Trepidation: Is the World’s response to the coming of Trump justified?

America is not the supreme power it once was. Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” implicitly recognises that truth.

Donald J Trump: no President-elect since Lincoln (who had 7 states secede before he was sworn in) has had so much attention and influence at home and abroad. There the comparison ends, except on tariffs about which Lincoln was an enthusiast, imposing them at 46 per cent on imports.

Even before his inauguration next month all eyes, political, commercial, economic, are on Trump. The back end of 2024 in the USA saw something new. The country had two Presidents at the same time – Biden, in office but with power draining from him by the minute, and Trump, although not yet in the White House, setting the domestic political agenda, with both allies and adversaries worried and off balance.

Congress obeyed his order to cancel a Bill to fund the government, and outside the USA countries engaged on contingency planning in case his tariff threat will be for real. In Europe, where large Nato countries, like the UK, France and Italy, are skint and struggling with high levels of debt, they fear his demands for higher defence commitments, 3 or 5 % of GDP, cannot be met – with possible consequences for US continued commitment to their security.

It looks like we are entering the age of Trump. If it was all about Trump before he enters the oval office, then surely it will be even more all about Trump once he sits there and pulls the levers of power in the hands of a US President. But there are caveats. He is a one-term President, and the supreme governing instrument of the United States isn’t the presidency, but the constitution with its division of powers. Also, America is not the supreme power it once was. Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” implicitly recognises that truth.

Trump II is of course a much smarter one than Trump I. In the Trump I phase, 2017-2021, he lacked political skills, had no experience of running a government as distinct from a personal business. As a genuine Washington outsider, he had no Trump group from which to make key appointments in the great offices of state, and from which he could staff the White House. Far from having a supporting cabinet and staff, he was surrounded by people who came to despise him. His first Secretary of State, Tilson, let it be known he regarded Trump as a moron. John Bolton and others who served him and were sacked or resigned hold him in contempt and openly declare him a danger to America.

Trump II is different. In the four years since his defeat in 2020 he has obviously learnt the lessons of his first term. This time his election campaign was better organised and although, typically, he went roaring off script at his rallies there was a script: about policies that were based on research and debate within his inner circle, and from outside advisers on the Right. Post-election research reveals that whoever ran his social media was focused on what mattered to the electorate he was aiming at. And, of course, since the election, unlike 2016, he has had a pool of Trump loyalists to draw from for his cabinet, and other choices from among supporters for jobs in his coming administration, especially his chief of staff - the most important of all the jobs surrounding a President.

The Trump II presidency, with Trumpers in charge of the federal agencies, and with a chief of staff noted for her competence and ability to manage the man, will be a more coherent one than last time, and more effective in implementing the policies he ran on. Commentators, and many others, have been expressing an unusual concern: they fear, unlike most other politicians, he will actually deliver on his campaign promises.

Of course, the essence of Trump has not changed. That big ego remains highly sensitive to criticism and flattery. He can lurch in any direction on policy or executive action, because he has no political compass to guide him.

Trump will be the great disruptor in the world. He is likely to crash into the Middle East backing every move Netanyahu makes against the Palestinians, and maybe even order an outright attack on Iran’s nuclear capability. Or send US Special forces into Mexico to assassinate the gang leaders in that country. How he handles Zelensky and Putin in ending the Ukraine-Russia war as promised is a mystery awaiting revelation.

Trump has been throwing out threats to allies and adversaries, but that is in a world where America is facing opposition from other powers who are in the ascendancy, and are not without weight in the world economy.

The US share of global GDP in 2023-245 was 15.56 per cent, calculated to fall to 14.72 per cent, whereas BRICs share, with its 13 members, was 42.45 per cent. Then you have to factor in the potential development of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with its 500 million population market (which the USA is not a member) accounting now for 10.06 per cent of global GDP, but 6.5 per cent of GDP growth. These are some among many changed economic and geopolitical factors making it impossible for anyone power to hold total sway over others.

Those GDP figures show the shift of economic power from America to the rest of the world, but perhaps the most startling illustration is in merchant sea power with which world trade is conducted. In the years after 1945 the USA controlled more than half the world oceangoing merchant vessels and was the undisputed naval sea power. Today China has a larger naval fleet, and possesses 5,500 oceangoing merchant vessels while America has only 80. For US admirals contemplating a conflict with China in the Pacific, that imbalance of a supply chain potential is a logistical nightmare.

A one-Term Presidency Has In-Built Limits

Foreign policy and the use of US armed forces is in the hands of a President, and Trump can exercise his powers in those areas throughout his four -year term, with relatively little restraint. But there is always a relationship between how strong a President is domestically and the freedom he has in international relations. A low home rating and opponents are more able to challenge him.

It is on that home ground the limitations of Trump’s one-term can kick in. If the Republicans lose control of either the House or Senate in the mid-term elections in two years, he will be a lame duck, unable to get any of his legislation through. The present Republican majority in the House of Representatives is wafer thin, and 20 Republican Senators are up for re-election in 2026. So, it is in the coming two years, when there is a Republican majority in both Houses of Congress, that Trump has to accomplish the main part of his domestic programme.

He will be able to let rip oil and gas production and so reduce energy prices with benefit to domestic economic growth. But if he does start imposing his tariff policy on imports, he will not have universal support in Congress. A number of Republican House and Senate members are free traders, and have already described his policy as a tax on American consumers; and there are great swathes of US manufacturers, a powerful lobbying force, who rely upon a foreign base supply chain who will suffer from tariffs.

