Trump calls for wall funding as part of deal

Stand by for a year of presidential bullying, tweeting and cutting of social services, played out against a backdrop of the Russia election interference investigation and a fired-up anti-Trump ‘‘Resistance’’.

New York City is closing out 2017 in the icy clutches of a cold front. With a high of minus 5C, and a low of minus 12C, those planning to pack Times Square for the New Year’s Eve ball drop will be dressed as if they are participating in an excursion to Scott Base.

But as the sun sets on 2017, we look ahead to the next 12 months and the political, economic, and societal forces that will shape America’s domestic tranquillity and its standing in the world.

In domestic politics, expect the roller coaster to continue.

The president is not going to become more ‘‘presidential’’, and the president isn’t going to stop tweeting. That means more unvarnished Donald Trump, which his supporters love. It also means the continued bullying of opponents, perceived and real, on his Twitter feed.

Trump will continue to press a Republican agenda, including cuts to social services and poverty programmes and the evisceration of Obamacare, and will call out anyone, including members of his own party, not on board with his plans.

Untethered to a clear ideology, Trump campaigned on promises that reached across the political spectrum. We will see this pushpull play out in the new year.

Democrats may be pleased to hear him pushing for massive infrastructure investment. If they support an infrastructure plan, their price will likely be holding Trump to his less traditionally ‘‘Republican’’ promises to protect Medicaid, the healthcare programme for low-income Americans, and to find a solution for the ‘‘Dreamers’’ – illegal immigrants brought to the US as children – who are on the cusp of losing the legal status granted to them by President Obama.

On foreign policy, expect ‘‘America First’’ to ring loud and clear. The administration will continue to press forward on its plans to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Trump will continue to court Russia and China in support of constraining North Korea and defeating Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

This singular focus means Trump will continue to downplay Russia’s ongoing meddling in US democracy, and may neglect to temper China’s rising economic and political influence in foreign countries and in international institutions like the United Nations.

The administration will begin 2018 with a large number of vacancies in key posts, most notably permanent ambassadors to key allies including South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. They will be filled as the year progresses, but this task, requiring Senate confirmation, will be harder if Democrats win back the Senate majority in the November mid-term elections.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s work is far from over. Despite the administration’s claims that the investigation into potential collusion with Russia during the 2016 election will be wrapped up shortly, the indications are that Mueller is just getting started.

Trump’s former campaign chairman has been charged with a plethora of felonies. A campaign aide and the president’s former national security adviser have pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and are cooperating witnesses in the probe. And this week we learned that Mueller is investigating the Trump campaign’s social media activities.

The Whitewater investigation into Bill Clinton lasted more than four years and ended with impeachment grounded in Clinton’s perjury and obstruction of justice. This investigation has already claimed more scalps, and indicated much more serious wrongdoing, than the affair and coverup that Kenneth Starr revealed.

In 2018, the ‘‘Resistance’’ to Trump and his agenda will ramp up.

Democratic women are signing up to explore runs for political office in numbers that are 10 times those of 2016. Democrats will have an array of unusual policy platforms to offer in 2018, from preserving national parks, to climate change, to transgender people serving in the US military.

Depending on the progress of the Mueller probe, Democrats may start campaigning more openly on the promise of impeaching Trump. This is a tightrope to walk, as Newt Gingrich learned in 1999 in the aftermath of the Clinton impeachment: Americans don’t care for baldly partisan maneuvering to get rid of a duly elected president.

The 19th-century philosopher Joseph de Maistre said ‘‘every nation gets the government it deserves’’. America’s average voter turnout is drastically lower than that of most other developed democracies, and was just shy of 56 per cent in 2016. The Americans who either elected Trump or didn’t show up to vote have made the bed that we all lie in.

Although Trump’s loyal base is charged up, his approval ratings – now wavering around 35 per cent – indicate that many Americans have political buyer’s remorse. And this may be the single greatest lesson of 2017 as the year turns over: don’t complain. Vote! US President Donald Trump says any deal that would grant legal status to immigrants brought to the US as children needs to include funding for a wall on the border with Mexico.

‘‘Look, I wouldn’t do a DACA plan without a wall,’’ Trump told The New York Times, referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, which he has set to expire next year.

‘‘We need it. We see the drugs pouring into the country, we need the wall.’’

He reiterated that point in a tweet yesterday, adding that a DACA deal needed to end ‘‘chain migration’’, the policy that allows naturalised immigrants to petition for relatives to come to the US. In the Times interview, Trump had mentioned the policy – ending it is a White House priority – but did not directly tie it to the DACA deal.

Democrats, whiplashed for months by the president’s changing stances on DACA, reacted to the new positions by looking forward to next week’s negotiations with Republican congressional leaders and the White House.

‘‘We’re not going to negotiate through the press, and look forward to a serious negotiation,’’ said Drew Hammill, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi’s press secretary.

Funding for a border wall, a modified Trump campaign promise, has found little support in the Republican-controlled Congress.

During his election campaign, Trump repeatedly said that Mexico would ‘‘pay for the wall’’. Since January, House Republicans have instead proposed paying for the wall up front, and moved legislation through the Homeland Security Committee that would devote US$10 billion to its construction.

In a statement on DACA in October, Trump said border wall funding and an end to chain migration needed to be discussed as part of any deal. ‘‘Without these reforms, illegal immigration and chain migration, which severely and unfairly burden American workers and taxpayers, will continue without end,’’ he said.

Democrats remain resolutely opposed to wall funding, and many Republicans favour funding for ‘‘border security’’ that would not be earmarked for an actual wall.

Polling this year has found low public support for the wall concept. In August, a Fox News poll found barely three in 10 respondents supportive of the idea, and about as many convinced that Mexico could be made to pay for it.

Trump, by citing a yearlong drop in illegal border crossings, has also given some breathing room to moderate Republicans who see security funding, not a wall, as a reasonable compromise.

Trump also returned to a favourite target yesterday, saying Amazon should be charged more by the US Postal Service for the packages it sends around the world.

Amazon has been a consistent recipient of Trump’s ire. He has accused the company of failing to pay ‘‘internet taxes’’, though it has never been made clear by the White House what the president means by that.

In a tweet, Trump said Amazon should be charged ‘‘MUCH MORE’’ by the postal service because it’s ‘‘losing many billions of dollars a year’’ while it makes ‘‘Amazon richer’’.

Amazon sends packages via the post office, FedEx, UPS and other services.

In the seconds after the tweet, shares in Amazon, which had been trading higher before the opening bell on Wall Street, began to fade and went into negative territory. The stock closed down more than 1 per cent.

The Seattle company did not respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for the postal service said: ‘‘We’re looking into it.’’

Between July and September, Amazon paid US$5.4 billion in worldwide shipping costs, a 39 per cent increase from the same period the previous year. That amounts to nearly 11 per cent of the US$43.7b in total revenue it reported in that same period.

The US Postal Service has lost money for 11 straight years, mostly because of pension and healthcare costs.

One part of the operation that is not suffering, however, is shipping and packages, which handles Amazon and other online orders from retailers. In the year ended September 30, the postal service reported higher-than-expected revenue of US$19.5b, ‘‘due to e-commerce growth’’.

Amazon has taken some steps towards becoming more selfreliant in shipping. Earlier this year it announced that it would build a worldwide air cargo hub in Kentucky.