Those who wanted to be reassuring are for their expense. In less than three weeks, Donald Trump, like an absolute monarch, sketched a staggering roadmap: seizing the Greenland and the Panama Canal; Make Canada the 51st US state; And take possession of the Gaza Strip to transform it into “Côte d’Azur” of the Middle East.
At the same time, he withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreements, launched the dismantling of the International Development Aid USAID (more than 10,000 employees) and left his advisor Elon Musk, responsible for cutting in the Public expenses, take control of the Treasury Payment System. The billionaire also started a trade war with China, brandished customs duties against its Canadian and Mexican neighbors, and raised the taxes on steel and aluminum imported to the United States. Who is the turn? Threatened, the European Union and Taiwan are shaking.
With clear objectives in domestic policy – reducing the federal state, slowing down immigration, putting an end to “wokism” -, the 47th president, who had four years to prepare his project and compose his teams, started his second term Foot to the floor: some 80 decrees signed in two weeks, against an annual average of 55 between 2017 and 2021, calculated Bloomberg. At this rate, he could exceed Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945), who initialed more than 300 per year during his presidency.
In Trump’s world, everything money
On the diplomatic level, Trump II is more aggressive than Trump I, even downright imperialist. The former businessman may have theorized in his bestseller The Art of the Deal His taste for overbidding, on Gaza or other subjects, “we take very seriously what he says,” warns a French diplomatic source. Sage attitude. Far from being peaceful by his re-election, the tenant of the White House wants to obtain without appeal victories using the power of America to make his opponents, enemies as allies to bend. In Trump’s world, everything money: the defense of Ukraine against access to its rare land. That of Taiwan against concessions on semiconductors. Transactional 100 %, for him, values do not have their place in foreign policy.
An approach shaped by his past as a real estate developer in New York. “He has a geographical reading of things: he looks at the planisphere and identifies the ‘properties’ that interests him”, points Charles Kupchan, professor at Georgetown University and ex-advisor by Barack Obama. Operating a disturbing return to 19th century American politics, it cuts the world into areas of influence and wants to act the domination of the United States over its western part, from the Americas to Greenland.
A boon for Xi Jinping
At the same time, the one who dreams of winning the Nobel Peace Prize is sees himself as an almost messianic figure capable of putting an end to conflicts in the world. And so much the better if his crazy ideas shock. “He considers himself a disruptor, it is his trademark. He was elected on the idea that the system in place did not work. Almost all that he said and does aims to destabilize the establishment . And it does not matter if his unrealistic and unhealthy project to expel nearly 2 million Gaza Palestinians faces hostility from the Arab countries. He will try to impose it by force.
The Trump “method” begins to show its limits. The Republican finally suspended for one month his threat of imposing 25 % customs barriers in Mexico and Canada. What did he get in exchange? Not much. The Canadians have appointed a “Tzar” to fight fentanyl traffic. As for the Mexicans, they promised to deploy 10,000 men on the border to strengthen the fight against illegal immigration, but that is already what they have been doing for years … During his first mandate, spectacular announcements had already Pschitt. Presented as the “biggest deal that no one has ever seen”, the trade agreement signed with China in January 2020 has never been respected by Beijing. Finally, despite his “Bromance” with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, Donald Trump failed to make him give him up his nuclear arsenal.
Already, the resistance is organized. In the United States, courts challenge many decrees deemed illegal. Abroad, China has triggered reprisals. It will not be the only one if customs taxes continue to rain on the planet. A boon for Chinese President Xi Jinping, who intends to take advantage of the blows to the soft power American to increase his influence on the international scene. While negotiations are sapping to end the war in Ukraine, the republican leader does not exclude that the Ukrainians can “be Russian one day”. Bread blessed for the chief of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, who will also seek to exploit the flaws of the Trumpian mechanics.