Then there are his promises of tax cuts, which will have to be paid for by the Treasury issuing more bonds (debt) thus raising the national debt beyond the present $36 trillion mark. That will require a vote on a Bill by Congress. As last Friday’s fight over the House Speakership showed, a number of fiscal conservative House Republicans will not vote for that, leaving the Speaker and the President reliant on Democrat votes to get the measure into law – with the Democrats sure to demand concessions on other matters from Trump. Power in the USA does not flow just one-way from the White House to

Congress

Members of the House and Senate do of course sometimes bend to the demands of a President, but there are always limits to how far they will kneel. While obeying Trump to reject the first Bill to fund the government, they refused to obey him on the second funding Bill when they ignored his demand to increase the cap level on the national debt above the present £36 trillion. When Musk intervened and threatened House members with deselection in two years if they did not again obey Trump, they asked pointedly who elected him.

Every member of Congress, a body filled with hard-schooled political professionals, is aware of the limitations of a one-term President. The Senators elected along with Trump in 2024 will still be in office in their six-year term when he is gone. Those to be elected in 2026 will only have to deal with him in his fag-end two years. In the power equation that governs US federal politics, those time scales tilt the balance to Congress in its relations with a one-term President.

Another crucial factor in a one-term presidency is that when the first two-year period is over, everyone else is thinking and planning for the Republican succession, with the sitting president becoming less and less relevant as the contestants search for positions that will make them different from him. And one of those will be J D Vance the vice-president who, being elected, is someone Trump cannot fire. Watch that space.

But it is a full four years on foreign policy

As noted earlier, a President’s foreign policy freedom can be restrained by his domestic standing, but as even the weakening Biden administration showed right up until its end, the occupant of the White House has considerable power to exercise in the field of international affairs.

One of Trump’s declared major policy differences from all previous Presidents, which shows that he has been thinking better than last time, is how to deal economic blows against adversaries. His aim is to maintain the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency, used for over 80 per cent of world trade. He sees the dollar system, and tariffs, as much more effective in imposing US punishment than sanctions. Sanctions produce sanction-busters as has proved to be the case with Russia. The dollar system and its supporting world-wide financial infrastructure on the other hand, controlled by the US Treasury, can freeze any country out of it and make its trading life very difficult. Trump has threatened the BRICS group that he will act against them with tariffs if they dare start to create an alternative to the dollar. In a sense that is a threat that is a non-threat, as the BRICS countries are nowhere near able to create an alternative reserve currency. But it carries a warning to everyone opposed to the USA, that its trading freedom comes with an American licence, that can be withdrawn.

The EU has been told that it must buy more US oil and gas (from the increased production he will promote) otherwise the tariff wall will rise. If the EU buckles, what then for its climate policy? If he includes the UK in that threat Ed Miliband will have a nervous breakdown. I would like to be the fly on the wall as Lord Mandelson explains to Trump that Starmer’s policy of getting closer to the EU doesn’t really mean we are as one with them.

It isn’t just the big economies that could find themselves in trouble if he is serious about imposing tariffs to record highs in the next two years. Vietnam is an example of a developing country that would be badly hit. With some punitive tariffs already applied to China, and more anticipated, Chinese and others have been investing in Vietnam as a safer route, a back door, for exports to the United States. Vietnam now provides a third of sports shoes, half of wooden beds and dining tables, and a quarter of the solar cells imported by America. Vietnam has also been the new base for higher valued products. Samsung has invested $22bn, and billion-dollar factories are assembling smart-phones and semiconductors, all with the US market as the target. Vietnam now exports nine times more than it imports from the US. Trump has recently been describing Vietnam as the worst “abuser” of the US on trade.

Trump’s policy in dealing with other countries and institutions like the United Nations will, more explicitly than any other president since 1945, be undisguised, unashamed, placing American interests first and last. Ever since George Washington warned against getting involved in foreign conflicts, there has been a deep current of isolationism in the United States, of which Trump and those who support him are simply the latest potent example. The world is on for a rocky road. But he will only be president for four years.

Then there is Musk

Before and during a presidential election campaign in America, money is one of the great sources of power. But after an election the only source of presidential power lies with the winner, and the switch can be flicked off on anyone else in an instant. Musk is a very rich man. He is a clever man. He is not a politician, and it is evident that he is now steeped in the error of believing that his present power comes from him and not Trump alone.

No one with an ounce of political ability would have crossed the red line that Musk did when he threatened Republican House members with de-selection unless they obeyed him and Trump. Enemies were made instantly. Enemies who occupy another source of power, elected power, which represents local and state interests that are likely to clash with Musk when he sets out to cut federal programmes, many of which will be important and beneficial to local businesses and constituents. Enemies that Trump as President will have to rely upon to get his promises into law. I wouldn’t be surprised if “Musk’s head” will be one of the asking prices for their support.

The so-called Department that Musk is to head in attacking the US bureaucracy has no statutory basis as yet. If it continues without a statutory basis then it will not have the power to instruct cuts in what are law-based departments. Indeed, if it is not really a government department, how will it get civil servants to comply with its demands for information? If Trump, and Musk, want it to be a statutory department, a real part of the government, then that will require a Bill to pass Congress, and Musk to be approved by the Senate among whom will be some of his new enemies and Democrats out for his blood.

Musk is now engaged in the same mistake other extremely rich men have made before him of believing he is a power beyond the reach of others, even bigger than the President. I look forward to the fall, and fall-out.