It may feel like we have been in the throes of Trumpian vindictive misrule for years, but, in truth, it has been barely two weeks since he became president for the second time. Regardless, it seems like a lifetime, a lifetime of chaotic changes in the US government and now — most recently — in its economic fortunes as well.
Read J Brooks Spector on Donald Trump’s first week in office here.
This roster includes a raft of measures designed to wrest control of vital government functions and programmes from their constitutional or legislative circumstances.
These are efforts encouraging or pushing senior officials in many departments into unanticipated retirement or even firing them; combing through government public websites to remove all that potentially offensive data and studies (to the Maga crew) about LGBTQI, gender and similar references; offering (or demanding) that thousands of civil servants accept a pre-emptive buy-out offer engineered by Elon Musk’s shock troops as they take over the Office of Personnel Management; and putting chaotic spending freezes on a wide array of government programmes.
The freeze also included a hiatus on virtually every aspect of the US foreign assistance programmes while a review of each and every programme will ensure they all meet the objectives of the “America First” dream.
Simultaneously, Elon Musk’s “DOGEy” operation has gained effective control over a massive set of databases holding extraordinarily sensitive personal data on anyone getting US government grants, pensions or salaries. If knowledge really is power, Musk’s extra-governmental operation can theoretically wield enormous influence as well as hold the ability to mine that data in the service of manipulating who might be retrenched or even prosecuted for sins against Trumpworld.
Even as all this has been taking place, the president used real tragedies to hammer away at his two pet obsessions — DEI (diversity, equity and inclusiveness in government activities) and immigration.
Demonstrating an extraordinary level of unctuous, fake solicitude, Trump turned the announcement of his signing into law the Laken Riley Act (so-named for a student killed by a foreign, illegal immigrant) into a diatribe about immigration and immigrants and how his administration is going to get rid of them all.
And, of course, even as he was speaking so sanctimoniously, Homeland Security and other federal agents were rounding up illegal immigrants in raids and beginning to send them back to their countries of origin. Colombia eventually relented on the use of US military aircraft for this purpose after threats of punitive tariffs on Colombian exports were unveiled.
Along the way, the Trump administration announced it was planning to send up to 30,000 deportees to the US naval base of Guantanamo in Cuba as a temporary staging or holding area. That base was already infamous for the incarceration of prisoners seized in Afghanistan as Taliban terrorists. Such a plan is certain to generate a major controversy — if it is actually carried out.
Mid-air collision
Then, after a horrific mid-air collision between a military helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet on its final approach to Reagan International Airport across the Potomac River from downtown Washington killed 67 people, the president used a media conference on the crash to offer an extended tirade. He tried to pin the blame on DEI initiatives and the hiring of unqualified air traffic controllers, saying that DEI initiatives during the Obama and Biden administrations were the real cause of the incident.
Not surprisingly, there is no evidence that such hiring processes had anything to do with the crash. It has been reported that on the night of the crash the responsible air traffic control tower was understaffed, and controllers on duty were handling twice their usual responsibilities. There are also unconfirmed reports the pilot of the helicopter was flying at the incorrect altitude, thereby intersecting the plane’s approach path.
Meanwhile, the total pause of US government grants and transfers to a vast array of programmes and institutions that was earlier announced was put on hold with a temporary stay issued by a federal court judge. However, a halt to virtually all US foreign assistance programmes across the board, save for urgent humanitarian aid, remains in place.
Presumably, the freeze affects virtually every aid programme (besides those to Israel and Egypt for geopolitical reasons), including projects like Pepfar. That programme, with its bipartisan support and long history of success in South Africa and elsewhere, has been put on hold as well. Over two decades, Pepfar has represented an innovative model of US and host country support in which US government funding has been bolstered further by funds from the private sector and international foundations. This hold on spending will quickly generate a baleful impact in many parts of Africa.
As part of this, the new president gloated that the administration had stopped a monstrous $50-million allocated for condoms to Hamas in Gaza. However, some quick, basic research showed it was not $50-million for Gaza in the Middle East, but $50-million for the Mozambique province of Gaza for family planning and health services. Oops.
