In less than a week President-elect Donald Trump will once again lead the United States of America when he is sworn in on 20 January 2025.
The last few months since his electoral success have been interesting, because Trump’s entire strategy has been fundamentally different from when he was elected for the first time in 2016. His team was weak, they were new to government, and they were quickly carried away by the state for those first four years in office. Trump also routinely butted heads with the leadership of the Republican Party, particularly in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The result was that his first term in office was largely not memorable: there were no standout achievements. However, those lessons seem to have directly informed his approach the second time around. Within days after being declared the winner of the 2024 election, Trump produced almost daily videos outlining his key policy priorities. He also began lining up individuals who would be part of his leadership team. There is an excellent tracker on the Washington Post for this; at the time of writing Trump had 101 nominees lined up. There are approximately 1300 positions that require Senate confirmation. That is quite a number. Many of the occupants may only be sworn in mid-way through the term. Trump’s team has moved on lining people up for key positions first.
However, the first hiccup arose with the nomination of Matt Gaetz whom Trump wanted as the United States Attorney General: a nomination soundly blocked by various members of the Republican Senate, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and John Curtis. Gaetz removed himself from the list when it became clear he would not succeed.
One aspect of advanced democracies like the USA is that just because the President has been elected from a particular party does not mean that his party will automatically support all his decisions. Trump learned this lesson in his first term. Sometimes your biggest opponents are within your own party. Nonetheless it seems that aside from Gaetz, so far he is going to have strong support from the various Republican caucuses to drive his agenda and approve his nominees when their names are submitted.
Now, what is that agenda? The best place to find it is on Trump’s campaign platform, it’s right there on the donaldjtrump.com landing page. There are 20 key points on the page. I am not going to list them all here; I will discuss some specific objectives in more detail. However, before reading ahead it is worth reviewing those 20 points. Broadly Trump’s platform is focused on immigration, the economy, energy, defence, social issues, government and elections.
Front and centre, the first two priorities are to seal the border and carry out the largest deportation operation in American history. Trump has been relentless on illegal immigration, first it was “build the wall”, now the plan is to close the border. He is appointing Tom Homan, a former acting director at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as his “border czar’’. As for sealing the border, there are reports that the Trump administration is trying to find some form of health reason to close the border down. Overall, sealing the border is highly unlikely. The largest deportation in history is possible, it’s ultimately a numbers game.
Next up is ending inflation, and perhaps linking these with a few of Trump’s other objectives is worthwhile because they all speak to the economy. Trump wants the US to be the dominant energy-producer in the world, to stop outsourcing to drive American manufacturing, to introduce tax cuts for workers, cancel the electric vehicle subsidies and cut costly regulations.
Now there are few tools that Presidents have that can influence inflation. Government spending through infrastructure investment is one. This isn’t mentioned in Trump’s focus. The other is taxes; Trump does have a history of tax cuts. In his first term he had some success on this front. Energy and regulations are related, “Drill baby Drill” is going to require an enabling regulatory environment that allows companies to access fossil fuel resources. Trump has spoken at length about tariffs.
“Tariff is my favourite word. It’s the most beautiful word in the dictionary. We’re going to have 10 – 20% tariffs on foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years’”. This one has been red-flagged by economists, because tariffs on imported goods will likely drive inflation, the opposite of what Trump wants to do.
Will Trump end inflation? No, you don’t “end” inflation. However, he will impact it, hopefully down, but also possibly up.
On defence and security, Trump is committed to peace in Europe and the Middle East, strengthening and modernising America’s military and combating crime across multiple fronts. Trump’s foreign policy approach is more hawkish than dove. His rhetoric on military actions is quite strong, but in his first term in office he did not engage in significant military action and his efforts in North Korea and Iran largely amounted to nothing. Currently there are talks of a potential ceasefire and release of hostages taking place between Israel and Hamas. Trump has come out and said that if this doesn’t happen before he takes office “All hell will break loose”.
On the social side, he is committed to defending the Constitution and its values, cutting funding to schools that push critical race theory and gender ideology, keeping men out of women’s sports and deporting pro-Hamas radicals to make college campuses safe and patriotic again. These are relatively easy wins for him that in fact some institutions have already started responding to. Trump’s rhetoric alone seems to be pushing this towards happening in many cases.
Another interesting one, electoral reform, same-day voting, voter identification, paper ballots and proof of citizenship, also likely an easy win that he could secure for the future.
Trump’s challenges from the first term will remain the same. The Republican party in both the House and Senate: can he count on them? His ability to work with Democrats across the government, governors in states and mayors is a space he grappled with previously. Finally, the federal government as a whole: notably nowhere among his top 20 objectives does Trump speak to reducing the size of the government: a job he has assigned to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, where does this fit in?
There are many promises made across multiple areas and equally heavy pressure to deliver. With 20 key campaign promises, the question is, what will it take to ensure they all receive a green tick at the end of the term?
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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