Trump triumphed in a hotly contested election; What should your new mandate look like on issues such as the economy, abortion, international relations and democracy?
Donald Trump is the winner of the presidential elections (follow our live here) in the United States, becoming the 47th president of the country.
Trump’s victory was confirmed as soon as the states of Wisconsin and Alaska released the final results of the count, giving the Republican 13 additional seats, guaranteeing 279 seats and a majority in the electoral college.
Anticipating the publication of the final result, Donald Trump held a thank you speech to the voters on Wednesday morning (11/06), declaring himself the winner.
Speaking at a convention center in Florida, Trump said it was an extraordinary honor to receive from the American people the powerful mandate that made him the 47th president of the United States, after having been the 45th.
Trump’s victory became more evident after the confirmation of the favorable result for the Republicans Key states of Pennsylvania and Georgiaconsidered indefinite in the latest polls before the elections.
Democratic candidate Kamala Harris had won just 223 seats at the time of this report’s release.
There were still 4 states left to confirm, for a total of 37 seats in the electoral college. Of those, Trump leads by a comfortable margin in 3, which would give the Republican an additional 32 seats in the Electoral College.
But what can we expect from Trump’s second term as president?
His first term, between 2017 and 2020, could be a good indicator of what his second term, which begins January 20, 2025, will be like.
Trump is expected to “pick up where he left off” in 2020, at the end of his first presidential term.
One unfinished project is closing the U.S. southern border and building a wall, a policy that marked his first term.
At the time, he failed to get congressional approval for the funding needed to build the wall as planned.
Now the Republicans have won the Senate and can also secure a majority in the House of Representatives (at the time of publication of this article, the Republicans were leading the House with 200 of the 218 seats needed to obtain a majority), giving Trump a comfortable advantage for the approval of his projects such as the construction of the wall, one of his electoral promises.
Mass deportations
It is also likely that Trump will gain congressional support for his plan to carry out a mass deportation of immigrants who do not have visas to live in the United States.
There were about 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States in 2022, according to Pew Research Center estimates, although Trump claimed throughout the campaign that the number would be much higher.
Experts have warned that any mass deportation would be costly and difficult to implement and could have negative effects on some sectors of the economy where immigrant labor plays a key role.
Lower taxes for rich people and businesses
When Trump accepted the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in July, he promised to “immediately end the devastating inflation crisis, lower interest rates and lower the cost of energy.”
He wants to extend the tax cuts enacted in 2017, which expire in 2025.
It was the largest tax reform in decades, which Trump said aimed to simplify the tax code and promote growth and investment.
However, the largest cuts benefited corporations and the wealthy, something Democrats wanted to reverse.
Trump is also expected to further reduce taxes on corporate profits, to 15%, and eliminate taxes on tips and Social Security payments for retirees.
More taxes for foreign products
Trump also wants to expand oil drilling activities because he believes it would reduce energy costs, although analysts are skeptical.
It also said it plans to impose taxes of 10% to 20% on most foreign products, with imports from China taking a 60% cut.
Many economists have warned, however, that such measures will ultimately be paid for by American consumers in the form of higher prices.
In his first term, Trump waged a trade war with Beijing, accusing China of unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft.
Relations with Congress
However, the composition of the US Congress will undoubtedly determine whether Trump will be able to carry out his promised policies as desired. If the latest results confirm the observed trends, it could be that Republicans take control of both houses, giving Trump a comfortable mandate in relation to the approval of presidential projects.
It is worth remembering that at the beginning of Trump’s first term as president, between 2017 and 2019, Republicans also had control of the Senate and the House.
But at the time, as a “newbie” in Washington, Trump was considered unaware of how Congress works and this hindered his ability to use the Republican advantage of being in the White House and having a majority in Congress to achieve major political victories. political analysts said at the time.
If Republican majorities in both houses of Congress are confirmed in the 2024 elections, the Trump administration will likely pursue legislation that includes support for, among other things, border security, completion of the wall and tax cuts.
Ban on abortion
The repeal of abortion rights in the United States is one of the greatest political achievements of the Republican agenda carried out by Donald Trump during his first administration, but during the 2024 campaign it became a sort of electoral minefield for him.
During his first term, Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion, the 1973 decision known as Roe v. Wade. Wading.
This new conservative majority revoked the right to abortion at a federal level in 2022 (in force since 1973), which was precisely one of the objectives that the Republican politician had set himself with these appointments.
This change had consequences. There are currently 14 states in which there is a total or almost total ban on abortion and there are three other states in which it is only permitted before the sixth week of pregnancy, a period in which it is common for women not to even discover that they are pregnant. pregnant.
Because of these bans, there have been cases of women dying because doctors did not provide them with the necessary health care, for fear of criminal prosecution.
These measures have led to political setbacks for Republicans, who have lost several local elections since 2022, even in traditionally conservative states where a majority of voters believed abortion restrictions were excessive.
This forced Trump to seek some kind of balance during the campaign.
During the September televised debate with Kamala Harris, she said she would not sign a federal abortion ban since “there’s no reason to sign the ban because we got what everyone wanted,” in her words.
He criticized Florida legislation banning abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, but also said he opposed a ballot initiative to restore abortion rights in that state.
While it may seem that his position as president is an unknown quantity due to this electoral moderation, the stance of nominating conservative names for positions in the judiciary and public bodies should continue in full swing, as demonstrated by the so-called Project 2025.
More power to the president: Project 2025
Called Project 2025 and prepared by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the project is a plan of more than 900 pages that envisages a series of changes in the structure of the American government that could affect the country well beyond Trump’s four years in office.
The plan involves the dismissal of thousands of career public employees, the increase in positions of trust – i.e. those filled with political appointments -, the expansion of the president’s powers, the dismantling of the Department of Education (the equivalent of a ministry) and other federal government agencies, in addition to tax cuts.
The Heritage Foundation released its plan in April last year.
Project 2025 proposes to place the entire federal bureaucracy – including independent agencies like the Justice Department – directly under the president’s control.
This controversial idea is known as the “unitary executive theory,” and its proponents claim it would speed up decision-making.
The plan also proposes to eliminate job security for thousands of public employees, who could be replaced by political appointees.
The document classifies the FBI as “a bloated, arrogant and increasingly lawless organization” – and calls for drastic reforms in this and other federal agencies.
Critics of the project argue that it would politicize areas that should be technical and would expand the president’s power too much, threatening the balance between the three powers and democracy itself.
“Isolationism and unilateralism”
In foreign policy, Trump’s second term will likely resemble his first, distancing the United States from conflicts elsewhere in the world.
He said he would end the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours” through a negotiated deal with Russia, a move that Democrats say would strengthen Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel but has said little about how he would end the war in Gaza.
“I see Trump’s presidency as marked by isolationism and unilateralism that offers little other than a deepening of global instability,” says Martin Griffiths, a conflict mediator and former UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency response coordinator.
Jamie Shea, a former NATO official and now professor of strategy and security at the University of Exeter, believes President Trump’s first-term style was disruptive, “but in terms of substance, there was a lot of continuity.”
“He did not withdraw from NATO, he did not withdraw US troops from Europe, and he was the first US president to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine.”
Donald Trump is the second president in the country’s history to serve two non-consecutive terms.
The previous one was Grover Cleveland, who was in office from 1885 to 1889, failed to be re-elected and four years later obtained a new mandate, which he held between 1893 and 1897.
Source: Terra
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