the essential
After promising a rapid drop in prices, the president-elect is no longer at all as affirmative on the realization of this promise, as on others.
The inauguration ceremony is a little over a month away (January 20, 2025), but already, Donald Trump must face the difficulty of the task. The golden days of campaign promises are behind him. Fulfilling commitments made before the election is another matter.
The president-elect had notably repeated, during the long months of the presidential campaign, that he would reduce the prices of consumer products as soon as he came to power. “On my first day in office, we will quickly bring prices down and make America affordable again,” he declared at a meeting in North Carolina and on multiple other occasions. “Prices will fall!” he immediately assured. “You will see, they will fall very quickly.”
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Patatras, a few weeks later and while the presidential election was won largely due to the discontent of the population with the increase in prices and a context of generalized inflation, Donald Trump is today no longer at all as affirmative: “I would like to lower prices, but it is very difficult, once they have increased, to achieve it”, he admitted during an interview carried out in margin of the presentation of his personality prize of Did he himself believe in his campaign promise, or did he know that prices probably won't fall under his Presidency?
Same behavior regarding the Ukrainian file: the war had to end even before his arrival at the White House. Donald Trump thought he was capable of bringing together Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky around the same table. It now appears quite clear that the conflict will not end at the start of the year. Donald Trump no longer speaks on the subject.
“We must be ready to fight”
In his desire to increase customs duties, the future tenant of the White House faces the same difficulties. Did he imagine taxing products from Canada? “We will use all the weapons in our possession to defend our population,” replied Doug Ford, the Premier of the Province of Ontario. “We are going to cut off the energy supply that comes from here and goes to New York via Michigan and Wisconsin,” the Canadian official threatened. “We must be ready to fight.”
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Did Donald Trump expect so much resistance? Already, doubts are arising about his ability to implement the policies on which he was elected. During his first term (2016-2020), his very limited negotiating skills came up against the culture of compromise dear to America. He had been able to act on decisions of purely presidential prerogative (notably by decree) but had not been able to put in place any major bipartisan plan.
“Trump will pursue the policies he believes in”
Enough to reassure half of the population who did not vote for him and who are worried about the potentially catastrophic consequences of certain policies (deportation of migrants, destruction of the health insurance system, etc.)?
“Since his victory, many voices believe that Trump will not do everything he was elected to do,” notes Lincoln Mitchell, a political scientist and professor at Columbia University in New York. “I don’t think we should believe that. There is no reason to think so. He will try, as he showed during his first term, to pursue the policies he believes in. Perhaps, at the margin, he will be persuaded. not to realize his most brutal ideas and destructive, but it would be stupid for Democrats to base their strategy on the idea that he won't achieve what he said.” It remains to be seen whether he will be able to cope with the difficulties of the task.
