Anxiety as the World Awaits Donald Trump, America’s 47th President.

There’s anxiety in the air as the rest of the world awaits President Donald Trump’s comeback as the 47th American President, who will be inaugurated on January 20, 2025.

President-elect Donald Trump has laid out an ambitious agenda that he promised would go into effect on Jan. 20, the day he would be sworn into office for his second term. There are fears among the bureaucrats that he may prune down the size of the government. There are fears among the immigrants of his massive deportation. There are fears that he may be out on a revenge mission. There is shivering internationally as Trump has promised to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza within his first few months in office.

During his first time at the Oval Office, Donald Trump issued several executive orders to carry out his policies, not wanting to wait for Congress to pass proper laws. He signed 220 executive orders during his tenure, two of which were signed on his first day in office. His first two weeks in office were chaotic with executive orders. Executive orders don’t have the same efficacy as Acts of Congress.

Traditionally, the transition period between one administration and another, makes the incumbent a lame duck. The newly elected President-elect, basking in the euphoria of his victory makes utterances to send signals about the incoming administration and distract the outgoing administration. However, it takes months to complete proper legislation to bring into effect some of the new policy proposals of the new government.

Some of the topics that dominated Trump’s campaigns and would develop into legislation include banning federal funding of gender-affirming health care through different government programmes. “On day one, I will revoke Joe Biden’s cruel policies on gender-affirming care — ridiculous. I will sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programmes that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age,” Trump said in a video posted to social media.

“I will then ask Congress to permanently stop federal taxpayer dollars from being used to promote or pay for these procedures and pass a law prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states.” Trump also said he would support allowing “victims to sue doctors” who have performed transgender procedures on children. He will also ask Congress to pass a bill that mandates that the only genders the federal government will recognize are those assigned at birth.

Immigration and mass deportation of migrants

The biggest anxiety is among immigrants. On the campaign trail, Trump promised that he would begin the “largest deportation operation in American history.” That means rounding up, housing, and removing up to 20 million people, many of them migrants who are in the country illegally. Trump’s aides have confirmed this intention, but Texas Governor Greg Abbot has warned: “This task is a mountain to climb. It’s going to take Trump’s time.”

Trump plans to reinstate the border policies he enacted during his first term, which ended under Biden. It was one of the reasons the far-right Americans voted for him. They believe the trouble with the American economy was partly caused by the immigrants. “All of the secure border policies that we had in place with President Trump, he can simply flip the switch and put those back in place just like they were before. They didn’t need an act of Congress,” one of Trump’s senior campaign advisers Jason Miller told a major news network in the US.

Trump hopes to deport undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. It was one of his campaign issues. “They’ll be targeted arrests,” Tom Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a candidate to lead Trump’s deportation effort, told CNN. “We’ll know who we’re going to arrest, where we’re most likely to find them based on numerous, you know, investigative processes.”

Trump has also indicated that he is prepared to use the National Guard and perhaps even the U.S. military to carry out the massive deportation effort. During the campaign, JD Vance, now Vice President-elect, said that the new Trump administration would look to deport roughly 1 million annually. According to an estimate by the American Immigration Council, that could cost about $88 billion each year. That could have a telling effect on the economy. And, in four years of his administration, he may not be able to achieve much in that direction.

Trump intends to use high import tariffs as a bargaining chip with the Mexican government on the immigration issue. The same could also be applied to force other countries to change their policies towards the US. “I think that tariffs need to be used to get counterparties back to the table, especially China, which is not living up to all of the agreements they made,” Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary in Trump’s first term warned.

Where Trump will slap new tariffs, and how extensive those will be, remains to be seen, but in the last days of the campaign, he threatened Mexico with tariffs unless it agreed to curb the flow of migrants into the U.S. or halt shipments of cars from China. “I’m going to inform her, (Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum) on day one or sooner, that if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I am going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send into the United States of America,” Trump said. Monday at a rally in North Carolina.

US Foreign Policy and the Wars

At a town hall event in May, Trump said he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. It is highly speculated that one of Trump’s “day one” priorities would be “bringing Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table to end this war.”
Both Trump and Vance have been harsh critics of the Biden administration’s funding for Ukraine to help it defend itself following Russia’s invasion. The Biden White House is reportedly planning to rush more than $6 billion in allocated military aid to Kyiv before Trump’s return to power in January. Once that happens, most experts believe that Trump will cut off further U.S. military aid for Ukraine.

Trump has stated that he believes Ukraine should have been prepared to have “given up” more in negotiations with Russia to avert a war, claiming that if he were president, Russian President Vladimir Putin would never have invaded in the first place. Whether Trump can quickly negotiate peace in Ukraine, and what those terms may include, it’s clear that U.S. policy on the war will abruptly change on Jan. 20.

Similarly, Trump is poised to quickly impose new US sanctions on Iran to influence its funding of Hezbollah and ambitions of producing nuclear weapons.

Culled from Nigeria Democratic Report (NDR)