How the US will be changed domestically under the Trump II Administration

Ex- and future President Donald Trump on his way to defeat Kamala Harris, achieved two more milestones: (a) he is the first President, since Grover Cleveland’s win in 1892, to win two non-consecutive terms; and (b) he is the first Republican President to win the majority of the electoral college votes as well as popular vote in twenty years since George W Bush won his second term against John Kerry in 2004, writes Vidya S. Sharma, PhD.

Winning both the electoral college and popular votes endows him with a strong mandate to implement his policies.

Trump or more precisely the Republican Party would control both legislative bodies: the Senate and Lower House. So theoretically for the next two years, ie, till the representatives on Capitol Hill and one-third of the Senate go back to polls in 2026, he should not have any difficulty to have any of his legislative initiatives passed.

During his first term, he ensured that the Supreme Court would have a majority of judges whose political philosophy, reading of American history and cultural views were similar to his. It means that any challenge to the laws/executive orders signed by him is unlikely to succeed.

I explained how Kamala Harris lost the unlosable election in my first article. Here I wish to examine how the Trump II Presidency might change/reshape the US domestically. In my third article, I will explore how the Trump II Administration will affect the US’s relations with its allies and foes.

I begin with obvious things first.

THIS TIME NO MORE PROTESTS AGAINST HIM

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In 2017, the day after Trump was sworn in, we saw the groundswell of protest. Thousands of women protested against his victory in Washington, DC, and other cities wearing pink hats and shouting feminist slogans. We are not likely to see any protests.

People are exhausted and know the Democrats let them down – in all sorts of ways: in terms of policies Biden pursued, his obsession with Russia forged during the Cold War, his inaction for the first three years of his term on illegal immigrants, his unqualified support to Benjamin Netanyahoo while the Israeli Defence Forces committed war crimes in the name of eliminating Hamas fighters but in reality to achieve Netanyahu’s dream of greater Israel, Biden not keeping the promise to be a bridging President so that a more competent Presidential nominee might have emerged, etc.

JANUARY 6 RIOTS

Many times Trump has described the January 6, 2021 rioters who stormed the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. as patriots. Many of these rioters have been found guilty and have either served their sentences or are still in custody. All of them and the organisations they belong to have tirelessly worked for Trump’s re-election.

Sooner or later all of them can hope to be pardoned, including Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro. The last two were White House aides to Trump and were found guilty of contempt of Congress.

CASES AGAINST TRUMP

One by one all cases against Trump would be dropped or frozen until his term expires whether these cases are in the Supreme Court or have been brought against Trump by Democrat-leaning District Attorney of various states. No judge will pass an adverse judgement against a President-elect or President.

SUPPRESSION OF DISSENT

Trump and his supporters like Elon Musk, Steve Bannon etc. accused Democrats and mainstream media of suffocating free speech. Readers may recall social media outlets like Twitter (before it was taken over by Musk) and Facebook deleted some of Trump’s posts because they could not be supported by facts. Twitter even expelled Trump.

During his Presidency and also in the last four years while he has been campaigning to be re-elected, Trump has regularly identified and denigrated individuals, mainly journalists whose reports/opinion pieces he did not like. He made insulting remarks about them, and criticised their work/reports in his speeches and on social media without offering a scintilla of evidence. Some very respected journalists were barred from White House briefing during his first term.

In the last two years, he has called for every mainstream American TV news network to be punished. At least fifteen times he has demanded such media organisations as CBS, ABC, and NBC be stripped of their broadcasting licences.

Consequently, we can expect the voices critical of his policies or his behaviour would be repressed/harassed yet at the same time rabid right-wing voices would be allowed free reign in the name of free speech.

Trump has nominated Brendan Carr to head the Federal Communications Commission. Mr Carr has already criticised mainstream TV organizations for their supposed political bias. On his podcast, Steve Bannon threatened MSNBC journalists to expect retribution.

Scarborough and Brzezinski of MSNBC are reported to have paid a visit last week to President-elect Trump in Florida to “restart communications”. Probably to apologize for their past “misdeeds”, ie, for calling Trump “authoritarian”, even “fascist.”

We will also see various media outlets applying a degree of self-censorship (as media outlets do in India when it comes to reporting events regarding Modi or his administration or the BJP). For example, before the election, we saw The Washington Post, traditionally a newspaper with liberal leanings, refuse to endorse Kamala Harris. Perhaps, Jeff Bezos, who besides owning The Washington Post, is also executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, does not want his other business interests to be targetted by the Trump II Administration.

The repression of dissent will be far harsher this time around.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND HATE SPEECH

During his first term the Trump Administration quietly changed the definition of both domestic violence and sexual assault.

