is quite discernible when FED chairman Powell decreased a quarter percentage point in the rate of interest after the latest FOMC meeting, a signal that things may be different.
Climate change is the greatest looming disaster that confronts mankind and it may be the greatest existential crisis gradually crippling the homosapiens towards the Sixth extinction. Trump has to help shape up rather a viable climate policy in the interest of mankind. The Israel-Iran war has the potential to trigger a world war and Trump must take diplomacy to the table with the conflicting nations to bring peace in the Middle East area. He is titled as a don and he may not do only different things but shall manage it differently.
(The writer is a former General Manager of Bank of India and currently a visiting professor at KIIT School of Management. Views expressed are personal)
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