Key Points
- Donald Trump will be sworn in as President of the United States on January 20.
- He has taken a tough stance against immigration.
- Trump wants to impose tariffs on all imports of American goods.
When Donald Trump was president from 2017 to 2021, he was widely seen as impulsive and unpredictable.
So it is difficult to predict what his next term will look like, but we can analyze the comments he made during the election campaign.
He said he would be “a dictator…but only on day one,” during an Iowa town hall event with Fox News host Sean Hannity in December.
It is still unclear to what extent the US Congress will implement Trump’s wishes.
Republicans scored 52-48 although 51 of the 435 races for the House of Representatives remained uncontested.
It could still face other obstacles, including the Senate rule known as the filibuster, which requires 60 of its 100 members to agree to pass most legislation, a threshold the new Senate will not clear not with Republican votes alone.
You are hired
Thousands of government positions will have to be filled by the president-elect at the start of his term, and he will appoint many people himself.
He has promised roles in his administration to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a major Trump donor, as well as
We know that JD Vance will be Trump’s vice president, but it’s unclear who he will choose for other important cabinet roles.
Donald Trump’s views on immigration
Trump has taken a tough stance on immigration, an important issue for American voters.
He promised a mass expulsion of all undocumented migrants if elected, a proposal criticized by both human rights organizations and economists.
During the Trump falsely claimed: “In Springfield, they eat dogs. The people who came in eat the cats. They eat the pets of the people who live there. »
He has sinceregarding Haitian immigrants in Ohio City. There have been no credible reports of Haitians eating pets, and Ohio officials — including Republicans — have repeatedly said the story is false.
Donald Trump and the border wall
Part of Trump’s immigration plan would be to continue building a wall along the border with Mexico.
The length of the wall he built during his first term is disputed: Trump says it measured 700 km.
But according to a BBC analysis of Customs and Border Protection data, Trump only added 15 miles of wall where none already existed, although he rebuilt existing barriers and built hundreds of kilometers of secondary barriers.
When President Joe Biden took office, he immediately halted construction of the border wall.
The American economy
Trump has made tariffs and tax cuts key elements of his economic pitch to voters. He said he would cut federal spending, which Republicans blame for soaring consumer prices, and reduce federal regulations.
Trump said he would impose tariffs of 10 to 20 percent on all products imported into the United States and tariffs of 60 percent on all Chinese products.
Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told Reuters that politicians had been working with Trump for months to ensure they could get going with “a really aggressive first 100-day package.” , bold and conservative”.
He said they aimed to recreate the economic growth experienced at the start of Trump’s first term, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and led to a sharp decline in the economy.
Republicans cite the significant increase in federal tax revenue since 2017 as evidence that Trump’s tax cuts have increased revenue and say his current agenda will do the same thing.
But the revenue increase they cite is in nominal revenues, driven by inflation and an expanding economy. This turns into a decline when you take into account the size of the economy.
Abortion
Democrats made reproductive rights and improve access to abortion
Trump said the issue should be left to each state and that he does not support a national ban on the procedure.
He supports exceptions for rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother and has said he would not block access to abortion drugs. He also expressed support for in vitro fertilization, or IVF, which some abortion supporters want to ban.
Changes in foreign policy
While the war in Ukraine remains a marginal issue for voters, Trump says Russia would never have invaded the country if he were president and that he could end the war in just one day.
“This is a war that must end and we are going to end this war. I will try, and I believe I can, to end it as president-elect. In other words, before we even take power. We have to stop people from dying,” he said on the campaign trail last month.
Trump has said he will end this war quickly, although it’s unclear exactly how.
During his last term, he was staunchly pro-Israel and his first government took a tough stance against Iran, implementing what was then dubbed a “maximum pressure” campaign to heavily sanction the country and deprive its economy of the capacity to grow.
Reversing Joe Biden’s climate initiatives
The president-elect is expected to roll back work on Biden’s aggressive climate change agenda, which aimed to reduce fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions.
Trump has pledged to save the nation’s coal-fired power plants and increase oil and natural gas production.
With additional reporting from Reuters
