Trump47: The Second Coming of The Donald

What I will be focusing on over the next four years of Donaldismo

Today is Inauguration Day in the United States of America, and Donald J. Trump will once again be inaugurated as its President. This will be a very short entry (as I am working on a million other pieces), so let’s skip ahead to the meat…..

The following are the four items that I will be most focused on during Trump’s second term in the White House:

1. Gutting the Deep State

This is by far the most important task at hand because if the permanent state is not rolled back, every single accomplishment is immediately made temporary. The smartest thing that Stephen Bannon ever said was back in 2015 or 2016 (I can’t recall which specific year it was) when he explained that it will take twenty years of consecutive victories in order to right the ship. The Trump Team is cognizant of this fact, which is why Executive Orders have been drafted beforehand to issue on Day One of Trump47.

Some of you will recall that there was a wave of resignations the last time Trump entered the White House. The US Department of State practically gutted itself under Rex Tillerson, only for Trump to fire him and hire Mike Pompeo, who brought all the snakes back into State. The Deep State subverted Trump45, working hand-in-glove with media and Big Tech to tank his regime. There are no excuses this time around to deal with long-standing leftovers and moving his own people into key roles.

2. Immigration Reform/Deportations

The big one.

This is THE issue that made Trump in 2016 and that can make or break him at any time. All his efforts to reduce migration the last time around were fought tooth and nail, with lawfare being the primary device to oppose his policies.

This time around, the expectation is that there will be at least some deportations of illegal migrants who have settled in the USA. The lowest hanging fruit in this cohort are criminals. There are some 30-50 million illegals currently residing on American soil, so an Operation Wetback on steroids is very hard to imagine actually happening.

When it comes to legal migration, the issue is much less black and white. Your standard fare boomercon who is a diehard Trump supporter wants to see illegals deported en masse, but is fine with legal migration, with varying opinions on the numbers that should be permitted entry.

The real debate here lies with “skilled workers”, with the H-1b designation the battlefield. Big Tech defected from the Democrat camp to Trump, and they are going to want their pound of flesh for backing him this time around. At the same time, the Nativists are Trump’s base and most diehard supporters. Significant numbers of these are employed in tech, and see the H-1b program as a way to import cheap labour to their detriment. It is this issue that has the best chance of doing great damage to the Trump47 coalition, one that spans the old left-right spectrum.

For those of us in the USA’s far-flung provinces, Trump pulling off immigration reform that vastly curtails the amount of entries would help us with our own local immigration politics as “the metropole informs the provinces”.

3. A “Transactional” Foreign Policy

Personally, I think that foreign policy reform will be the most difficult promise to pull off.

Second only to immigration, foreign policy played a key role in propelling Trump to the White House in 2016. “Forever wars” were supposed to end, and “nation building” was to be retired in this “America First” approach. Trump45 saw Russia policy taken out of his hands via a bipartisan congressional consensus, and he got actual support for his targeting of China (which was suspended due to COVID).

Trump has not used the term “transactional” (at least from what I can recall), but the expectation is that he is coming for what he sees as America’s: no more free rides from allies. This means squeezing NATO members so that they up their yearly military spending. It also means redirecting more economies towards the USA. Biden already did Trump the favour of splitting Europe from America, and we should now expect Trump to strong arm Europe into holding the line against China economically as well.

On the other hand, the USA is an empire and it is in imperial management mode. This has a habit of throwing up all sorts of surprises, with the recent war in Gaza being an excellent example. What must also be considered is how much US allies will be willing to bend to Trump’s wheeler-dealer approach? The safe bet is that push back will be tame. Trump47 is counting on this.

The net effect of a transactional foreign policy will be America as a formal protection racketeer.

4. Re-Shoring and Re-Industrialization

Bring manufacturing back to the USA as a key issue for #MAGA has been rather muted this time around. Despite some attempts (like the chip factory in Arizona), this has largely not come to pass.

Instead, what we have seen is “friend-shoring”, where trusted US allies are chosen to manufacture vital products for the US economy in order to secure critical supply chains. This is all about countering China, something that should take centre-stage over the next four years. Untangling this Siamaese death embrace is a very, very tall order.