Less than two weeks into the job, US President Donald Trump is doing his utmost to escalate his ‘war’ on the media. He is also persisting in raising the spectre of a trade war with America’s third largest partner, Mexico, by threatening to impose a 20 per cent tariff on Mexican imports.
Moreover, he signed an executive order banning travel from seven Muslim countries and suspended all refugee admissions into the country. This move created widespread confusion across the country as airports struggled to adjust to Trump’s directives. These unilateral moves, which have prompted protests at US airports and across the globe, reflect the President’s desire to quickly make ground on his campaign promises.
He is also considering lifting Obama-era sanctions against Russia.
In a recent interview with ABC News, Mr Trump claimed he would make relations with Mexico “better than ever before” despite his insistence that the country must pay billions for a border wall. But less than 24 hours later, Mr Trump watched his first foreign policy controversy unfold after Mexico’s President angrily cancelled a visit to Washington to meet him. This bullying treatment he gave Mexico would certainly backfire with powers such as Germany, Russia, Iran and China.
These serious threats to Muslims, the media, Mexico, Germany and China confirm Trump’s eagerness to reverse America’s commitment to expanding world trade. But why does he want this?
The answer is simple: he is a bully and sees international trade the way he sees everything else: as a struggle for dominance in which you only win at somebody else’s expense. In his inaugural address, Mr Trump made it perfectly clear: “For many decades, America enriched foreign industry at the expense of our industry, but now this has to stop.”
The American people are baffled by the first few days of the Trump presidency, as other democratic nations of the world are, and this is because it has become clear as crystal that he has no intention of changing his behaviour or the populist agenda he laid out on the campaign trail. He is unwilling and uninterested to respect certain norms of presidential behaviour.
His senior counselor Steve Bannon wants the US media to keep its mouth shut and warned reporters not to act like an Opposition party.
In such an authoritarian climate, how is the press going to operate? Who is going to act as a brake on Mr Trump?