Trump 2.0

                                                       Post–02

  President Trump 2.0— A Maverick Manning the White House??

      Trump’s return to the White House in his second avatar as the President of the U.S. was as momentous as his failure to shine in the hustings for two consecutive terms in 2020. His defeat against Joe Biden was not conceded by him gracefully, as was normally done by almost all of his worthy predecessors. He asserted in no uncertain terms that he had lost the election only due to election fraud. His followers went one step further by raiding the Capitol to obstruct the Senate proceedings for the confirmation of Biden as the next President. The FBI brought criminal charges of multiple counts against around 2000 rioters, but President Trump, upon inauguration for the second time in 2025, pardoned nearly all of them, and the remaining 14 persons walked out of prison as “time served ".

      We may set aside the issue of President Trump's personal traits (some may describe as his hubris) and his background as a millionaire businessman born into wealth.

      We may first try to gauge, if there has been any significant shift in the approach and execution of the declared policy resolutions often touted as “America First” and “Make  America Great Again( MAGA)” over the first term of President Trump and his first one year in the White House for the second time respectively with a gap of four years conceded to the republican Joe Biden.

     The performance of President Trump’s government during his first term, as well as its impact on the national and international geopolitical landscape, can be examined in general terms.

     Broadly speaking, during the first term of President Trump, there were no major internal agitations. Street mobilisations against the administration were largely nonviolent in nature. At the  International level, President Trump registered mixed success in containing ISIS by eliminating their leaders. Trump managed to work out a peace deal with the Taliban, indicating the final withdrawal of all troops by the middle of 2021. However, he declared a verbal as well as real trade war against China, and hitherto friendly neighbours like Mexico and Canada, following his “America First” policy. He did not spare the European Union from his ire for its alleged unfair trade balance with and overdependence on the U.S.in the matter of collective defence architecture like NATO.

     On the home front, he tried to keep his electoral promises, rather hurriedly signing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. That, in effect, brought in noticeable reductions in individual and Corporate tax structures. This Act was greeted with smiles on many faces, though it ignited a series of lawsuits against several provisions of the law, too. He also addressed the long incarceration problem of the nation by much of the stringent existing regulations thereof. By amending the parts of the harsh rules/guidelines necessitated in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008, he addressed the problems in running corporate entities and the stock exchanges. To make a long story short, though the first term of President Trump was notable for the implementation of “America First” rhetoric, he had yet to shed his ego as a successful(?) businessman, borne out of a wealthy family legacy, and morphed into an astute(?) politician. However, his loss to Joe Biden in his second attempt to serve the nation as the POTUS might have given him adequate time and opportunity to learn a lesson or two about something a little more than the tricks of electoral politics.

      The evolution of President Trump from his first term into his second term may not be tectonic, but a tangible one. The exploration of all these may be initiated with the composition and complexion of the Cabinet that President Trump appointed in his second term. In the backdrop of this population profile of the nation during his second term, President Trump has appointed three men of colour to his cabinet, which is at the same level as his first term. However, as far as gender diversity is concerned, the number of women in leadership positions has reached a record high of eight, which is double the number of women he had in his first term. Besides, he has appointed a woman as the White House Chief of Staff for the first time in history. Similarly, the appointment of Marco Rubio of Hispanic origin as the Secretary of State, second only to the Vice President in the administrative protocol, is a historic event too. Scott Bessent, Head of the Treasury, is the first openly gay cabinet member in history. It was also clear that the choice of those men and women was largely dependent on their loyalty to the declared policy of unabashed nationalism of a Republican kind. At the macro level, there have been trifectas, when a single party has the majority in both houses of Congress as well as its man in White House. The situation is still more favourable for the Republican Party now, or you may say President Trump, because out of the nine judges of the Federal Supreme Court, six are Republican President appointees, three of them having been appointed by Trump himself during his first term. Though under the U.S. Constitution, the concept of separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary is inherent, the fact that the President is empowered to nominate such appointees subject to confirmation by the Senate, the socio-political leanings of individual appointees are likely to be the basis of the presidential choice in the first place.

       In his second term, Trump started his presidency with a bang via worldwide optics on the undocumented immigrant hunt. He looked determined to free the country of illegal immigrants, especially those entering through the Canadian and Mexican borders. By September 2025, the Trump administration claimed that two million illegal immigrants had left the country through a combination of over 400,000 deportations and an estimated 1,600.000 self-deportations. [www.dhs.gov.org] On this issue, Donald Trump has indeed taken a robust action, but his predecessor in office, Joe Biden, did not lag behind him on this issue without much optics. In fact, the ICE had deported more illegal immigrants during the last year of Biden's (2024) in the White House than the highest number in a single year recorded during the first term of Donald Trump. 

