In two days’ time, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. What have we learnt about him during the transition period since his stunning victory – apart from what has emerged from the unsavoury intelligence reports about Russian cyberattacks, that is?
First, he likes the military and has an affinity for people like himself – combative, scrappy and successful. We should not be surprised by his choice of Cabinet. The general view is that he has made more good selections than bad, though nepotism could prove a problem.
Second, the disenfranchised in the US now have a champion. They will give him more leeway to make mistakes than they would others. But Trump has to produce an agenda consistent with their interests.
Third, he will not be a classic conservative Republican. Trump will be more radical in his approach to government spending and job creation. The Republican base are more in line with Trump than with past dogma.
What kind of president should the world expect? His campaign has been driven by three principal complaints: US military might is taken for granted by its free-loading allies; the US has signed trade deals that harm its middle and working classes; immigrants are taking jobs and bringing crime.
China is the rising power against which the US must measure its decline
On the day of his inauguration, he has promised to spend hours signing documents “to erase the Obama presidency” (albeit, Obamacare may be simultaneously repealed, replaced and improved). He could, with a stroke of his pen, undo dozens of executive orders signed by Obama. He could even withdraw the US from the Paris climate change agreement and reverse many of his environmental measures.
The First Hundred Days will be marked by whirlwind activity. He has promised to expel about two million undocumented immigrants and cancel visas to countries that refuse to take them back. Without even seeking Congressional approval, he could order a ban on Muslims entering the country. He and Vice President Mike Pence, who is being given wide-ranging responsibilities, will begin interviewing candidates for a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
His 100-day action plan includes measures “to clean up corruption and special interest collusion in Washington”. He has promised to finalise a design for a wall along the Mexican border, with Mexico paying for the project – though he appears now to be hedging these promises.
On the economy, Trump must give the rust-belt workers who elected him the jobs and economic improvements he promised them. It was anger at economic competition from China and Mexico, more than immigration, which persuaded them to support Trump. In his acceptance speech, he set as his highest priority a massive infrastructure programme to give solid wages to manual labourers.
But he will have to balance how to combine a huge infrastructure programme with the tax cuts which he has also promised and produce a fiscally responsible budget. The assumption by many commentators is that he will turn a blind eye to the deficit and go for both infrastructure spending and tax cuts in the hope that the resulting greater economic growth will produce higher tax revenues and lower deficits.
Trade is the one area of policy where Trump has the power to push through his own decisions. Abolishing existing trade deals does not require the approval of Congress, nor does introducing new tariffs. The rust-belt states have lapped up his tough-sounding rhetoric on this subject. Trump may think that picking a fight with China or Mexico will be the best way of shoring up his popularity.
He has promised either to renegotiate or to leave the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact with Canada and Mexico. He plans to announce the US’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a major Asian deal, and to withdraw from the negotiations for a Trans-Atlantic trade treaty with the European Union.
If he doesn’t get what he wants, he is prepared to pull out of the 164-nation World Trade Organisation. The fear must be that if he really kills these trade treaties and imposes tariffs, he will assuredly cause a recession that will hurt blue-collar workers more than free trade ever did. And he might bring down the world economy.
Some of the biggest uncertainties arise over foreign policy. He is the first commander-in-chief with no experience in public office or of top military command. He has hinted at warmer relations with Russia (cyberattacks on American elections notwithstanding) and selected as his Secretary of State somebody who has a close rapport with Putin.
China is very much on Trump’s mind. It is the state that mounts the most direct challenge to US hegemony and its global reach, its cyber-defences and economic growth. It is the rising power against which the US must measure its decline.
Trump’s aim is to end what he believes is a culture of subservience to China. Until now, the chief White House concern in Asia has been to persuade Beijing to apply pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear programme. Trump is likely to tell China to lean on North Korea, which is dependent on it for aid, or face US-imposed sanctions – marking a sea change in relations.
He has vowed to invest heavily in the military. He will present the US as a country that demands to be respected by other great powers. No longer the world’s policeman, simply another state jealous of its sovereignty and overwhelming power.
Trump has calculated that Daesh (so-called Islamic State) can best be defeated in Syria with the help of Russia. That is likely to mean Putin being given free rein in Syria to bolster Assad and destroy rebels, while the US deals with Daesh on the Iraqi side of the border.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, he will not allow Iran to emerge as a victor in either Syria or Iraq. We should expect closer vigilance of the nuclear curbs agreement reached by the five Security Council nations, Germany and the EU. Above all, we should expect Trump to be the most pro-Israeli president since Reagan.
As to Nato, European allies should be doing all they can to demonstrate to Trump that the alliance is vital not just for the security and stability of Europe, but also for the US. To cement the alliance and ensure world peace and European security, it is essential that European countries meet the defence spending targets to which they are committed.
On the evidence of what it has seen of Trump’s politics and irascible and unpredictable personality, the liberal western world understandably views his inauguration with trepidation. But what the US has swallowed, the world must now digest. It is as well to be reminded that doom-laden language about past presidents-elect has echoed back through American history from Abraham Lincoln to Ronald Reagan – and has (mostly) been proved wrong.
But if predictions of disaster are not always accurate, sometimes they do not go far enough. Many predicted that George W. Bush would prove a calamitous president. Sure enough, he plunged the US into a long war and turned a budget surplus into a $1 trillion deficit.
While the dire prophesies about a Trump presidency may be overblown, they may not be wrong. Only this can be said with certainty about the apocalypse. It hasn’t happened. Yet.