Challenges galore for Trump

As he takes the presidential oath today, for the second time, Donald Trump has the potential to become one of the most influential holders of the world’s most powerful political office in recent history. He not only won the electoral college but also a majority of the votes cast nationwide in the election.

His Republican Party controls the Senate and the House of Representatives, though only with a thin margin. The conservative majority in the Supreme Court, in an important decision on presidential immunity, has made the office stronger. Trump’s conviction on felony charges has done no political damage to him, either domestically or abroad.

In the light of these factors and his unorthodox ways, the world waits with anticipation and apprehension, some fuelled by his comments since his victory in November, on how he will use his authority to address domestic and US foreign and security policy issues as well as the existential crises faced by humankind.

Trump made illegal immigration one of the leading issues of his campaign. Hence, it will be essential for his credibility to send some illegal immigrants out of the US to their home countries at the earliest. He will also increase his rhetoric against illegal immigration. But the fact is that despite Trump’s electoral posturing and the rhetoric which may come henceforth, the US economy needs both low-level workers and high-end technical professionals. It will, therefore, be compelled to eventually become pragmatic, but not before Trump causes turbulence domestically and externally on this issue.

In the long term, though, it is not immigration that is the major internal issue for the US but manufacturing and retaining a decisive global edge in the frontier areas of science and high technology. There is consensus in the US on remaining the leading country in science and digital technology innovation. That led the Biden administration, in its dying days, to announce “controls on advanced computing chips and certain closed artificial intelligence (AI) model weights, alongside new licence exceptions and updates to Data Centre Validated End User authorisation”.

The obvious intention is to deny China capacities in advanced AI innovation, though it’s capabilities in sophisticated tooling cannot be effectively curtailed. How will Trump handle this important aspect of US efforts to retain its primacy in science and technology, with China having become a ‘scientific power’ with growing technological competence? This will be Trump’s challenge for his entire term because of the great speed in the development of digital technology.

Trump’s announcement of wishing to acquire Greenland bears the mark of the first-term Trump making outrageous remarks, unconcerned with the canons of conventional diplomacy. His approach to the Ukraine war will attract great media attention worldwide.

However, the real geopolitical challenge before Trump lies in managing the continuing rise of China. That has been the main foreign and security policy issue for all US presidents since the closing years of the first decade of this century. By then, it had become clear that China’s rise had been far deeper and wider and rapid than US calculations. With Xi Jinping becoming China's undisputed leader and showing a firm determination to take on the US, Obama, Trump 1.0 and Biden have had to handle his ambitions. He is relentlessly pushing forward.

It is not clear if Trump will seek to bluntly thwart Xi's ambitions or try to reach an accommodation with him. Trump’s choice of Cabinet colleagues who have a hardline approach on China gives one indication, but his inviting Xi to his inauguration marks a softer touch. Naturally, the chance that Xi would have personally accepted the invitation instead of sending a representative was never there.

Indeed, the basic dynamics of the US-China Great Game will inevitably lead to even greater competition. It will need great statesmanship in both countries to ensure that this does not lead to conflict.

Trump wanted the Gaza war to end and issued dire threats to Hamas and, no doubt, behind-the-scene pressures on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israel-Hamas ceasefire will lead Trump to claim how effective he will be on all issues. It is too early to predict how the ceasefire will pan out. Hamas has not been finished.

Outgoing Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has noted: “Indeed, we assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost.” What can be assessed, though, in the context of the larger West Asia is that Trump’s implacable opposition to Iran will continue. What is not clear is how much of an investment he will make in addressing the basic Arab-Palestinian issue. The chances are that it will have a low priority for him.

Trump will continue with the Indo-Pacific approaches developed during his first term and taken further by Biden. He will seek to strengthen Quad. India is an essential component of the grouping. But that will not diminish the pressures he will put on India, especially on trade issues. But he will avoid raising human rights concerns with India. On the India-Pakistan front, he will remain indifferent, unless there are chances of a major conflict.

Where Trump will show little or no interest is in addressing the existential issue of our times: climate change. He is a climate sceptic who took the US out of the Paris pact. Extreme weather events, too, have not changed his outlook. This is particularly a major negative for the global fight against climate change at a time when world temperatures are breaking the 1.5°C threshold. Trump is unlikely to back off from his decision to allow drilling for hydrocarbons or seek to reduce its proportion in the energy mix.

However, whatever an incoming US President may consider to be his agenda, it has often been seen that he has had to amend it to address unforeseen challenges. George W Bush had to confront the tragedy of 9/11; he responded with a global war on terror. Barack Obama had to face the consequences of the global economic crisis of 2008, which began with the collapse of the Wall Street. Trump 1.0 faced the Covid pandemic and did poorly, while Biden had to face the Ukraine and Gaza wars. What unforeseen development(s) will Trump 2.0 have to deal with?