The Trump Administration only considered physical harm that constitutes a felony or misdemeanour to be domestic violence. In other words, such acts as psychological abuse, coercive control and manipulative behaviour were not considered to constituting domestic violence under his first term.

In 2020 (the last year of Trump I Presidency), according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 43.5 million women experienced “psychological aggression” from an intimate partner in the US and more than half of women murdered each year in the US are killed by an intimate partner.

In 2020 we saw an increase of 8.1% in domestic violence. Some of this increase could be because of the lockdown orders due to the Covid -19 pandemic.

Griffin Sims Edwards of the University of Alabama and Stephen Rushin of Loyola University published the results of their research on the effect of President Trump’s election on hate crimes. They found a strong correlation between Trump campaign events and incidents of prejudiced violence. FBI data (gathered during Trump I Presidency) also show that since Trump’s election there has been an anomalous spike in hate crimes concentrated in counties that supported Trump strongly. It was the second-largest rise in hate crimes in the 25 years for which data was available. Edwards and Rushin also found these hate crimes peaked in the fourth quarter (October-December) of 2016 and they continued at this new, higher rate throughout 2017.

This time racist, sexist and xenophobic rhetoric has been more intense than in 2015 and 2016. So we can expect, in the name of free speech, a greater proliferation of hate speech. Ditto for race-based attacks and vigilante attacks on illegal immigrants.

POLITICS OF REVENGE

The US electorate mandated Trump to pursue his politics of vengeance. Since his defeat in 2020, in almost all of his speeches, he has complained of a witch hunt, being persecuted by the Biden Justice Department and Democrat Party-leaning law officials and judges. He said, once re-elected, he wished to clean out the Justice Department of all officials who have harassed him.

People believed him. The fact that prosecutors refused to lay charges against Biden for taking secret documents home when he retired as Vice President on the grounds of Biden’s failing memory but were vigorously pursuing Trump for the same offence gave credence to Trump’s witch hunt narrative

Every time he appeared in court, Trump’s poll numbers went up and his supporters donated many millions of dollars for him to fight his legal cases and his re-election.

Trump’s enemies as he perceives them are not confined to the Federal Justice Department and legal professionals in various states. Many journalists, media outlets, Democratic party donors, people who were in his orbit but testified against him (eg, Michael Cohen who served as Trump’s personal attorney and often described himself as “Trump’s fixer”) and even elected politicians are on his list. Each of them should expect troublesome times ahead.

TARIFFS, INFLATION, UNEMPLOYMENT AND GDP

In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in July 2024, Trump boasted, “Under my plan, incomes will skyrocket, inflation will vanish completely, jobs will come roaring back, and the middle class will prosper like never, ever before.”

However, all market economists are of the view that Trump’s policies, if implemented, would have the opposite effect, ie, they lead to higher inflation which in turn would keep interest rates higher for longer, and would adversely impact GDP growth.

President-elect Trump has promised to (a) eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits and (b) reduce the corporate tax, and other expensive tax cuts. Trump wishes to make up for this loss of revenue and fund his tax cuts by (a) eliminating Government waste, (b) cutting social welfare programmes and imposing various degrees of tariffs on all imports (60% tariffs on Chinese imports and 10-20% tariffs on products from elsewhere in the world).

This would cause economic turmoil as affected countries are bound to retaliate.

According to research carried out by the Australian National University’s Professor Warrick McKibbin et.al. and published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), a highly respected economic think tank, US GDP will shrink between 2.8% and 9.7% by the end of his term in 2028 (See Figure 1 above).

This huge variation between 2.8% and 9.7% is explained by such factors as how many unauthorized immigrants Trump can deport and how fast; to what extent and in what ways other countries may respond to US tariffs; and to what extent Trump can make the Federal Reserve subservient to his wishes (ie, take away the Fed Reserve’s independence in setting monetary policy and benchmark interest rates).

As shown in Figure 2 below, McKibbin et.al. estimated that the combined effects of his policies would be that employment would briefly rise in the beginning (ie, more people will be in work). But it would begin to fall. By the end of 2028 (when his term expires), unemployment would be 3% – 9% higher 2024 level.

McKibbin et.al. also estimated the combined impact of his policies on inflation. As Figure 3 below shows that his policies would cause US inflation to spike. By 2026, it would be 4.1% to 7.4% above what it was 2024.

McKibbin et.al. also concluded that if Trump’s policies were analysed separately, these policies will have similarly generally negative effects but the magnitude of their impact would vary.

US DEBT

According to the research carried out by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a non-partisan group, Donald Trump’s campaign proposals would increase the US national debt by $7.5 trillion.

