Donald Trump has defeated Kamala Harris in the US presidential election, sealing an improbable comeback that is expected to pitch American democracy, US alliances and global markets into an era of upheaval.
Trump’s resounding victory ends a volatile White House race that saw the billionaire Republican face two assassination attempts, a criminal conviction and the eleventh-hour change of his Democratic opponent after President Joe Biden abandoned his re-election bid.
The president-elect gained ground on the Democrats in 48 of the 50 states in the union, sweeping past Harris in the “blue wall” of Midwestern states she had thought could deliver her the White House. He was also on track to win the popular vote — something no Republican has done since George W Bush in 2004.
Victory in the state of Wisconsin gave Trump the majority in the electoral college he required to return to the presidency, according to the Associated Press.
“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” Trump said in a victory speech in his Mar-a-Lago resort, predicting a “golden age” for the US under his new administration.
Republicans also took control of the US Senate and looked set to retain a majority in the House of Representatives, with nearly 60 races in the lower chamber yet to be called. Control of the US Congress would give Trump greater freedom to pursue a radical rightwing agenda in the world’s largest economy.
In one of the earliest foreign reactions, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed what he described as “history’s greatest comeback” and a “huge victory” in a post on X.
The US dollar surged, putting it on course for its biggest daily gain since the 2016 Brexit referendum, as investors bet that Trump’s economic policies would boost economic growth and inflation.
The currency climbed 1.9 per cent against a basket of rivals, while Treasury yields shot higher on expectations of heavy borrowing by a second Trump administration.
Wall Street stocks were also poised for big gains at Wednesday’s open, with S&P 500 futures up 2.3 per cent.
At 78, Trump will in January be the oldest US president to be sworn into office. His running mate, 40-year-old Ohio senator JD Vance, will be one of the country’s youngest ever vice-presidents.
Trump will return to the White House four years after his first tumultuous term ended with his attempt to overturn the results of an election he lost to Biden and the assault on the US Capitol by his supporters.
He will lead a sharply divided country, but voters showed they were willing to overlook his past behaviour and incendiary campaign, instead punishing Harris for the high inflation, global conflicts and a significant rise in immigration that Republicans blamed on Biden’s policies.
The Democratic president, who entered office promising to “restore the soul” of a divided nation, ends his term deeply unpopular, and will hand leadership of the country to a man he repeatedly claimed posed a grave threat to its democracy.
Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, hailed Trump’s victory, saying the party was “ready and prepared to immediately act on Donald Trump’s America First agenda”.
Trump, the world’s pre-eminent populist politician, now returns to the pinnacle of global power and is expected to proceed with big policy shifts that will reverberate domestically and internationally.
At home, he has vowed to enact sweeping tax cuts for individuals and companies, start mass detentions and deportations of undocumented immigrants and punish his many political opponents.
Senior officials from Trump’s first administration have repeatedly warned of his authoritarian tendencies and erratic leadership, with John Kelly, his former chief of staff at the White House, saying he met the “general definition of fascist”.
Abroad, the US’s trading partners and allies can expect Trump to impose steep tariffs on a much broader scale than in his first term, which could shock the global economy and strain ties with allied governments in Europe, Asia and Latin America.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron posted that he was “ready to work” with Trump, while UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer congratulated the president-elect on his “historic victory”.
In the Middle East, Trump has promised to take a tougher stance towards Iran than Biden and resolve the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, although he has not detailed how.
Trump is expected to put heavy pressure on Ukraine to reach a settlement with Russia over Moscow’s invasion of the country.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sent his congratulations to Trump on Wednesday morning, posting on X that the president-elect’s “‘peace through strength’ approach in global affairs [is] exactly the principle that can practically bring just peace in Ukraine closer”.
Trump’s return to the White House eight years after his shock victory over Hillary Clinton could also serve as a personal legal victory for the former president, who was facing possible prison time stemming from four separate criminal cases.
Earlier this year, Trump became the first former US president to be convicted of a crime when a New York jury found him guilty of almost three dozen charges in a “hush money” case involving payments made to a porn actor.
Trump also faces charges in two separate federal cases involving his handling of classified documents and his effort to overturn the 2020 election. As president, Trump will be able to lean on the Department of Justice to drop the federal cases.
Compared with his first term in office, Trump will be in a position to govern with a far more compliant Republican party on Capitol Hill. Many of his internal sceptics representing the traditional Republican establishment have either lost their re-election bids or embraced his leadership of the party.
Additional reporting by Tommy Stubbington
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