Will Donald Trump be able to restore USA ‘to-Greatness’?

Donald Trump’s ride to the White House for a 2nd term is based on his MAGA campaign and his vow to restore the USA ‘to ­greatness’ – Just how will he achieve this goal

Donald Trump, the 47th president of the US who has staged a comeback as Arnold Schwarzenegger says, “I will be back”, returns to the White House for a 2nd term of four years of presidency from 2025 to 2029 with a vow to restore America to its pristine heights and repair a broken economy led by Biden, his successor and predecessor. Trump was the 45th president, Biden 46th and Trump again 47th.
Trump, who wasn’t at his best throughout his campaign with sunken shoulders and a body language that showed he was not confident of defeating the new star on the firmament Kamala Harris, seems to have changed after his narrow escape from two assassination attempts. ‘Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason. And that reason was to save our country and to restore our country to greatness,’ he said.
But just how will he achieve this ambitious goal?
Now that the point and his voters are going to be looking for throughout his 2nd term. His first term wasn’t too good. In 2016 he left an economy devastated by the pandemic and his mishandling of the Covid 19 scourge that left 500,000 dead and five million infected. Biden inherited that broken economy and took two long years to bring it back to normalcy.
Now Trump says he inherited a broken economy, an economy that was tanking, which was not true at all. Biden inherited the broken economy from him, and he and his Fed Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell fought a relentless battle to rein in inflation to 2.4% by the end of the term through an aggressive 52 -week interest hike that had the investors on the edge and the stock markets shaky.
But by the end of 2023, inflation was down, and job creation was at its peak at the end of Bidens 4-year term with a whopping 22.1 million jobs added, 60,000 jobs on the average per month, beating Barack Obamas record of 30,000 jobs each month, and Trump’s own 40,000 jobs per month.

On the economy, though he told his supporters, do you want another four years of price rises of Biden and winning the election? The price of gas has come down from the pandemic high of $5 per gallon to now $2.5 per gallon. Grocery prices are still high not because of Biden’s rule but because of the wars in the middle east and the Russia Ukraine war which have completely disrupted the demand supply chain of all materials from food to raw materials for infrastructure that runs the economy of a country.
The president-elect has made more than 40 distinct promises on what he’d get done just on Day One of his new administration, on themes ranging from slashing government spending to transgender issues, and education to energy and immigration.

So, what will the notoriously unpredictable Trump prioritize?
Donald Trump points his finger following early results from the 2024 US presidential election in Palm Beach County Convention Centre.
Trump says he will usher in a golden era of economy for the country under his next four-year reign. America had its best Golden Hours under Bill Clinton, thanks to his labour secretary Robert Reich, classmate of his wife Hilary Clinton, when daily wages soared to $20 an hour, now $7 to $10 an hour, ever since George W Bush took over from him, the middle class was a happy lot. Can he perform the Clinton Magic, a person he hates most?
Mass migrant deportations
Trump has pledged to close the US-Mexico border on the first day of his presidency, before carrying out a round-up and deportation of migrants who entered the country illegally. This will cost the exchequer something like $10 billion at the rate of one million a year to sustain the momentum. He has said he could use the military to do this, and he’s separately pledged that any migrants who kill American citizens will face the death penalty.
Migrants who crossed into the US from Mexico pass under concertina wire along the Rio Grande River. Critics say he is as yet unclear whether he intends to include all 13 million suspected illegal migrants or simply the criminal ones and warn that deporting the former would be legally and logistically impossible – even if polls show many Americans support it. The American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group, says that – at an estimated $968billion – it would also be prohibitively expensive.

America First foreign policy
Trump’s philosophy of protecting American interests first must always determine US foreign and economic policy is not going to bring any good for other countries from the EU to South China including China and India from where America makes most of its imports. Trump has said he would slap 10 to 20% tariffs on all goods coming into America from other countries and would be very steep at 60% for goods flowing from China, its top trading partner with which the US has on a rough estimate a $1 trillion deficit in trade and balance of payments. Trump has complained for years about allies freeloading off US military spending and has threatened to pull his country out of NATO, which would be disastrous. Fearing Trump’s comeback, months ago, EU nations got together to draft a plan of unity to have each other’s back in a crisis such as the one of Russia and China unabashedly displaying signs of aggression in eastern Europe and south China seas.
Trump had threatened countries that don’t spend 2% of its GDP on defence would not be supported by the United States. Now that he enjoys a 2nd non-consecutive term, he will put the plan into action. He hates the UN and calls its climate change program a hoax. He will not fund the UN or NATO if he can help it.