Whims and whimsies
There are troubling signs the Trump administration is planning to put all aid programmes directly under the Department of State, where they would be directly subject to specific presidential initiatives — or whims and whimsies — rather than any idea of fulfilling longer-term objectives. Critics argue such a shift will further strain any notion that US foreign assistance is for anything other than the narrowest of self-interest. No matter, it will, instead, be Maga ideology over long-term national interest.
Then, by the end of the week, fulfilling a campaign promise (or, perhaps a Trumpian obsession), Trump’s team announced that 25% tariffs were being imposed on imports from Canada and Mexico, and 10% (for now) on China.
This is already beginning to touch off a battle of warring tariffs and — at least to some commentators — the beginning of the effects of what may look rather more like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, an infamous measure that helped turn what had been a financial crisis into a global Great Depression.
For some reason, the president continues to believe the country’s supposed greatness at the end of the 19th century was a direct result of major tariffs on imported manufactures. That, in turn, drew an intellectual influence from Alexander Hamilton’s “Report on Manufactures” back at the birth of the republic when the country was still overwhelmingly dependent on almost all manufactured items from Britain.
However, this Trumpian policy obsession has come about absent an understanding that much of the country’s manufacturing output depends on cross-border transport (especially from China, Mexico and Canada) of subassemblies and parts, such as automobiles. Oh, and it ignores the reality that much of the country’s produce for consumption is now imported from Mexico.
Who really knows at this point how pointedly and precisely the three target nations will respond to this new decision — although both Mexico and Canada have announced similar moves on tariffs and China has said it will appeal against this move at the World Trade Organization.
Most economists are convinced the measure will raise prices in the US. Exporters will not absorb the tariff costs fully, but instead most of these new costs will accrue to importers — who will, in turn, pass price increases on to retailers and consumers. Another campaign promise bites the dust.
And egg prices — the cutting back of which was a key deliverable according to the florid rhetoric of the Trump presidential campaign — are instead heading upward as avian flu causes the death of egg layers, thus restricting supply, but not demand. This is separate from the new tariffs but is also certain to give consumers yet another grievance.
Presidential appointees
In the meantime, the process of confirming the presidential appointees to senior positions like Cabinet officers continues to grind away. Senate confirmations are a constitutional imperative and some nominees, like Marco Rubio as secretary of state, have sailed through. By contrast, a clearly under-qualified Pete Hegseth for the Pentagon barely scraped by.
Several other individuals — especially Robert F Kennedy Jr for health and human services and Tulsi Gabbard as head of the Office of National Intelligence, the office that oversees all of the federal government intelligence bodies — are in trouble due to their past actions or statements, despite the arm twisting being carried out by the Trump team.
Kennedy continues to waffle over whether he believes childhood vaccines are dangerous and cause autism, while Gabbard has a queasy track record of cheeriness towards deposed Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Such behaviour could reasonably be expected to colour her judgement and recommendations to a president who eschews the hard study of details.
Meanwhile, Kash Patel, being nominated to head the FBI, embraced the ideas — or actually helped generate them as a kind of intellectual bagman for Trumpworld — of the Maga universe. This even included producing a recording of the 6 January rioters singing a patriotic song. If he gains confirmation, we can expect even more departures from the top ranks of the Department of Justice and FBI, beyond those already dispatched with prejudice. Yuck.
Still only past its second week, the Trump administration has thoroughly upended the government’s programmes, policies, personnel and prospects. Along the way, in a near-casual way, it has picked fights with three of the country’s most important trading partners without bothering to engage in dialogue or diplomacy.
The inevitable conclusion is that these are not serious people intent on governing. Instead, they are pulling down the temple pillars in pursuit of retribution and revenge against those whom they believe have done them wrong, or who have a larger, broader, social, economic or historical vision. This is beginning to mimic the way earlier republics like the Roman one ultimately lost their way.
These are not happy times for the Democrats, and so far at least, they have been far too cautious about responding to all this churning and tumult. They seem to be realising that they must do something, but it is unclear, at least not yet, what it is they can do when they control neither house in Congress and must rely upon the courts and public angst. DM