Not so very long ago, the job of imagining President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office was largely the
The wall
These might include increased funding for the US military and his proposal to strengthen the southern border with a continuous wall, even if getting the Mexicans to pay for it may have to wait for fraught bilateral negotiations that are harder to imagine bearing fruit.
Whether a more extreme immigration and foreign policy would ever clear a 60-vote hurdle in the Senate is another matter of course, but Democrats could quickly find the tables are turned on them over the question of executive action.
Faced with opposition from Republicans on Capitol Hill, Barack Obama has increasingly used his constitutional (and some would argue, unconstitutional) prerogatives as president to make progress on a host of contentious issues.
Some of these, a President Trump would be able to reverse just as quickly because they continue to rest only on executive action for legitimacy rather harder-to-reverse acts of legislation.
Much of Obama’s immigration plan, which is already under review by the supreme court, could not only be reversed on day one by Trump, but driven hard in the opposite direction.
This is particularly alarming for immigrant rights groups because Obama has leaned heavily on the concept of prosecutorial discretion to justify his plan to shield undocumented immigrants from the threat of deportation.
Since Trump has argued that virtually all the estimated 14 million people in this category should be subject to the full force of the law, it may prove legally hard to block mass deportations. Even if the practical, humanitarian and political impediments remain unthinkably high, the insecurity felt by millions already living in the legal shadows would be real the moment Trump wins.
Syria
President Trump is likely to be forced to proceed more slowly on other aspects of foreign policy. Despite his bluster about making America win again, Trump has been lukewarm on the question of unilateral intervention in the Middle East and shown sympathy toward Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who may be left alone to reorder Syria to his own liking.
Other promises to tackle the Islamic State and terrorism may prove similarly complicated by the introduction of reality into the conversation. A temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, for example, may prove impossible to sustain from legal challenge – even with a more Trump-friendly supreme court.
China
The centrepiece of Trump’s economic agenda, trade, is an area where change could be felt quickly or slowly depending on how much Obama achieves in his last year in office.
A massive trade deal with Asia is nearing completion and has already cleared the highest hurdles in Congress, but would instantly be in jeopardy if the ink is not dry in time.
Renegotiating trade terms with China – perhaps the the trademark of Trumpism – may be a longer run thing, with no guarantee that Beijing would agree or that Congress would ratify any fundamental rewriting of terms.
Perhaps the biggest changes would come simply through the signal that a Trump presidency sends the outside world about the future direction of US policy.
A collapse in the value of the dollar on the day after November’s election, for example, would give Trump the ability to claim (perhaps unconvincingly) that he was already doing his bit to tackle China’s currency manipulation.
Otherwise so much of what Trump stands for is about attitude rather than instant action. “Make America Great Again” is a slogan not a manifesto, and one that the candidate claims he can bring about through a series of savvy deals and business acumen rather than any single concrete policy.
The wheeling and dealing would no doubt begin on day one but may take more than 100 days for anyone, including Trump, to assess.
0 comments:
Post a Comment