Updated January 30. With an exceptional flurry of executive orders in his first week in office, causing an unprecedented overload in the news cycle, Trump is doing exactly what he said he would do to achieve MAGA. Expect serious negative impacts in America and the rest of the world, as what happens in a country as large and economically powerful as America doesn’t stay inside its borders.
And expect chaos.
Here’s a rundown of the most striking measures Trump has put in place so far:
- Pardon the 1500 people convicted of assaulting the Capitol on January 6, 2020, thus setting the stage for more attempts to disrupt what is a fundamental democratic process; this seriously damages America’s image as a democratic leader and model to follow, but for Trump, it’s a useful insurance policy against any future election reversals: Should he decide to run for a third term (and he can, Roosevelt did) and then lose, his fan base will happily pick up arms to fight for re-instating him, knowing that once he’s back in the White House, he will pardon them;
- Boosting America’s fossil fuels industries and rust-belt manufacturing by declaring a “national energy emergency”: turning back the support Biden had given to the green economy, replacing it with “drill, baby, drill” and removing all Federal environmental protection regulations;
- Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, World Health Organization, and WTO is probably next; and from the OECD minimum tax on multinationals and forcing Canada and Mexico to re-open the trade treaty that replaced NAFTA in Trump’s first presidency by threatening 25% tariffs as soon as Feb.1st;
- Planning to deport immigrants and close borders to everyone, including refugees, in defiance of the Geneva Conventions;
- Attempting to “securitize” North America by taking over Greenland, seen as a lucrative gateway to Arctic resources, Panama, allegedly under China’s control, and increase Taiwan’s defense spending, perceived as insufficient
- Removing controls over AI and crypto: Promising to be a “crypto president,” claiming this gives free rein to innovation, Trump lured the Silicon Valley moguls away from the Democrats and obtained campaign funding support from a slew of tech titans, notably from Elon Musk and his X platform that was turned over to Trump’s MAGA message, but also Amazon’s Bezos who silenced the Washington Post, and Meta’s Zuckerberg, who’s now ended the fact-checking system on Facebook, aligning it with X’s approach.
These measures attempt to destroy the post-WWII international order, replacing it with the 19th-century model of sovereign states.
From Trump’s standpoint, this makes total sense: The U.S. is economically and militarily the strongest country in the world, and on a one-to-one basis, it will win every negotiation. International organizations can only hobble it and should be done away with, starting with the United Nations, the OECD, and perhaps even NATO.
Moving out of the World Health Organization, accusing it of mishandling the Covid pandemic, is probably Trump’s most dangerous move: Should another pandemic occur, millions could die, not only in America but everywhere, as American withdrawal from WHO is sure to gut its capabilities, both in terms of prevention and early warning and in terms of coordinating the necessary global response.
The WHO responded, expressing hope that the U.S. would reconsider. Several public health experts and international organizations have also expressed concerns about the potential negative consequences of this move.
Finally, consider that Trump is the first US President openly (even brazenly) supported by both tech and oil sector billionaires. The show Musk put on in support of Trump, including resorting to a “Nazi salute,” was unforgettable:
This opens up a new oligarchic era in American politics, reminiscent of the golden age of the Robber Barons. So expect a further boost in the fossil fuels industries —with clearly catastrophic fallout on the climate and the environment— and in AI and social media.
In turn, this could mean fewer Americans reading investigative, independent journalism while fake news and conspiracy theories so dear to Trump will be booming.
What MAGA requires to make it happen
MAGA policies are so revolutionary and demand such drastic changes in society and the economy that to implement them successfully, a top-to-bottom overhaul in the Federal government would be required. And that is precisely what Project 2025 called for. A recent TIME analysis found that nearly two-thirds of Trump’s executive actions are “mirror or partially mirror” proposals from Project 2025.
Project 2025 is a plan developed by the Heritage Foundation to ensure the Federal administration is at the sole service of the President. “Gutting government” by reclassifying workers and mass dismissals is the core idea propounded by Russell Vought, who served as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under Trump’s first term.
So, what Trump is engaged in now is merely phase 1 of Project 2025. In phase 2, the Federal government should be staffed exclusively by civil servants loyal to Trump and fully supporting MAGA goals.
Will this happen? Trump is certainly on a roll. On January 15, even before entering the White House, he optimistically announced on Truth Social (his media platform): “… I will create the External Revenue Service to collect our tariffs, duties, and all revenue that comes from foreign sources. We will begin charging those that make money off of us with trade, and they will start paying, finally, their fair share.”
