First year of Donald Trump’s Presidency.
January 20Th 2017, Donald Trump took office as the 45th President of the United States of America. It is not a long period of time but the feelings are quite different: it seems much longer because of the disaster that the White House is. And, more importantly, it possible to maintain that President Trump and his Cabinet members are implementing a hardline conservative agenda that is quietly reshaping America. He is, right now, changing the social contract of America.
We can summarize the following seven points as the most important hits of Trump’s Presidency from a European point of view:
First, Puerto Rico. Irma and Maria, two Hurricanes brought to the island the most important humanitarian crisis since the beginning of the last century. The response by Trump was disdain, arrogance and lack of concern about the problem. Puerto Rico wanted not only help from the American institutions but also its integration as the 51th state. Again, we can see disdain from the White House. No response. And the worst issue for the island, Trump’s Tax Plan provides a new tax for every good imported from Puerto Rico.
Second, Trump’s decision to exit the Paris Climate Deal, a decision that will be in force next year. This decision exemplified Trump’s environmental policy. Among other issues, in one year, he allowed to build the pipeline from Alaska, fracking’s development and repealed the Obama Climate Action Plan, which cut emissions of polluting gases by the coal sector. One year later, the situation is worse.
Third, Trump´s decision to move the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. A decision that altered the weak balance in this complicated area of the world. Even more, this year, the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia of the United Nations published the report “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid”. It has no importance for President Trump. He promoted a new entente cordiale between Israel and Saudi Arabia that can be a huge stone in the path to a durable peace in the Middle East.
Fourth, a new very aggressive migratory policy. The wall between Mexico and the US is the cornerstone of this policy. Some days ago, he changed the deportation policy of citizens coming from El Salvador. This policy is complemented with restrictions and offenses to non-white (and poor) communities and in the limitation to access to the US for people coming from Middle East. A huge contradiction with American heritage and the own personal conditions of President Trump and his family.
Fifth, the aggressive policy against North Korea. Is clear that Kim Jun Un is provoking a global crisis. But the response by Trump provoked, also, an increase of the nuclear race in North Korea whose consequences are unclear but dangerous.
Sixth, during this year the United States exited every multilateral forum on free trade: Trans Pacific Partnership or TTIP. Right now, he is renegotiating a new agreement for commercial relationships that should substitute the NAFTA (signed by Clinton with Mexico and Canada in 1995) to the detriment of Mexico. He wants only bilateral agreements where the US was able to impose its supremacy.
Seventh, a new tax policy. New policy thinking of rich people. It is also remarkable are the attempts to derogate Obamacare, the public health policy by the former President so important in a country without any social protection.
Last but not least. Two notes about Donald Trump himself. First, his problematic situation with his companies and economic interests. We can affirm today, that he is in a huge problem of interest conflict and the response of the American institutions are quite different as compared to the past. But interests conflict in a second way: his relations with Russia that is are under scrutiny by a special prosecutor: this one can be cause of a impeachment in the future.
The second one is the feeling of misrule of its government. He needed a long time to have an executive. He rules its Presidency in a personalistic, little thoughtful and very impulsive way. The famous book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, by Michael Wolff shows a chaotic White House. It shows Trump as an egotistical, angry, uneducated man incapable of exercising reasonably his rule as President.
In my point and view, that book is not for knowing new things about Donald Trump and his Presidency. It is gossip and therefore morbid. But in fact it’s a book that reminds one of The Emperor’s New Clothes, the short tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. As in this tale, it is a story about the “naked King”, the man who inhabits in the White House. But in that case, it was the imagination of a writer. Nowadays Wolff writes about what he saw and heard in the White House. And that is a problem for the world.
