Victory expected to alter American global relations

It was so quiet in Clinton headquarters you could hear an email being deleted.” That was one of the trending jokes that followed the surprise Donald Trump victory on Wednesday to become the 45th US president.

But besides the jokes, and despite his unpopularity with pollsters and the media, Trump’s victory will significantly alter the world politics with his “America First”, “Make America Great Again” protectionism policy which was his campaign theme. The second central theme of his campaign was immigration restriction. Interestingly, both of these did not feature in his victory speech and that has left a frightened America.

“We and millions of Americans are fearful that he quite plainly doesn’t know what to do. He’s never held office. He did not take interest in policy. He seems to have only a passing understanding of the country’s democratic institutions. His choice of advisers has ranged from ridiculous to frightful…,” wrote Washington Post’s columnist, Jennifer Rubin.

During the campaign, Trump’s position on immigration, complete with mass deportations, scared many of the immigrants. He also constantly spoke about building a wall along the southern border with Mexico to deter the illegal migrants with a promise that Mexico will pay for the wall, 100 per cent.

“They don’t know it yet but they’re going to pay for it,” he said. It is said that Mexico would pay for the wall through increased border-crossing fees and Nafta tariffs.

Nafta is the North American Free Trade Agreement signed by Bill Clinton in 1993 and lowers trade restrictions between US, Canada, and Mexico.

Trump says that this was the “worst” trade agreement ever signed by the US and that it has killed American jobs. But critics say that this is an uninformed view of the global trade.

“Donald Trump’s argument that the American worker has been hurt, first and foremost, by two Clinton-era trade policy decisions is a vast oversimplification of the problems the US economy faces,” wrote Fortune journalist Chris Matthews.

How Mexico navigates out of that will remain to be seen and its markets collapsed after Trump’s victory.

UNMITIGATED DISASTER

Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister and professor of politics and Latin American studies at New York University told New York Times that Trump’s victory was “an unmitigated disaster… There are very few tools to fix the relationship.”

Another promise was a temporary ban on Muslim immigration as Trump wrestles with the global terrorism which he has promised to take head on. In one of his speeches, Trump said that America has to “stop political correctness… We have to get down to creating a country that’s not going to have the kind of problems that we have had with people flying planes into the World Trade Center.”

He has already promised to send ground troops and heavy bombing to defeat Isis in the Middle East without going into specifics.

Trump wants to rebuild the US military and accuses the Obama administration of cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from the national defense.

He wants to significantly increase the size of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and US Marine Corps.

Another of the global fears is that Mr Trump will dismantle traditional US commitments and alliances and stop costly US engagements abroad. But it is the rise of neo-nationalism, triggered by his victory that might see other leaders try to mimic Mr Trump’s campaign.

At the centre of his foreign policy is a new alliance with Russia — he regards President Putin as a hero — and wants to use his help to ease tensions in Syria and elsewhere.

On China, Mr Trump regards the country as one of the US’s top adversaries, especially on economic policy. He has promised to label China as a currency manipulator, crack down on hacking, and threaten the Chinese government with steep tariffs if it doesn’t agree to rewrite trade agreements. He has also promised to expand the US’s military presence in the South China Sea which could trigger some diplomatic upheavals.

It is, however, the rolling back of most of the policies that were enacted by Barack Obama that will make the world see Mr Trump differently.

“We know Mr Trump is the most unprepared president-elect in modern history. We know that by words and actions, he has shown himself to be temperamentally unfit to lead a diverse nation of 320 million people. We know he has threatened to prosecute and jail his political opponents, and he has said he would curtail the freedom of the press. We know he lies without compunction,” wrote the New York Times in an editorial. It has backed Mr Hillary Clinton’s bid.

But it is the rise of neo-nationalism, triggered by his victory that might see other leaders try to mimic Mr Trump’s campaign. The world order will no doubt change.

“The election of Donald Trump to the presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism,” concluded the Washington Post.