Trump Returns America To A Pre-War Era Of Oppression And Inequality

President Trump’s inauguration this Monday and the Gaza ceasefire the day before mark the major events of the week under review.

The trump of doom, he might not quite be, but the inauguration of US president Donald Trump’s second term at the head of the world’s most powerful nation and largest economy does send off alarm bells around the world, including for India.

And, surprise, it is not tariffs that cause the biggest worry, at least, not so far. After having made wild threats of tariffs up to 60% on Chinese imports, during the presidential campaign, Trump now says that he will levy an import duty of 10% on Chinese goods, not because these cheap imports are killing American jobs but because China is shipping fentanyl, or its precursor chemicals, to Mexico and Canada, from where the drug makes its way into the US.

A Volley Of Threats

Trump has threatened to levy an import duty of 25% on goods from Mexico and Canada. But the threat contains the underlying message that it is a bargaining chip, and could disappear if Canada and Mexico oblige on illegal immigration and drug smuggling.

Rather than tariffs, it is Trump’s assault on the normative order that is a cause for concern. He has abandoned the US role as anchor of a global order in which rules of conduct, internationally approved, inform how one nation engages with another, whether in trade or in security-related matters. Instead, he is taking the US back to a pre-World War regime, in which the mighty oppress the weak, and military capability alone determines the limits of civility in interactions among nations.

He has threatened to take over the Panama Canal from Panama, and annex Greenland. He has refused to rule out the use of force in either enterprise, both of which he justifies on grounds of US national security. He celebrates a return to wielding national power to expand territory, hailing William McKinley, who, as senator, framed the Tariff Act of 1890, which raised import tariffs to almost 50%, and, as president, annexed the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico, after defeating Spain, and in a nationalist fervour, annexed Hawaii as well.

Presidency Paramount

If might can be wielded to annex territory for reinforcing national security, who can blame Russia for securing its land access to Sevastopol, Crimea, where it has its warm-water naval base? The road from Moscow or St Petersburg to Crimea runs through eastern Ukraine, and if Ukraine joins NATO, NATO would control Russia’s access to its naval base. And if God can directly intervene in the affairs of a nation to protect one person destined to make the nation great again, as Trump claimed, referring to his escape from an assassin’s bullet, can Bible-thumping believers let mere justice and international law come in the way of Israel adding to the promised land Judaea and Samara, Biblical names for the West Bank?

If the territorial integrity of nations is conditional on the deemed national security interests of big powers, what is the relevance of a body such as the United Nations? If tariffs can be arbitrarily levied at varying rates on different countries, dispensing with the norm of Most Favoured Nation, meaning that a country is obliged to impose uniform levies on imports from all nations, subject only to concessional rates for less developed countries, what is the fate of the World Trade Organisation?

It is not just in international relations that Trump seeks to change norms. He seeks to make the presidency paramount, rather than accept that it is coequal to Congress. He has violated the law passed by Congress to ban TikTok, the Chinese video-playing app, with effect from January 19, unless it was sold to US owners by that deadline. He has given the app more time to be sold, ignoring the law of the land, reports Wall Street Journal.

He has issued an executive order to modify the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which grants citizenship to anyone born on US soil. Citizenship on the basis of being born on the soil is called jus soli. Trump has sought to introduce elements of jus sanguini or right of blood, to birthright citizenship. His executive order rules out automatic citizenship to those born to parents who are illegally present in the US, as well as to those born to an illegally present father and a mother whose presence is legal only temporarily, for example, on a work or student visa. Legal presence calls for either citizenship or permanent residency.

This would deny automatic citizenship to children born in the US to Indian parents while they are in the US on H1B visas or spouse visas.

As many as 22 of 50 US states are challenging the legality of this executive order that seeks to amend not any law but the Constitution itself.

Trump has taken the US out of the World Health Organisation and the Paris Accord on climate change. He has railed against renewable energy, claiming climate change to be a hoax. He has declared a national energy emergency, to enable further production of oil and gas. The US already is the world’s largest producer of oil. Trump is probably betting that most Americans do not know that, and would credit him for securing that distinction when the news gets around.

This, too, matters normatively. It would encourage other ignoramuses who gain political power elsewhere in the world to renege on climate action.

Credit For Gaza Ceasefire?

Should Trump get the credit for the Gaza ceasefire?

Trump had put pressure on Israel and the Hamas by threatening that all hell would break lose if a ceasefire deal was not in place before he took office. And the deal took hold one day before Trump’s inauguration. The Biden administration allowed Trump’s envoy-designate to work with its own people on working out the details of the ceasefire.

Biden has been urging this ceasefire for months. What prevented him from applying real pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who dragged his feet on the ceasefire because his right-wing allies opposed it, was the ongoing US elections. It would have been political suicide for either contestant in the US presidential elections to withhold arms supplies to Israel in the middle of a war. Netanyahu played hardball, made Biden look like the dog whose tail wagged him, and contributed to the Democrats’ defeat in the presidential election.

With the election out of the way, the US president is relatively free to take action that would make it clear to uppity Israeli leaders that the US wish is Israel’s command. The post-election president happens to be Trump, but were it Harris, the pressure on Netanyahu to cease hostilities would not have been any less.

Now, of course, attention should shift to Trump’s promise to end the Ukraine war in a jiffy. Space-time bends, provided the gravitational force acting on it is large enough. The Trumpian mass is stretching a jiffy to three months, for the time being. How long it would stretch depends on how long Ukraine can fight, once US aid stops flowing, as it is likely to, with Trump in charge, and isolationist Republicans in majority in both Houses of Congress.