Once in the Oval Office, he quickly got to work, either pausing parts of the government, like stopping foreign aid, or lopping off areas of the government that don’t fit into his MAGA agenda, which is set to do away with “woke capitalism.”
That means he is doing away with concerns for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors; in short, every federal policy and government support to encourage the economy to go green and become sustainable will be stopped.
For example, consider government oversight to ensure transparency and curb corruption (the G in ESG). This has led Trump to happily engage in his favorite TV show-style pastime: firing people. He recently fired the Inspector Generals of at least 14 major Federal agencies. But, as reported by the Washington Post, this is a move that “appeared to violate federal law, which requires Congress to receive 30 days’ notice of any intent to fire a Senate-confirmed inspector general.”
Diversity and gender equity (termed D.E.I.) was also an immediate target (the S in ESG). The objective is to remove non-binary and “other” genders from the Federal bureaucracy (because in Trump’s America, people are only male and female, full stop). To make sure it all happens as planned, Federal workers are told to “inform on colleagues trying to dodge D.E.I. crackdown.”
Curbing environmental protection is also in the works (the E in ESG), and Trump announced that he would soon sign an executive order to fundamentally change or get rid of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency which, he says, “has been a disaster”.
If you don’t protect nature, you won’t protect humans. So it comes as no surprise that in Trump’s America, public health protection is to be curtailed to allow for what he optimistically calls “vaccine freedom.” Note that’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s term—Kennedy is slated to become the new Health Secretary next week, and Americans will have to consider whether or not to continue sending their kids to schools where classmates are unvaccinated and therefore a potential health threat.
Pausing government services, curtailing them, sending federal workers home on leave, and encouraging them to snitch on their colleagues create a dark climate of fear—similar to what you find in dictatorships like Russia or China.
How far can Trump go?
As we all remember, Trump badly shook American democracy in his first term but didn’t bring it down. Now, he claims he and his backers have learned from their mistakes and will do a “beautiful” job this time, but chances are it’s still not going to happen.
First, for the usual reasons: lawsuits, legal pushback, and the fact that the United States is a federal state, State governments are notoriously independent of Washington. America is a country awash in laws and regulations both at the federal and state level. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has a strong presence across the country and can efficiently engage in lawsuits and advocacy and provide legal assistance wherever needed.
Second, there are limits to what Trump can accomplish because, in many ways, “the economy trumps Trump”— the words of Mark Maslin, an Earth-system scientist at University College London. And, as Maslin points out, investments in green technologies are set to continue simply because renewable energy sources such as solar and wind are cheaper.
To go against economic history is a losing battle, and for someone like Trump, who purports to hate “losers,” his quixotic battles are somewhat surprising. Nobody thinks of Trump as a Don Quixotte battling windmills —a hugely romantic, endearing figure— but, in a way, that is what Trump is for his fan base, who sees him as a brave warrior fighting the evil of “woke capitalism.”
Third, Trump’s posturing and bluster suggest that his roar is worse than his bite. For instance, there’s every reason to believe that threatening Canada and Mexico, the US’s closest and most important trading partners, with tariffs is merely a way to cow them into submission. The threat will bring them to the negotiating table to review the trade treaty so painfully crafted with Trump in his first term and give the US even better terms.
This also means that many of his promises cannot and will not be fulfilled. For example, during his election campaign, he claimed he could end the Ukraine war within 24 hours of being in office. Now he says (more realistically) that it will take six months.
Reality is catching up with Trump, which is probably good.
Correction: At the start of Trump’s second week, reality appeared like it had not yet caught up with Trump. But 48 hours later, it had. Here is what happened:
Monday, January 27, the White House Budget Office, with a memo ordering a pause to all grants and loans disbursed by the Federal government, put on hold trillions of dollars, creating massive confusion among those targeted, from schools to the scientific community (anyone or any program connected to DEI or Green Deal was out).
On Tuesday, January 28, a District judge paused the order.
On Wednesday, January 29, the order was rescinded by the White House Budget Office.
That’s what chaos in government looks like.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of impakter.com — Cover Photo Credit ACLU article (2019): Trump Administration Seeks to Stifle Protests Near White House and on National Mall going against the First Amendment Creator: Ted Eytan, Creative Commons