Parts of the Trump tax plan (implemented during his first term) are due to expire in 2025. Trump has vowed to extend the tax package in full. Further, he has also proposed to eliminate taxes on overtime, social security and tips income. As part of his policy to revive manufacturing in the US, he has also promised to reduce corporate tax payable by domestic manufacturers to 15%.

Trump said he can fund all these tax reduction packages by imposing widespread tariffs. However, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that the Trump II Administration would only raise $2.7 trillion.

The debt is the most serious economic issue facing the US. It will soon become a national security issue. Presently it stands at $35.6 trillion. According to the IMF, the ratio of US debt to its economy or GDP stands at about 120% that compares to 144% in Italy, 110% in Spain, 101% in the UK, 106% in Canada, 77% in China, 67% in Germany and 56% in Australia.

MASS DEPORTATIONS OF IMMIGRANTS

Because of their status, nobody knows how many illegal migrants are in the US. But the best estimate, according to Washington, DC-based Migration Policy Institute is that there are 11,047,000 illegal migrants.

Professor Masaki Kawashima of Nanzan University (Japan) concluded that there were about 40 million foreign-born people residing in the US in 2017 and of these 11.7 million were illegal migrants.

A large percentage of illegal migrants work in the agricultural industry (mostly Trump supporters) and the construction sector. So their mass deportation will cause severe disruption in these two segments of the US economy. In many cases, these illegal migrants are paid very low wages as these people cannot go to any authority to seek justice for underpayment. So the unit cost of production in these two industries is bound to go up and thus fuel inflation. Home affordability in the US is the worst since 1984. Trump’s policy of mass deportation will only exacerbate the situation.

Recently, some southern states have passed laws to ensure that hospitals or schools do not admit a patient/child unless he/she is legally in the US. This is a recipe for spreading infectious diseases.

EDUCATION

Trump has promised to abolish the Federal Department of Education. The latter came into existence in 1979 when during the Carter Administration, the Congress, with bipartisan support, broke the former Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into two cabinet-level agencies: the Education Department and the Department of Health and Human Services.

A year after in 1980 President Ronald Reagan campaigned to abolish the Education Department. Since then the GOP manifesto has often called for the Department’s abolition.

The main function of the Education Department is to administer federal funding appropriated by the Congress. Amongst other activities, it administers four programmes:

1. Title I (for K-12 school) programme. It is meant to help educate children from low-income families;
2. IDEA programme. Its purpose is to meet the needs of disabled children. Spending on above two programmes is about $28 billion;
3. It also distributes about $30 billion a year to low-income college students via the Pell grant programme (previously called Basic Educational Opportunity Grant); and
4. It manages the $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio.

The department cannot be abolished until identical legislation to that effect is passed by both houses. The Republican Party will hold 220 seats in the House starting January, while Democrats have 213 seats. Given the fact that the GOP is faction-ridden, President Trump may even have difficulty getting the Lower House pass the requisite legislation. In the Senate he will face even tougher task. The composition of the present Senate is: Republican 53 and Democrats 47. The bill would need to be passed by 60 votes (to overcome a filibuster), ie, at least seven Democrats would have to cross the floor and vote for the abolition of the Education Department. A most unlikely scenario.

Even if Trump succeeds in abolishing the Department, does not mean various programmes run/monitored by the Department will just lapse into nothingness. Trump will need to find other agencies to house those programmes.

But Trump-Vance assault on Education goes much further.

Vice President-elect Vance, a graduate of Ohio State University and Yale Law School, in his biography, “Hillbilly Elegy”, praised universities for opening up job opportunities for him. On January 2, 2017, Vance even wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times. In it he praised Barack Obama as his role model.

During his 2022 Senate campaign, Vance changed his mind on higher education. Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference titled “The Universities are the Enemy” Vance declared that universities were dedicated to “deceit and lies, not to the truth”.

The Trump-Vance duo and the MAGA movement they spearhead see the universities as “gatekeepers” of decent employment, exploiting people by offering four-year degree courses (which in their opinion are far too long). They see universities as dividing and screwing the American people by undermining the values of hard work and not giving due/enough credit to what they may have learnt at work. Thus they put non-graduates under a glass ceiling that restricts them from applying and getting jobs they are capable of.

One of the segments that comprises Trump’s voter base are people who did not go to a university. Trump proposes to hold higher education institutions accountable, reduce administrative costs, and introduce accelerated, affordable degree options.

HEALTH

Trump has nominated Robert Kennedy Jr. as his Secretary of Health and Human Services. He is an anti-vaccine activist. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he made numerous misleading/false statements against COVID-19 vaccines. Previously he had claimed, against scientific evidence, that vaccines caused autism.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called fluoridation of drinking water (achieved by adding Fluorosilicic acid to water supply) one of the top 10 public health achievements of the 20th century. Water Fluoridation effectively strengthens enamel and prevents tooth decay. Kennedy is against it.