In line with his determination to end US involvement with overseas conflicts, Trump – who rarely misses a chance to praise Vladimir Putin – has claimed he could end the war in Ukraine in just a day, reportedly by forcing President Zelensky to accept terms favourable to Russia. That is making Zelensky concede territories in Ukraine for which the Russian forces are fighting quite reluctantly for over two years now as they have become war weary and want to go back to their families.
Experts fear that deserting Ukraine and imposing crippling tariffs on China could prompt Beijing to invade Taiwan, a US ally. Because unlike Biden had warned China against any such plans as Taiwan would have America’s back, Trump may look the other way.
Putin has no immediate plans to congratulate Trump on his victory, according to the Kremlin
Donald Trump attends a bilateral meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping during the G20 leaders’ summit in Osaka, Japan on June 29, 2019
Need Text Conspiracist health Tsar
Trump’s mooted picks to help him achieve his ambitions in the Oval Office don’t come more bizarre than his pledge to reward Robert F Kennedy Jr for ending his own independent bid for the presidency last month by installing him in a key health role, the Daily mail analyst wrote. ‘Bobby’s going to pretty much do what he wants. I want him to do something important for our country. It makes people healthier,’ said Trump.
Bobby, a nephew of ex-president John F Kennedy and a former heroin addict, wants to remove fluoride from drinking water, calling it an ‘industrial waste’ linked to cancer, arthritis, thyroid disease and IQ loss. He also believes other health-related conspiracy theories, notably that childhood vaccines cause conditions such as autism. He’s described vaccinations as a ‘holocaust’.
Winning election means ‘get-out-of-jail-free card’.
There is a very personal pressing agenda and reason for Trump wanting to become president again– he’s a convicted felon who is desperate to avoid going to prison. His best chance of doing that was winning another White House term just before he was due to be sentenced later this month for 34 felony convictions related to falsifying business records overpaying Stormy Daniels hush money shortly before the 2016 election. He also faces three other criminal trials, in which he denies wrongdoing. He faces 91 counts of felony in election interference including a conspiracy to overthrow people’s verdict of 2020.
The American constitution says a sitting president cannot be prosecuted and so people like Jack Smith, special counsel prosecuting Trump on taking home classified documents including top secret CIA and FBI files home instead of handing them over to the National Archives as is the protocol, has to begin unwinding his case. Trump can pardon himself, but he cannot recuse himself from the case of death threat his supporters had issued to court official in Atlanta and he has and his 10 co-defendants including the former mayor of New York and legal counsel Rudy Guiliani face under the RICO act (Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization). This law was applied to the gangster Al Capone in the 40s in Chicago. It’s been used against cartel and NARCO kings, but never to a former US president.
Since this is not a federal case the prosecution would continue but, since he has won Georgia, he could use his presidential powers to change the judge and jury prosecuting him and replace them with flexible ones.
Now he could attempt to pardon himself, a process that legal experts say is technically possible – not least because six of the nine Supreme Court justices are Republican nominees. Trump’s election victory, said a former New York prosecutor, is his ‘get-out-of-jail-free card’.
Trump’s cases brought by Jack Smith are set to be closed before he enters the White House
$2 trillion budget cut
Economists agree the US needs to tackle its daunting $35trillion national debt and Trump is expected to put the job in the hands of two billionaires – Tesla founder and X /Twitter owner Elon Musk and Wall Street hedge fund manager John Paulson, tipped to become his Treasury Secretary. Trump has pledged to make Musk, who spent more than $132million on his election campaign, the head of a new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’. China will work with Trump… but fears mount re-election could spark trade-war hitting US jobs

Musk has claimed he could cut at least $2trillion from the government’s annual spending (which was more than $6 trillion in 2023) but gave no details of how. Financial analysts have claimed the scope of Musk’s planned cuts is deranged, with one describing them as ‘crazy, nuts proposals’.

Civil service slashed
Trump has pledged to slash America’s total of two million civil servants, whom he claims are ‘destroying this country’ and are ‘crooked’ and ‘dishonest’. Presidents usually leave career civil servants alone but Trump plans to reintroduce an executive order called ‘Schedule F’ that would empower him to sack 50,000 and replace them with loyal conservatives.
Opponents claim crucial areas such as food and workplace safety, and clean air and water, would be jeopardized by unqualified people taking over supervisory roles.
Trump is also determined to interfere heavily in education. He’s vowed to cut federal funding of schools that teach subjects he doesn’t like such as sex education, which he regards as fuelling ‘transgender insanity’.
Trump’s re-election will have implications affecting China, Taiwan, Russia and Ukraine.

Trade tariffs war
Economists and political critics say his tariff policy against south Asian countries like China and India, its biggest trading partners, was insane ( 60% tariff on Chinese goods) as it could trigger trade war that could also include European countries on whom he wants to slap 20% tariffs. He feels EU countries and south Asian nations are freeloading off America.

Trump’s tariffs would be a disastrous policy for the US, because it would push up prices and increase inflation hitting the consumers in the country, increasing their family budgets. Trump has said he wants to impose a 60 per cent tariff on Chinese goods and as much as a 20 per cent tariff on goods from all other countries – in all, some $3trillion of annual imports to the US.
Trump, who’s boasted that ‘trade wars are good’, claims this will protect American jobs, but this confrontational approach is likely to backfire badly. Other countries would respond with tariffs of their own and it’s forecast that the resulting trade war could lower UK growth by 0.7 per cent and 0.5 per cent in the first two years.