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At home, Donald Trump could adopt certain illiberal measures. At international level, we could see new policies towards Russia and Ukraine, a trade war with China, tensions with Europe and an escalation in the Middle East.
USA Corporation: Republican dominance will give additional power to Donald Trump, who might start his mandate with judicial interference
“God spared my life for a reason [...] And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness, and now we are going to fulfill that mission together. We’re going to fulfill that”, Donald Trump said in his victory speech. Right now, Republican Donald Trump is the second president with two non-consecutive terms (the first was Grover Cleveland elected in 1884 and 1892), but also the first president in American history with a criminal conviction. In the race for the White House, Trump put into play all methods designed to manipulate voters, clean or dirty, and the electorate turned a blind eye to Trump’s criminal indictments and verbal slips. Donald Trump won both the electoral and the popular vote. What follows next is just technicalities. But what about his plans for the judiciary?
He will likely follow through on campaign promises regarding the justice system. More specifically, he will fire Special Counsel Jack Smith, who engineered two federal cases against him. The magistrates who ruled his cases will also be affected, and, last but not least, Donald Trump is likely to avoid the serious consequences of the criminal charges brought against him. Trump's most pressing legal issue since the election is his November 26 conviction on 34 counts of falsifying accounting records to cover a 2016 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. His defense team had successfully delayed sentencing twice, first by seeking to have the case dismissed based on presidential immunity, and second, by highlighting the political stakes of a pre-election sentence. Therefore, the New York judge who delayed sentencing until November 26 may now opt for the most lenient sentence available. Of course, Trump’s attorneys might ask for a further delay in light of the election results. Donald Trump's more illiberal than liberal speech (he's not friends with Orban Viktor for nothing, one of the first leaders to congratulate him) makes me fear major transformations in America’s judiciary. The President of the United States can make appointments to the Supreme Court and can designate the Attorney General. Basically, 4 years may not be much, and suppose Trump evades criminal trials and convictions – there is still a possibility these cases might get reopened at the end of this mandate. It's advisable for Trump and his friends to shield themselves.
The Republicans also won the Senate and have a good chance of winning the House of Representatives as well (the final results for the House elections have not yet come in). It's a genuine “red wave” and I'm afraid that Donald Trump, who is already suspected of authoritarian tendencies and has already publicly expressed his admiration for authoritarian leaders, can now really do whatever he wants, because today he became the president of USA Corporation. Too few elected Republicans are likely to oppose or even criticize him.
The war in Ukraine. Will Zelenskyy succeed in winning Trump over to Kyiv’s side, or will we see a USA-Russia rapprochement?
As a business-oriented leader, I expect that soon after the investiture, Trump will travel to Kyiv. And I wouldn't be surprised if he renounces some of his ideas. I have often thought that the Republican Party’s blocking of aid to Ukraine in Congress was a cynical electoral device used by Trump to show Joe Biden that he can keep him in check, even when he’s not in the White House. However, the cost to Ukraine was dear, and virtually to this day they have not yet recovered from that long period of time when Kyiv could not rely on American deliveries of arms and ammunition. At present, Volodymyr Zelenskyy will have to use all his skills as a communicator and a psychologist to convince Trump to maintain the American policy of support - because Donald Trump has shown us during his first term in office that he can be impressionable. Zelenskyy has already congratulated Trump on an “impressive election victory”, expressing hope for their future cooperation in order “to end Russian aggression against Ukraine”.
“We look forward to an era of a strong United States of America under President Trump’s decisive leadership. We rely on continued strong bipartisan support for Ukraine in the United States”, Zelenskyy wrote on X.
We don’t know where Trump's relationship with Putin stands at present. International media has speculated a lot on this topic. What we do know for sure is that Donald Trump admires Putin, whom he considers a smart man who made the mistake of invading Ukraine in February 2022. But as recently as three weeks ago, in an interview to ABC, Trump said: “Russia has never had a president that they respect so much, but more importantly or less importantly, I guess, I went into Russia, and people said, ‘Oh, he likes Putin or Putin likes him’. Let me tell you, the first thing I did was terminate Nord Stream 2”, referring to the huge gas pipeline built by the Russians under the Baltic Sea transporting gas to all of Europe. And there’s something else that Trump said in his victory speech this morning that stuck: “We have more liquid gold, oil and gas. We have more than Russia”. In the end, maybe something good will come out of this business-oriented thinking. After all, hope springs eternal. On the other hand, the Chairman of the Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund, a person of influence among the Russian political elites, conveyed Moscow’s reaction shortly after Donald Trump’s victory was certain that this opens new opportunities for the restoration of relations between Russia and the USA.
Donald Trump could start a trade war with China
For Donald Trump, China remains the number one opponent. Let's recall that, during his first term in office, Trump promised a commercial assault on Beijing. Throughout this year’s election campaign, Trump also promised blanket tariffs on Chinese goods, and in his victory speech he kept mentioning that America is richer.
Trump's plans for China can also be inferred by looking at the names circulated for his upcoming team. Take, for instance, Mike Waltz, the potential head of the Pentagon. Waltz served in the U.S. Army, but is now a congressman representing Florida, where he has made it a point to upset China by introducing bills like the one reducing US dependence on rare earth minerals mined in China.
Trump's victory in the eyes of US allies: Benjamin Netanyahu pops the champagne, European leaders show concern
As far as the USA’s allies are concerned, champagne is already overflowing in Israel. Before the election, Israelis would have voted for Donald Trump themselves if they ever could. Bibi Netanyahu was also among the first world leaders to congratulate Trump. He spoke in his message of the greatest “comeback in history”, adding that Trump's return to office presents a “a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America”. On countless occasions, Donald Trump has reaffirmed his firm support for Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Against the current backdrop in the Middle East, with Israel getting attacked by Iran either directly or by proxy, and considering Trump's tough position towards the theocratic regime in Tehran, I wouldn’t be surprised if, after Trump’s investiture in early January, we could see Israel adopting a change of strategy towards Iran, which the Democrats have so far managed to tone down.
The mood is somewhat more serious in Europe. There are obviously some European leaders who are elated with the current result (Viktor Orban first and foremost), but most are worried about what Trump might do next. I was speaking earlier about Trump's plans to impose tariffs on Chinese products. Plans of this kind, however, also target Europe. Donald Trump made it clear during the campaign that he wants to impose tariffs here as well (although not as high as those he has in store for China), and that he is unhappy with the fact that Europe isn’t buying American merchandise.
And it's not just the economy. Donald Trump's transactional thinking goes further than that. We shouldn’t forget that, in his first term, Trump insisted that Europeans must contribute more to NATO if they want the United States to continue to provide them with security guarantees and to come to their aid, if necessary, based on Article 5 in the NATO Charter. It should also be noted that, during the election campaign, Donald Trump added Taiwan to the list of countries that, he believes, should pay for American protection.
Ever since Donald Trump's victory started to take shape, conclusions have been drawn and analyzes have been made: what happened, how we should explain this victory, why so many Americans preferred an older president with such a speech and such a history. Some the explanations pointed to the state of the economy, Kamala Harris' apparent lack of expertise in the field, or the fact that Joe Biden withdrew too late from the race. As for the conclusions, I believe the most important takeaway is that the Republican Party (and now the entire USA) has been hijacked by the fundamentalist MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. And severe consequences will likely follow in great numbers.