If Kennedy’s appointment is approved by the Senate then I need not elaborate what it would mean for the health of American people and health researchers.

SOCIAL WELFARE

We are likely to severe cuts in this sector so that money can be found to fund Trump’s tax cuts.

LGBTQIA+

This is another segment of US society that can expect harder times during the Trump II Administration.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Trump has repeatedly called climate change a hoax. Under Trump II Presidency, we can again expect that the US to pull out of the Paris Agreement – the global accord which implements the objectives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. We can expect him to grant oil and gas exploration licences wherever gas and oil companies may wish to explore – in national parks, off-shore, on farmlands, etc.

ABORTION

Kamala Harris sought the support of women voters by saying that she was for reproductive freedom. And she lost.

But it was not all gloom and doom for the pro-choice movement. There were 10 states which carried out referenda regarding abortion laws. In seven of these states referenda were passed giving passage of some protective measures including in traditionally red states like Arizona, Missouri, and Montana.

Trump won five of the seven states where referenda were carried through. In other words, voters chose to protect reproductive rights though they voted for Trump. These statistics alone tell you how the policies propounded by Democrats failed to resonate amongst votes and how empty of substance Kamala Harris was.

But pro-choice women should expect tough times ahead, especially if Trump embraces Project 25, a 900-page policy “wish list” prepared by the Heritage Foundation, a very conservative think tank. Trump had distanced himself from this document and its policy prescription during the election campaign. But he might have done so for electoral reasons.

SUPREME COURT AND FEDERAL COURT JUDGES

During his first term, Trump by appointing young, very conservative and pro-life judges to the Supreme Court ensured that the latter would be sympathetic to the GOP’s political philosophy and their cultural wars.

The GOP will control both legislative houses at least for the next two years. It is very likely that Trump will use this time to persuade two of the older conservative judges, Judge Samuel Alito (he will be 75 in a few months) and Judge Clarence Thomas (nearly 77 years) to resign so that he can appoint much younger judges. This would mean a Supreme Court with a conservative slant for at least 20-25 years to come.

Just as in his first term, Trump will have an opportunity to appoint scores of federal court judges.

CONCLUSION

By any measure, Trump’s victory was a stunning political comeback in the history of democratic societies. As I explained in my first article, Democrats largely contributed to his victory in many ways by (a) not pardoning him they made him a martyr to the cause of his political base, (b) first letting Biden seek re-election then dumping him when the extent of his cognitive impairment became clear to the whole world; (c) choosing a weak replacement candidate who had no policies to address the concerns of the electorate and thought that all she needed to do was to shout anti-abortion slogans and then say the future of the Republic was stake and Presidency would be hers for taking. She ran a vacuous campaign.

The Trump victory was a thorough repudiation of the Biden-Harris four years in general and specifically of their economic and border policies by the electorate.

As one examines the list of Trump nominees, it is clear he has chosen people who are loyal to him and will be eager to devise ways so that his wishes/prejudices/whims can be implemented. None of his nominees has his/her own political base.

It is also very likely all of his nominees may not be able to work as a team. For example, Trump and his nominee for Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright have one thing in common: both have called Climate change a hoax. One wonders how Wright’s policies will affect Elon Musk’s fortune that relies on how many electric vehicle his company Tesla sells. Similarly, how Musk’s fortune will be affected if Trump goes ahead and imposes 60% tariffs on Tesla cars manufactured in China.

Trump did considerable damage to science with his handling or non-handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. If the appointments of Chris Wright and Robert Kennedy Jr. are confirmed by the Senate (or Trump makes recess appointments to by-pass the Senate), we can expect scientific research to be discredited without any evidence.

The Trump II Administration will change the US in a substantial measure domestically in other ways too. We will see the US pulling out of Paris Climate Accord and dismantling of of Biden’s renewable energy policies/subsidies as much and as fast as possible. We will see various states implement harsher anti-abortion measures. We will see a spike in race-based violence. We may also see police forces of various states feel emboldened to treat blacks and other non-whites more harshly.

While Trump accused Biden and Democrats of weaponising the Department of Justice. Under Trump II we will see the Justice Department become subservient to Trump’s prejudices.

Vidya S. Sharma advises clients on country and geopolitical risks and technology-based joint ventures. He has contributed many articles for such prestigious newspapers as: EU Reporter, The Canberra Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age (Melbourne), The Australian Financial Review, East Asia Forum, The Economic Times (India), The Business Standard (India), The Business Line (Chennai, India), The Hindustan Times (India), The Financial Express (India), The Daily Caller (US). He can be contacted at: [email protected].

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