According to America expert Peter van der Heiden, Donald Trump, who was inaugurated yesterday as the 47th president of the United States, is at heart a businessman: if a deal does not yield anything for America, or for himself, he drops out. 'The Meloni's, Le Pens, Orbans and Wildersens and their supporters will greet Trump's intentions with approval.'

Four years ago, the day after MAGA supporters stormed the Capitol, I wrote an article on four years of Trump for Vox. My closing words then: “Either way, history was made yesterday, with a violent and undignified finale to an unworthy presidency from start to finish.”

‘An essential characteristic of him as a politician is his unpredictability’

I had actually wanted to write that it was the finale of Donald Trump’s political life, convinced that the American people would never want the 45th president anywhere near the White House again. But I was wrong about that – yesterday Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States, and the question now is what his return to the centre of power will mean. For America, for the world, and for us.

Closing deals

The tricky thing is that we really don’t know. We have obviously had four years of Trump already, and with any other politician, these past experiences, while not a guarantee, would at least be a decent indication of the future, but that does not apply to Trump. The essential characteristic of him as a politician is his unpredictability. It is not anchored in any tradition or ideology, at least not one that offers concrete practical tools.

One might even wonder if we are actually dealing with a politician here. Essentially, Trump is a businessman who operates transactionally: for him, everything is about making deals. If it does nothing for America (or for himself, I fear) or if it is even at the expense of the (financial) interest of the US, Trump will drop out. This is behind his threats to blow up NATO (I do not defend countries that fail to get their defence spending in order and hide under the US umbrella) and behind his feud with Canada, which would get rich on the back of the US by supplying oil.

Impeachment

To get anywhere with Trump, you need to offer him something. Ukrainian President Zelensky experienced this in Trump’s first term, when the US president made military aid conditional on Ukraine’s willingness to conduct criminal investigations into Joe Biden and his son Hunter – earning Trump his first impeachment. His feelings towards his Ukrainian counterpart are therefore not very warm, and that will certainly play into the announced reduction in aid to his country.

‘International climate policy gets serious setback’

The obvious help under President Biden (to the extent allowed by the Republicans, of course) is falling away and Zelensky will have to entice Trump to continue supporting his country. In this regard, it will not help Ukraine that the ministers and advisers that Trump has appointed to defence are total MAGA loyalists, who therefore have much the same attitude as the president himself. The only dissenting voice that might be expected comes from Marco Rubio, a more traditional, transatlantic Republican, at Foreign Affairs – who I therefore do not expect to remain minister for very long.

Borders closed

The ‘America first’ rhetoric, again prominent in Trump’s second inauguration and now supplemented by a ‘Golden Age’ for the US, is guaranteed to have consequences for the rest of the world. Trump firmly believes that everyone is systematically abusing the United States, in every area. This is most evident in the defence field: allies routinely underpay and lean, gratuitously, on US military strength (and military spending). But, for example, illegal mass immigration is also deliberately used by foreign governments to weaken America – and so the borders close.

Climate change is a hoax, also aimed at damaging America. And so Trump (‘drill baby, drill!’) is going to pump oil full blast again and halt the programme to switch to electric vehicles (what Trump’s top adviser and Tesla owner Elon Musk thinks about that remains to be seen). And Trump wants to impose such high trade tariffs that they can replace income taxes. So international climate policy is getting a serious setback (the biggest polluter is going to step it up) and the wait is for a recession, due to the trade war that will result from this kind of import policy.

Radical right

These are the ‘hard’ consequences we are guaranteed to feel, but they are not the only ones. Trump’s plans around artificial intelligence and social media, where absolute freedom comes first and censorship (as Trump calls moderation) is banned. This is going to have huge implications for us here. Until now, Europe could still – reluctantly – get the US to go along with it in curbing the dangers of unbridled new technology, but under Trump it certainly won’t succeed. Combined with his rabid rejection of anything he calls ‘woke’, this is quite a threat to the freedom and well-being of many.

Perhaps that will be the most tangible consequence of Trump’s return to office: a new agenda, new opportunities and new energy for the radical right in the rest of the world, which can agree with much, if not all, of Trump’s plans for a second term. The Meloni’s, Le Pens, Orbans and Wildersens and their supporters will greet Trump’s intentions with approval.