     One thing is clear this time. Notwithstanding his personal transactional nature, possibly imbibed as a veteran businessman in tandem with the idiosyncrasies of a showman, Trump, in his second round of presidency, appears to be a little more organised in his approach to reach his much-touted doctrine of “ Make America Great Again( MAGA) “, surrounded by a team of advisers having unquestioned loyalties towards their boss, than probably the policy itself. However, it is debatable whether his diagnosis of the root cause of the sickness of America over the last few decades on this account is correct or not. Many eminent economists in America and abroad, such as Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, believe that President Trump has yet to understand where the shoe pinches in the first place. There has indeed been a yawning trade deficit for the last few decades in the U.S. after downgrading high-end manufacturing, which has been the mainstay of internal prosperity and the U.S.global dominance. Undoubtedly, this wound on the American economy is a self-inflicted one since the days of Richard Nixon as the President, as he had opened the door wide open for Chinese export of consumer goods, capital goods with cheaper price tags, which lured a sizable section of American companies to shift their manufacturing business to China to enjoy the benefit of cheap labour there. This group of think-tanks argues that the budget deficits are a matter of greater concern for the health of the U.S. over the last few decades in the long term, as they have been mounting steadily year to year. The budget deficit skyrocketed during the last year of Donald Trump's first tenure ($3.13billion). But during the first year of Trump’s second term, the budget deficit shrank by close to $45 million. This appears to have happened largely owing to the enhanced revenue earnings through imposition of many-fold increased rates of tariffs in rapid successions under executive orders for almost all countries, and squeezing out thousands of employees working either in government departments or government agencies under the supervision of a newly created Department of Governance Efficiency(DOGE), initially headed by none other than the wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk. The government grants to top private universities have been blocked in many cases where the university authorities refused to contain the non-violent protests staged by the students against many domestic as well as international issues. With Musk's departure from the DOGE business, there has been a lull in the rapid firing of government employees. However, one single action caused shivering down the spine not only among the expats working under the H-1B visas, but also among the American tech companies. He severely restricted the approval of the applications from all companies and announced that the misuse of the facility of hiring highly competent immigrants must end forthwith. Additionally, he showed his strong condemnation of the outsourcing of IT jobs and entreated the big American companies to bring back their manufacturing facilities to American soil.

     Since the first day in office, President Trump has begun a verbal tirade against his perceived unfair trade balance between the U.S. and some countries for a long time, causing a huge trade deficit for the U.S. On his self-declared "Liberation Day" (February 02, 2025), he singled out, among others, Canada, Mexico, India, Brazil and China for such unfair trade practices. As a countermeasure, he announced steep tariffs on various commodities imported into the US. It ranges from an additional 10% to 25%. In the case of India, he imposed an additional 25% punitive tariff for the unwarranted import of crude oil from Russia. At the same time, he added a 25% additional punitive tariff on Brazil for political reasons. Here, it may be noted that, as of July 2025, though China accounted for a trade deficit balance of the US to the tune of over $14 billion and was the highest importer of crude oil from Russia, it was spared from the similar punitive tariff of an additional 25%, the reason being a "complex" trade relationship. This has caused a disruptive world trade scenario at large. At the same time, it led to new equations in international relations almost all over the world. It is not that in the US, the tariff wall has been raised for the first time by Donald Trump. In American history, such actions by the President were taken three times in the past. The Presidents did enact the Fordney-McCumber Act(1922) and the McKinley Tariff Act(1890), with the prior endorsement of Congress. In the background of the stock market crash of 1929, an effort was made by Congress to contain the general panic and protect the US business and farmers from foreign competitors. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was signed by President Hoover in 1930, resulting in a sharp hike in several commodities, but with a very negative result on the American economy, as the exporting countries resorted to retaliatory tariffs. What is common in all those cases, the regulating tariffs were considered to be a regular legislative action, and those were codified in the form of Acts. But in his second term, President Trump raised tariffs and modified them almost daily under his executive orders to meet, as per his statement, an emergency situation involving national security. Obviously, these aspects of the matter have been challenged in the Court of law and are still under review by the federal Supreme Court.

     Just a few words on President Trump as a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth, engaged in various streams of businesses, finally settling as a property developer, one of his flagship projects being the 58-storyTrump Tower in Manhattan, New York. Besides, he had tried his hand in show business for a short time, too. He did notify his political affiliation for the first time as a Republican in 1969. However, he had changed his Party affiliation several times, with one of his stints as a Democrat lasting from 2001 to 2009. He has quite a few firsts in his name. Though a couple of his predecessors in office had records of facing civil suits, Trump is the first President who has been convicted in criminal cases by the courts, but not sentenced on the grounds of existing judicial pronouncement. He had a habit of maintaining a constant visibility for the public. He is the first President to have held three press conferences on a single day, which is a record in itself.

     As of now, Donald Trump has been in office for only one-fourth of the fixed four-year term as President of the most powerful nation in the world. However, ever since his inauguration in January this year, he has created a storm in public as well as media discourse. In newspaper headlines on almost all days, he has sidelined the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Israel-Hamas armed engagement in Gaza. It is too early to predict whether he will be remembered as the most disruptive force ever within the national borders and beyond. Things are changing too fast for even the experts on geopolitics to comprehend a situation and make any indication as to how a particular matter would take place tomorrow. 

      Let’s wait and watch. President Trump undoubtedly appears to be inconsistent and unpredictable. Some may even call him somewhat mad. But to me, it appears that– to borrow an expression from Shakespeare– there is method in his madness. 

      I would share my point of view on this with my readers as a sequel to this piece of my blog very soon, as this one has already become rather lengthy. 

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IMAGE CREDIT: Google Gemini AI/ Microsoft Copilot AI