All about Trump

Published On: November 7, 2016 12:25 AM NPT By: Sukhdev Shah


Although Trump is fighting a regular election as a nominee of the Republican Party, he is not considered a standard bearer of the party
This week Tuesday (Wednesday in Nepal), America will vote for a new President, who is elected every four years. A new President is allowed to serve a second four-year term but the constitution prohibits further terms.

In the current election cycle, the contest is between two major party candidates—Donald Trump from the Republican Party and Hillary Clinton from the Democratic Party. There are other candidates from smaller parties but their electoral support remains miniscule.

The most recent polls measuring popularity of candidates among the voters show a tight race between the two candidates, characterized as a toss-up—an equal chance of either of them winning but most forecasters give more weight to a Clinton win, making Hillary Clinton the first women President in history, and the first wife-husband (a former President) team to occupy the White House. 

Unlike Hillary Clinton, Trump is not a career politician. All his life he has been a businessman and now a wealthy New York real estate developer. Clinton’s political career, on the other hand, spans over three decades, including eight years as First Lady in the role of President Clinton’s wife.

Although Trump is fighting a regular election as a nominee of the Republican Party, he is not considered a standard bearer of the party. In many ways, Trump is his own candidate, carrying his own agenda, and fighting his lone battle. Trump has devised his own agenda for the election and so, in effect, he is presenting himself as a Third Party candidate.

In large part, Trump’s personalization of his message and his campaign has alienated him from a large chunk of Republican base and from Republican leadership, who has chosen to stay away from the election and, worse, has denounced Trump as a phony candidate and a nonbeliever in what the Republican Party stands for. Many of the Republican leaders have come out against his candidacy and have made statements that Trump is leading the party in a wrong direction, risking a humiliating defeat at the polls.

This kind of isolation of Trump from his party base and his outright rejection by party bosses must tell a story—what has turned Donald Trump into a pariah like character in a party now he leads, even when he has won the party’s nomination fair and square, getting the largest number of votes in the primary election than any Republican candidate in history.

Donald trump is then not a regular party guy or a regular politician fighting to get elected. Rather, his election fight represents a movement—more likely a revolution—to change the direction of the country by doing things that have not been done before or spoken on public platforms.

Trump campaign’s signature agenda concerns immigration that has really transformed the country’s demographics from being predominantly white to now just marginally white. Trump’s opening crusade against immigration has been his remarks about Mexican immigrants whom he has labeled murderers and rapists, most of it carried out by those entering the country illegally. Trump regularly cites the number of Mexican immigrants who are in the country illegally at 11 million and proposes all of them to be deported—lock, stock, and barrel.

Trump has also proposed “extreme vetting” of legal immigrants, especially from countries or regions that are prone to terrorism. In the extreme, Trump has proposed placing a temporary ban on Muslim immigration until the time a consensus is reached on how to handle such immigration that experience shows constitutes a terrorism risk. Trump’s discriminatory immigration stance has earned him a load of derogatory labels, including being a racist and bigot.

An equally or more incendiary immigration control proposal brought about by Trump is that of building a wall on the US-Mexico border to deter illegal immigrants from Mexico and regional countries and force Mexico to pay for the cost of building the wall. 

The other revolutionary idea Trump has brought up is that against free trade and, in particular, keeping the US out of regional trade deals and placing restrictions on trade and investment that he considers necessary to safeguard American industries hurt by free trade and off-shoring of US industries.

The last of the major Trump’s proposal is the ending of America’s commitments under defense pacts which were agreed upon during the post-war period. Trump’s argument is that these defense pacts are now outdated and, if they still are needed, those countries enjoying US protection should pay for it.

By their nature, Trump’s proposals like these have been controversial, to the extent that many of them have been disowned by his own party. Critics have branded Trump as a racist for remarks about Muslims and Mexicans, and his proposal for inhuman treatments of terrorists and their families as violation of international human rights.

As for his worldview, he has openly praised Russian leader Vladimir Putin as a strong leader, compared to President Obama who he sees as weak. Generally, Trump’s praise for Putin has made people doubt his commitment for democratic values and the rule of law and his tolerance for political opponents. Given his desire to be a strong leader, Trump is criticized for acting like a dictator, should he win the election. His dictatorial instincts, critics allege, will also mean a weakening of American commitment for human rights and democratic politics at home and abroad.

These are the matters of serious concerns about Trump’s leadership of America and about his handling of presidency. But his key supporters and Trump himself view these criticisms as far-fetched and conjectural, designed to distract the public from his signature campaign slogan of “Making America Great Again.” Trump sees America facing existential threats from open borders, open trade, and unfair trade practices that are eroding American values, debasing its culture, and destroying its economy. The only way for America to stop this kind of deterioration would be to place restrictions on movements of goods, people, and capital to enter the country and closely monitor those movements.

What worries Trump and his supporters most is the sidelining of the country’s white population by “people of color,” that largely means the recent influx of immigrants from South America, Asia and Middle East. At this time, whites make up 62 percent of US’s 320 million population. Research predicts that by 2032, people of color will account for 53 percent of US electorate and, if such trends continue, the share of white population in the country will decline to just a third. That sort of outlook will make America an immensely diverse country for sure, but its traditional values will be lost, relegating the white population to a minority status.

Trump has been called a racist and nativist and his slogan of Making America Great Again an attempt to turn back history to the days of oppression and slavery. This may amount to being over-critical of Trump’s intentions, but the truth remains that, whoever gets elected President on November 8, the next President will have to tackle the immigration and trade issues in a serious manner for keeping America a distinct country and give meaning to ‘American exceptionalism.’ 

The author teaches economics at universities in the US

 sshah1983@hotmail.com


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