While retaining the ideological bases of his first term, Donald Trump has become professionalized, diversified and radicalized.
The surprise election of Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton in 2016 had the effect of shock waves. Demonstrations by opponents quickly multiplied in the United States, as did press articles contesting the legitimacy of a president elected by a narrow margin without winning the popular vote, with the added bonus of suspicions of Russian interference. Silicon Valley elites, now at least as powerful as oil tycoons and captains of industry, were against him, and the American president was treated with disdain by most international leaders, with the notable exception of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Eight years later, the contrast could not be more striking.
From Mark Zuckerberg to Jeff Bezos, including Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook, the tech barons rushed to pay their respects to the new president, and contribute to his inauguration ceremony. From Musk to David Sacks, via Marc Andreessen, several figures from Silicon Valley have campaigned in his favor. Even Bill Gates, although hardly suspected of Trumpist sympathies, recently said he was “impressed” by the president. The British publication The Economist, which has never hidden its disenchantment with Trump, headlines that America could enter a “new golden age” with him.
Among the American population, Trump is certainly still far from unanimous: his popularity rating remains slightly below 50%, a threshold that it never exceeded during his first term. But among his detractors, the contrast compared to 2017 is also striking. It is no longer combativeness and rebellion that are expressed, but rather resignation and passivity. In Washington, a city with a very Democratic majority, an anti-Trump demonstration which hoped to bring together 500,000 people barely gathered 5,000. “The population clearly came out in his favor, his legitimacy is incontestable”, confides a young New Yorker who participated in several anti-Trump protests during his first term and did nothing of the sort this time. “There is a lot of passivity, even among the most left-wing activists, everyone is somewhat discouraged,” confides a man involved in an association helping undocumented immigrants in Brooklyn.
And where he was once a pariah on the international scene, Trump now has several allies, from Argentina’s Javier Milei to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The planned victory of Pierre Poilievre in the Canadian election, which must take place this year, could give him one more ally on the other side of the border.
Trump drives home the point on tariffs and immigration
Better accepted by the public, Trump has not watered down his bourbon. Quite the contrary. Better prepared than during his surprise victory in 2016, the president also had eight years to promote the rise within the Republican Party of elected officials who share his populist line, breaking on certain points (notably the defense of free trade and immigration) with the party orthodoxy since the Reagan presidency.
Trump had certainly acted to restrict illegal immigration during his first term, including a very controversial measure that resulted in the separation of families who entered illegally from the Mexican border. But his first actions demonstrate a desire to act much more firmly this time, in line with his campaign promise to carry out the largest wave of expulsions in the country’s history. He thus declared a state of emergency on the border with Mexico, ordering the American army to ensure surveillance; called into question the rights of soil for children born to parents who entered the United States illegally (a decision which will undoubtedly have to be validated by the Supreme Court); and signed a moratorium on the reception of refugees.
-On the implementation of customs tariffs, Trump also wants to move up a gear. Although he had not yet signed anything at the time of writing these lines, he did however promise customs duties of 25% on goods imported from Mexico and Canada from February 1, reaffirming his promise to put in place 100% tariffs on the BRICs, and also promised to tax products coming from the European Union. It is currently unknown whether the president really intends to carry out his threats or whether he intends to use carrots and sticks to obtain more favorable trade agreements.
The ghost of William McKinley
Those who may have believed in Trump’s pacifist and isolationist speech during the campaign were quickly disabused. The president seems well on his way to resuming the aggressive line of his first term, which led, for example, to the assassination of an Iranian general and the abandonment of the nuclear agreement with this country; bombings on Syria; as well as the unprecedented delivery of lethal weapons to Ukraine and the unilateral abandonment of nuclear non-proliferation treaties signed with Russia. Donald Trump has thus expressed his desire to buy Greenland, or even to annex it by force in the event that the peaceful option is not on the table. He also wants to reestablish United States control over the Panama Canal, transferred to the country under Jimmy Carter, and has joked several times about Canada joining the United States. A symbolic measure, but one that says a lot: he also signed a decree renaming the Gulf of Mexico “Gulf of America”.
During his inauguration speech, Trump repeatedly made references to William McKinley, a 19th-century Republican president who, like him, had combined protectionism and expansionism (he had prepared the creation of the Panama Canal and acquired the Hawaiian Islands ). Another executive order signed by Trump had the effect of renaming the highest American peak, located in Alaska, Mount McKinley: an executive order from Obama had renamed it Mount Denali, its name in the language of a native Alaskan people .
The honeymoon between Trump and tech comes to fruition
In certain aspects, this new Trump presidency also promises to be a break with the previous one. The main change lies in the much more technophile aspect of the Trump 2.0 administration, the president having added a techno-libertarian string to his bow, after the rallying of a part of the Silicon Valley elites to his agenda and his rapprochement with Elon Musk. He thus signed the repeal of a decree from Joe Biden establishing safeguards for the development of AI, for example with the obligation for developers to carry out security tests and share their data with the government when working on particularly powerful models. The sign that Trump intends to promote a free and deregulated vision of AI, in line with what his friend Elon Musk wants.
The president also signed the implementation of a gargantuan $500 billion investment plan in artificial intelligence, the Stargate project, which mainly aims to build data centers for AI in the United States. Partners include OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle. The investment plan should create 100,000 jobs in the United States, according to Donald Trump. Interestingly, in this regard, the president has visibly learned from his predecessor, Joe Biden. If, during his first term, Trump had made big promises regarding reindustrialization in the United States, he had not applied any proactive measures in this direction, relying solely on customs tariffs, with a more than mixed result . Joe Biden, conversely, has increased giant investment programs, such as the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips Act, this time with a clear effect. If he likes to take potshots at his predecessor, Trump has visibly benefited from his experience on this point.
As shown by the unraveling of the decrees signed by his predecessors, which Donald Trump indulged in as soon as he took power, the establishment of lasting changes, however, requires the passage of laws by Congress, which cannot be repealed as easily by a president of the other side. It is on this point that the first big test for Donald Trump will come, while his majority is divided between factions with often contradictory interests, and his populist agenda, while it flatters part of his base, is not always to the taste of Republican elected officials holding a more traditional line, who remain numerous within the party. Obtaining the progress he expects will require the president to demonstrate diplomacy and an ability to find compromises in this context.
