Donald Trump: Crippled Presidency even before the Very Start
Rajai R. Masri
Sunday January 22, 2017
Donald Trump’s Presidency is already not to a good start. Rather, with women marching in mass demonstrations across many American cities and across major world capitals only one day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, protesting and vowing to actively resist Trump’s national programs and policies, Trump’s audacious initiatives and lofty ambitions of an “America Great Again” look doomed to failures before the start.
Princeton University Noble laureate Professor Paul Krugman forewarned presciently in his column in The New York Times as a syndicate columnist, more than ten months ago, long before the ongoing Primaries showing any signs of potential winners, that Republican Contenders unlike Democrats tend to skim over the facts avoiding addressing substantive relevant issues and intelligent arguments in the advancing of their platforms. Professor Krugman aptly elaborated on Republican Contenders techniques of resorting to simplistic common man rhetoric that arouses the attention and find appeal with the general masses. Donald Trump proved a master of Reality Show techniques selling simplistic empty promises to mostly simple-minded crowds. That was then; now, it is the time of reckoning coming to haunt the American people.
Undoubtedly, with a terrible showing at the polls of the lowest ever approving rate of a new President on inaugural day, Donald Trump, as all significantly compounded with the Women’s March of yesterday, is into an uphill battle to prevail and succeed on delivering on his ambitiously ridiculous programs as could become fairly apparent in the coming months.
Besides the highly controversial nature of Donald Trump’s ambitious programs, lacking full support among many Republicans in the Legislature made the more certain with the huge demonstrations in the Women’s marches yesterday, Donald Trump’s presidency and success of pushing forward towards implementation his programs now will start facing true difficulties inviting further divisions, confusions and wide disruptions. Democratic legislators are equally emboldened by the Women’s March as many of them will start wearing the hat of activists cementing increasingly closer ties with the grassroots American electrotates.
Suddenly, everyone is speaking loud across the aisles, “from where will Trump come-up with the money to spend on his ambitious programs?”
Yes, Donald Trump won the popular votes with a very slim margin; now, with the reality show is over and he is now the President of the United States of America, it is suddenly dawning on surprised American Statesmen that Trump’s promises and call for action cannot hold water; they are not adding up. With a deeply divided nation, it is so difficult to bring to fruition outlandish programs in the absence of a wide consensus. Rather, dissent and continuous disruptive protests seem likely the order of the day for the foreseeable future all along the first term in office of Donald Trump.
Here are some of the apparently self-conflicting projects that Donald Trump is trying to put on a fast track for implementation in the hope he could be assured the full support of a Republican controlled congress:
· Repealing the Obamacare Program: President Trump and the Republican Party have not worked out an alternative program for the replacement of the Obamacare Program as risks to leave more than 20 million people without health insurance should the congress succeed in repealing the Obamacare. That would end up causing disgruntling and risk of causing public unrest in the US at large.
· Building the Wall on the Mexican Borders: Much like kids in kindergarten, and with some estimates of the total cost running into as high as $25.0 billion, the raging debate who would pay for the wall is reminiscent of futile Byzantine arguments over the gender of the angels. Playing the macho – no brainer this joke of a President – the Trump Administration with the support of Republican legislators are now talking of starting construction of the wall and that in due course Mexico will end up paying for it.
· Deportation of 11.5 million illegal Mexican Immigrants: this is humanely and logistically formidable of a task that would fire back and cause wide protests and violence that the Americans are ill-equipped to handle.
· Causing American Muslims to Register: Much reminiscent of FDR’s program of the internment of the Japanese Americans after the attacks of Pearl Harbor that the Americans in posterity admitted was a stark violation of human and civil rights, forcing 6+ million American Muslims to register according to the plans of Donald Trump is a draconian act that the general American public when it comes to implementation will strongly and noisily, even violently protest against to prevent its implementation. Not an easy task to carry out.
· Banning Muslims from entering into the US is totally impractical and is hard to implement. Now with Supranational Organizations (the World Bank, the IMF, etc.) and the UN offices are located in the US, how the American Administration will cope with such a strange rule. This besides the fact that many investors of the Muslim faith, including Muslim countries with huge investments in the American financial markets would need to attend to their investments and meet with their financial institutions and advisors, including the American Treasury the depository of hundreds of billions of dollar worth of financial instruments owned by Muslim investors.
· Lowering the Income Taxes: As Trump promised in his Campaign that one of his very first acts when entering the White House would be to push the American Congress to lower Corporate and Wealth taxes from current 35% to low of 15% amounting to the equivalent of the immediate loss of $4.1 trillion by the US Treasury at the strike of the pen. This without guaranteed offset to generating commensurate revenues except of promises of tax revenues generated by the economic growth enticed by the stimulation of lower taxes. This, as the Administration of George W. Bush discovered could wind-up as a wishful thinking in the same exact example with a similar move by the George W. Bush’s Administration that the lowering of the taxes never resulted in higher economic growth and higher employment.
· Engaging in Trade Wars: There is a wide consensus among leading economists that engaging in Trade wars, the US will face high inflation and cause the loss of high paying jobs. Loss of jobs in manufacturing cannot be solely attributed to foreign trade as other technological and inevitable competitive factors come to play. Manufacturing in America represents less than 10% of GNP as the US remains generally competitive in the manufacturing of high value items in the example of Boeing, car manufacturing and the high tech industries.
· Building America’s Infrastructure: the assumptions by the Donald Administration that the lowering of Corporate Taxes would encourage possibly trillions of Corporate Profits parking in Tax Havens abroad to be repatriated that would be funneled to investing in American infrastructure. However, should that for any reason not materialize, Donald Trump’s promises to rebuild the American Infrastructure would remain just that, an empty promise in the absence of the availability of the matching investment funds to back it up.
· Building the American Military: while many military experts ridicule Trump’s call to significantly increase the military budget, the highest as is among all the countries of the world; however, the question remains, from where Mr. Trump will come-up with the money.
· Confronting China & Iran: Something that does not add up listening to Trump purportedly calling for America’s withdrawal into isolationism while simultaneously wants to increase military spending and prepare for potential confrontations with both China and Iran. Truly, Trump’s China and Iran’s policy could very well lead to heightened tensions and potential military showdown with Iran in the Gulf and China in the South China Sea.
· Moving the American Embassy into Jerusalem and Recognizing Israel as a Jewish State: All the signs are in place of Donald Trump acting immediately to moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem as he already nominated an ardent pro-settlers Zionist, Bankruptcy lawyer, Friedman, as the new American Ambassador to Israel. Besides, Donald Trump appointed Mr. Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, husband of Trump’s daughter as his senior advisor in charge of the Middle East. Mr. Kushner has no experience holding public office or experience in diplomacy. However, Donald Trump’s initiative to moving the American Embassy signals America’s abandonment of long-established American commitment to the International law and the UN Resolutions. In consequence, the American interests are bound to greatly suffer in both the Arab and the Islamic Worlds.
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