If you think Trump’s been bold so far, you ain’t seen nothing yet!
ON FRIDAY, in the chilling cold of a Washington winter, Donald Trump will stand on the West portico of the Capitol to be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States.
Aged 70, he will be the oldest man ever to take the oath of office. The emergence of this garrulous property mogul and TV personality — someone with no direct political experience — as the world’s most powerful figure is the greatest political upset of modern times.
Some have compared his rise to that of Ronald Reagan, a former B-movie actor. There are undeniable similarities, but Reagan was an experienced politician — having been California governor for two terms and a long- standing presidential candidate surrounded by a sophisticated team of advisers.
Trump’s journey was largely achieved without the help of a formal political machine, with a low- cost campaign and the incalculable contribution of Twitter to spread his message.
Offended
In a break with tradition for Presidents- elect, instead of using a residence opposite the White House, he’s been working in his cluttered office in Trump Tower in Manhattan, where he was photographed for his interview with Michael Gove.
What’s more, Trump has behaved during the transition period with the same degree of imperial impetuosity and unpredictability as he did during the election campaign.
For example, we’ve witnessed his refreshing view that Britain has been ‘so smart’ to get out of the EU and that we are ‘doing great’.
Not holding back, he said the EU is ‘ basically a vehicle for Germany’ and condemned Angela Merkel for making ‘one very catastrophic mistake’ by admitting more than one million migrants.
He’s also gone into battle with Washington’s intelligence services and the media after lurid and unsubstantiated claims that he hired prostitutes to defile a Moscow hotel bedroom where the Obamas had slept.
All the while, he’s been blithely tweeting his views on everything from the cost of a new Air Force One fleet to the use of nuclear weapons. He’s waged war on General Motors — the company that most symbolised America’s industrial might — and, in the process, encouraged Ford to reverse a decision to build a new £1.3 billion plant in Mexico ( a country which he’s said ‘brings drugs, crime and rapists to America’) and locate it instead in Michigan.
Americans expect Trump to fulfil his promise to ‘ drain the Washington swamp’ and, in many ways, he is creating a government that is splendidly novel in its willingness to think out of the box.
Whereas many of today’s politicians are afraid to say what they believe for fear of being branded politically incorrect, the Trump administration promises to be refreshingly honest. For example, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is so self-confident that he’s happy to make significant policy statements on the hoof.
He certainly offended key figures in the British Establishment when he pointed out that Brexit is not just an opportunity for the City of London, but for other financial centres planning to displace London as a world leader in financial services.
He, like other Trumpites, has little time for the banal neutrality of modern politics.
How invigorating it is also to see the lobbyists and PR experts who so infest modern political systems be given the cold shoulder.
No wonder the liberal establishment voices of the New York Times and the main television networks are seething with anger — fearful their prevailing values will be replaced with ones which they consider to be out- dated, misogynistic and racially insensitive.
Their self-righteous causes such as multi-culturalism and treating global warming theory as a religion are about to be brutally bulldozed.
The most intriguing aspect of Trump is that no one in business, or Washington politics, knows where the next assault will come from. In fact, Trump and his team have been plotting what is being billed as a Week One Revolution after his inauguration.
Without mercy, huge elements of the system left by Barack
CITY EDITOR Obama will be demolished.
The most obvious target is reform of Obamacare, the centrepiece of the outgoing president’s eight years in office and intended to provide affordable health insurance to 24 million people too poor to pay for medical care.
The fact that Trump will be aided by a Republicandominated Congress means he can undo his predecessor’s work at the stroke of a pen.
Here, the example of Ronald Reagan is instructive.
In his first week in office, Reagan intervened dramatically on energy policy and encouraged a new age of oil-drilling, which led to reduced prices for business and householders.
He also famously ended an air traffic controllers’ strike by sacking the whole workforce and replacing them with U.S. Air Force specialists.
Among the major reforms set to be made by Trump — a climatechange sceptic — are to incinerate greenhouse gas emission targets; suspend the Syrian refugee settlement programme; prepare prosecutions against China over trade violations; and consider fewer background checks on gun-owners.
At the core of so- called Trumponomics is a pledge to raise America’s growth rate from the mediocre level of 2 per cent or less since the Great Recession to match the past glories of 3 or 4 per cent.
Radical
That means a bonfire of all the regulation, tax and trade policy that Trump is convinced is stifling America plc.
It will also entail ending austerity and launching a huge public investment programme.
Here are seven key areas earmarked for radical reform:
ENERGY and climate change: An axe to Obama’s beloved green agenda. Coal mining firms in West Virginia and Kentucky who have faced closure now expect to be kept open. Full steam ahead for more fracking, oil- drilling, pipeline construction and exploration in areas of natural beauty.
SLASH taxes: Contrary to popular opinion, the U.S. has the highest corporate taxes in the Western world at 37 per cent. Trump aims to cut company tax rates to 15 per cent. He’ll offer big incentives to U.S. firms currently investing abroad to return their money to America. Middle income taxpayers will be offered a cut and death duties will be abolished.
FREE Wall Street from overregulation: Trump promises to scrap many of the 30,000 pages of rules that financiers say suffocate trading.
SPENDING spree: In echoes of the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt after the Great Depression of the Thirties, Trump wants a $ 1 trillion building programme to repair the country’s crumbling infrastructure of potholed motorways and decaying city centres.
TRADE wars: He’s on record as having threatened to impose a 45 per cent tariff on Chinese imports, and his choice of antiChina trade officials has sent an uncompromising message to Beijing. Companies that move production and jobs to Mexico (General Motors) or who sell goods to Iran (aircraft-maker Boeing) have been told they will face ‘consequences’.
WAR on Silicon Valley: The tech giants who act as if they’re more powerful than the nation state are in Trump’s sights, and he’ll challenge the monopolistic powers of Amazon, Apple and others.
FOREIGN policy: Trump disdains America’s traditional security alliances and prefers the approach of Roosevelt, who forged deals with whoever it was necessary to navigate the U.S. through World War II. He also admires how President Nixon struck a nuclear weapons deal with the old USSR.
For the past two years, much of the focus has been on the personal shortcomings of both presidential candidates — with Trump and Hillary Clinton having exchanged blows like a pair of punch-drunk boxers.
But, for all his shortcomings, Trump was the radical candidate. His policies incorporate ideas and approaches used by some of the great presidents of the 20th century.
He is already being compared with Theodore Roosevelt, with the great wartime leader Franklin D. Roosevelt and with the Right-wing, free marketeer Ronald Reagan.
Whether Donald Trump, with his dictatorial and narcissistic tendencies, can deliver change in the same way is the biggest question of our time.