Donald Trump uses his executive powers to fulfil his populist agenda, matching his combative campaign trail rhetoric with action. Investors have been so far enthusiastic about the new President’s pro-business plans, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average above the 20,000 mark on Wednesday for the first time, even though Mr Trump has yet to explain how he would fund his planned 1 trillion dollars infrastructure agenda.
On his first full weekday in office, Mr Trump formally abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an ambitious 12-nation trade agreement that was part of Barack Obama’s so-called pivot to Asia. By rejecting the TPP, which would cover about 40 per cent of the world’s economy, Mr Trump signalled that he would take more aggressive stance on trade, discarding Republican orthodoxy that free trade is good for the US and global economies. His tough stance on the issue resonates with voters in industrial states, which catapulted him to the White House.
Mr Trump is likely to move quickly to formally announce plans to renegotiate the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has led to deeper commercial integration between Canada, the US and Mexico, but which is blamed by the US’s 45th President for the loss of manufacturing jobs and lower wages for American workers. Canada and Mexico together are the US’s biggest export markets; nearly 2 million US jobs depend on exports to Mexico. The Mexican economy, however, has most to lose from NAFTA renegotiation talks, given that the US buys nearly 80 per cent of Mexico’s exports.
On Tuesday, Mr Trump signed an executive order to allow the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and Dakota Access pipeline. He also demanded to use US steel to make pipes. The Keystone XL would connect producers of heavy crude in Alberta, Canada, and US refineries in the Gulf of Mexico and carry 800,000 barrels of oil a day. The Dakota Access pipeline would carry oil from North Dakota’s Bakken area to Illinois. These are environmentally sensitive projects, but offer a boost to the US oil industry, which has been hit by a prolonged period of low oil prices. Mr Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline before climate change talks in Paris in 2015. The Dakota Access pipeline was 90 per cent complete when it was stopped in late 2016 after heated protests over fears that it would contaminate Native American land. Mr Trump’s announcement was widely expected, given that he has dismissed climate change as a hoax perpetrated by China.
The US President ordered an immediate construction of the border wall with Mexico on Wednesday and called for the hiring of additional border patrol agents. He says that the wall is needed to halt the illegal flow of immigrants and drugs into the US. Mexican authorities, on the other hand, have long complained about the flow of guns that enter the country from the north. A diplomatic tension over who would pay for the wall, which is estimated to cost as much as 20 billion dollars, forced Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s President, to cancel a planned meeting with Mr Trump in Washington. The two Presidents spoke by phone on Friday. A joint statement, which said that Mr Peña Nieto and Mr Trump had a constructive and productive conversation, sent the Mexican peso 1.6 per cent higher against the US dollar.
The Trump administration initially appeared to embrace a proposal that would impose a 20 per cent tax on all imported goods as part of a sweeping overhaul of the tax code being pushed by Republican leaders in Congress (later on, it said that a border tax was just one possible option for paying for the wall). A border tax could prompt other nations to retaliate. That would lead to trade wars, hitting consumers around the globe.
Mr Trump’s controversial executive order, which was issued on Friday, suspends entry of all refugees to the US for 120 days, indefinitely prohibits entry for Syrian refugees and blocks entry for 90 days for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – though it excludes Saudi Arabia, where founders of Al Qaeda originated, as well as Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan, which have produced Islamic militants. The order also broadens the definition of offences that can lead illegal migrants to be deported. Mr Trump cited the September 11 attacks to issue immigration restrictions, even though none of the 19 terrorists on the planes on 9/11 were from countries on his visa ban list, and said that these measures were needed to keep out radical Islamic terrorists.
The lawsuit was brought by human rights groups on behalf of two men who arrived at American ports of entry just after Mr Trump’s order had taken place. A federal judge’s ruling on Saturday prevented the government from deporting some arrivals, for now. The ruling doesn’t remove Mr Trump’s executive order, so the ban remains in effect for refugees planning to come to America.
In his first week in office, Mr Trump also ordered an investigation into voter fraud, which he blames for losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, despite any evidence and bipartisan condemnation of his allegations. He reiterates false assertions that he was deprived a popular-vote majority, because immigrants illegally voted for Mrs Clinton. Mr Trump repels empirical facts and instead presents his own version of facts to his benefit. This is a sorry display, which delegitimizes the US electoral system.
DOD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jette Carr / CC BY 2.0
