By Rajan Philips –

Rajan Philips

The election of Donald Trump as US President for yet another term has sent many world leaders scurrying for cover. Especially in the West. But even China is concerned. In the US itself, the longstanding maxim that there can only be one president at a time is being put to the test every day. Joe Biden, the outgoing president, is scrambling to salvage his legacy after a disastrous last year that has diminished all his achievements over the first three years on the domestic front. Externally, Biden’s presidency has been a monumental failure – from the impulsive withdrawal from Afghanistan that kickstarted it, to the hopelessly painful stalemate in Ukraine and the relentless mass devastation in Gaza that are dragging out its end. With the pardoning of his son Hunter Biden, the outgoing president has ceded even the little moral hump that he had over Trump.

Donald Trump who would not have succeeded in getting a major party nomination as a presidential candidate in any other democratic country, sequestered the Republican Party, arrogated himself to be its candidate, and won a second election with even a small popular vote majority albeit under 50% of the total. That Trump’s popularity could grow from 3% and 12% when he first started his political venture in 2015 to nearly 50% in ten years in spite of all the scandals, criminal convictions, and worst of all the 2021 January 6^th attack on the American constitution and democracy itself, is a statement not so much on Trump’s resilience as it is on America’s sociopolitical decadence.

The Tariff Man

Trump’s second term is poised to be even more inglorious than his first but with much greater organization and persistence, and fortified by – thanks to Chief Justice Robert’s creative legal mind – absolute immunity in most instances and presumed immunity in all other instances. But even the Supreme Court cannot help Trump to form a cabinet of his choosing and full of sycophants (not the Lincoln’s team of rivals) without the Senate’s approval. The Republicans have only a slender majority in both houses, and enough Republican Senators have already signalled that they are not prepared to support his more questionable cabinet appointees.

What the world leaders are now going through is the dilemma of having to put up with two presidents at the same time. One they can smile and ignore and the other they have to grin and suffer for four more years. Biden is trying hard to strengthen Ukraine’s military to gain some territorial advantage before Ukraine is forced into negotiations with Russia under pressure from Trump. President Biden is even more desperate for a ceasefire in Gaza, but Prime Minister Netanyahu who has betrayed Biden at every turn in the Gaza conflict is not about to do him any favours with less than a month left in Biden’s term.

Biden’s eleventh hour initiatives in Ukraine and in the Middle East have raised eyebrows among Washington watchers because all of them could be torpedoed without notice by Trump on his first day President. Yet the two presidents seem to be adhering to the transition protocol – with the Biden Administration briefing the Trump transition on the new initiatives although Trump himself has not said much about either front after the election. Except the usual bravado that there will be hell to pay by Hamas if all the remaining hostages are not released before his inauguration in January.

At the same time, Trump is threatening to hold America’s trading partners hostage with his tariff threats. He has warned neighbouring Canada and Mexico that on his first day in office, he will impose a flat 25% tariff on all imports from them unless the two countries mend their borders to his liking. And a further 10% tariff on already tariffed Chinese goods. In another bluster, Trump has threatened 100% tariffs on imports from BRICS countries unless they stop planning an alternative currency to the dollar.

Trump is stoned on the idea of tariffs although it will lead to domestic price increases and will not bring back lost American jobs. The captains of American businesses do not believe Trump will actually impose tariffs but will only use them in bargaining to get what he wants from other countries. On the other hand, the blue collar foot soldiers who voted for Trump are now googling to find out the meaning of tariff.

Like the word Brexit in Britain after the Brexit referendum, Google search for the meaning of tariff has seen a massive spike in the US after Trump’s election. It is already too late for the American voters to know what tariff means. Just like with Brexit in Britain. If Trump were to go ahead and impose tariffs on imports that will only increase the price of many goods that Americans buy. The midterm Congress and Senate elections in two years will give them the opportunity to vent but that will not stop Trump from going on for another two years.

Weak West, Divided World

For the rest of the world, there is no midterm election to protest against a man whom 49% of Americans have elected. The countries that Trump threatens with tariffs cannot even unite to provide a collective response. With one tariff tweet, Trump has driven a wedge between Canada and Mexico who have trilateral free trade agreement with the US that is now 30 years old. Even the BRICS member countries will be forced to go their separate ways to deal with Trump’s tariffs. Only China can show some muscle against this madness, but that will only aggravate the madness. All in all, in facing Trump, it will be every country for itself, with no god for all.

Trump’s second coming is also coinciding with an exceptionally weak moment in Europe. Britain is neither here nor there, and the new Labour government can do nothing about it. Not surprisingly, 44% of Britons want the country to move closer to the EU and only 19% want it to move the other way towards Trump’s America. The old Heseltine line against Thatcher, now writ large in a vastly different global context. And the EU is not where it could and should be. The EU’s two big brothers, France and Germany, are both facing uncertainties.

France is in political turmoil with a lame duck president who has no majority in parliament. This week, the hard left and the far right combined to defeat the government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier whom President Emmanuel Macron had appointed after a deadlock parliamentary election in June. No government in France has lost a no confidence motion in 62 years.

President Macron is insisting on staying on as President until his term is over in 2027, and no parliamentary election can be called till June next year. For now, the President can distract the French public with the multi-day celebration of this Saturday’s reopening of the Norte-Dame Cathedral that was ravaged by fire in 2019 and is now fully renovated. World leaders will be in attendance, but Pope Francis has declined the invitation. President elect Trump will be in attendance, after apparently accepting a pleading invitation by the French President. As the old saying goes, “the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.”

The political and economic crises are even worse in Germany which has been the EU’s main anchor for much of its life. After the collapse of the governing (traffic-light) coalition in November, elections have been scheduled for 23 February 2025. The elections will be held under a new hybrid (single constituency and proportional) system that has made the results and the shape of the next government quite unpredictable.

With Germany and France in crisis, the EU is not at all in a strong position to respond to Trump. And Trump will have admiring allies in Italy’s Giorgio Meloni and the Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban. Besides its own tariff fears, the EU’s bigger problem is to avoid being caught in the crossfire of tariffs between the US and China. EU and NATO will also have to come to terms with whatever Trump comes up for Ukraine. What is mostly expected now is a potential peace agreement through the personal agencies of Trump, Putin and Zelensky.

Closer home, India is “less concerned about a second Trump term than many other US allies and partners,” according to Tanvi Madan writing in Foreign Affairs. Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar has said that India “always had a positive political relationship with Trump,” and that Trump in turn “has also had a positive view of India.” New Delhi has  dissociated itself from the de-dollarisation plans by BRICS countries. A specific upshot of the Trump presidency for the Modi government could be the easing of the heat from Washington over the Modi government’s alleged involvement in targeted attacks, including murder, against Sikh individuals in the US and Canada.

As world leaders recalibrate their governments to Trump’s second coming, Sri Lanka will have to chart its own course to navigate the choppy waters around it. Sri Lanka does not have to do anything grand by way of either the non-alignment of old or the all-alignment of Modi’s India. If the new government can competently manage its internal political challenges, it does not have to do anything more than keeping Sri Lanka’s trade channels open to expand its exports and settle its debts.