Donald Trump, with his remarkable victory in the US presidential elections of 2015 and now again in 2024, has left political hacks and media pundits with egg on their faces. He won against a hostile deep-seated political machine (and corporate media) both times. Contrary to the norms of American democracy where it is not so much public’s votes but the money of billionaires that ends up selecting politicians, he defeated Kamala Harris and her Democrats who collected three times more campaign funds than he did. His seen-as-improbable victory has tectonic repercussions both withing the US and, more importantly internationally.

In his first term, an outsider Trump was hampered and shackled by what is called the Deep State, a cabal of long-term entrenched politicians, senior bureaucrats and covert intelligence operatives determined to resist any political change in US policy Trump might have brought about. In that mission, he was tarred and smeared with allegations of colluding with Russia and other foreign powers, his personal peccadillos turned into massive legal firestorms even after he had left office.

The course corrections that Trump 1.0 as the 45th president attempted were both far-sighted and also myopic. He had already gone down in history as the first US president in many decades who did not start a new foreign war, even though he inherited many what he called “forever wars” from his predecessors, and the resource hemorrhaging they entail from which he has promised to pull out. He began a rapprochement with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un; and even had to sack his defense secretary James Mattis for opposing his plan to pull out of Syria (he now inherits a bigger US involvement mess there after Assad’s sudden ouster by Israel, Turkey and the US, the latter having to now call a terrorist with US’s ten million dollar bounty on his head “Your Excellency”!). He saw through the massive corruption scam that was Ukraine (led by Obama’s vice president Joe Biden); but the Deep State was able to turn the table on him with the charge of colluding with Russia, which probably contributed to his eventual election loss to Joe Biden in 2020.

Many other decisions made by Trump 1.0 were guided by short-term business interests and not very statesman like. His withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement (which Joe Biden subsequently reinstated but which Trump 2.0 has again withdrawn from on Day 1), the Iran Nuclear Deal as well as the World Health Organization, bluntly telling Europeans US is prepared to ditch NATO unless they pay more (up to 5% of their GDP) for their defense, as well as shifting the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem were impulsive, myopic decisions that have contributed to upending the Old International World Order and given a push for multipolarity.

Though Biden reversed many of those decisions, a reinvigorated (and wiser with experience) Trump now returns with a much bigger public mandate to push his old agenda. He not only won a decisive electoral victory but (unlike in 2015) also the popular vote and carried with him all the so-called swing states, the Senate and the House. Unlike in 2016, this time he has already announced a slew of cabinet and other important positions which turned a mentally declining incumbent Joe Biden into and even lamer duck than normal. It was evident in how, even before formally taking office, Trump’s Middle-East envoy was able to arm-twist Netanyahu into accepting a ceasefire deal he had been balking from.

Before speculating on what a stronger Trump 2.0 might do, it might be worthwhile to see how lame duck Joe Biden’s last misuse of presidential powers will demoralize an already humiliated and divided opposition Democrats and make Trump’s tasks much easier. After much crowing about “upholding the law” and not pardoning anyone no matter how close to the president, he preemptively pardoned his son Hunter Biden not only for the gun laws violations he was investigated for but for ANYTHING he might have committed from 1st January 2014 onwards. That included influence peddling with bribery for the “big guy”, i.e. vice president Biden on behalf of business interests from Ukraine’s Burisma gas company to China! To make matters worse, on the last day of his presidency, he preemptively pardoned other family members suspected of bribery and influence peddling as well as those investigating Trump supporters who rioted at the Capitol against a “stolen election” in 2020. Legal quibbling and niceties aside, it certainly makes Biden look very guilty!

So, what can be expected from Trump 2.0? His focus will be entirely internal – making America great again with re-industrializing US manufacturing which Globalization Liberalism since the collapse of the Soviet Union had decided to outsource to China and elsewhere. It will not be an easy task, since manufacturing once lost to those who do it more efficiently and cheaply cannot effortlessly be brought back. It cannot also be forcefully dictated since with manufacturing power going East, military power (in the form of armament manufacturing) too has significantly shifted out of the US to emerging powers like China, Russia and Iran as the Ukraine and West Asia conflicts have shown.

It has not been very long when leaders of the Collective West were cocksure that their sanctions against Russia had already brought it to its knees: EU’s Ursula von der Leyen, UK’s Defense Ministry and US’s Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo even went on record to say that Russian military was on its last leg, that it was fighting with shovels and cannibalizing chips from washing machines to run their military hardware. It took hardly two years of a painful reawakening to have the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte walk back and say that Russia produces more weapons in three months than all of NATO does in over a year!

But that has not stopped Trump from threatening to use force, in military or other less coercive ways, to further America’s commercial and to that end strategic interests, especially in the Western hemisphere. His statements about re-acquiring the Panama Canal, taking over Greenland and merging Canada into the US have alarmed North and South Americans as well as NATO allies in Europe. Although many have brushed it off as “Maga-lomania”, there is a deeper and more fundamental lesson to be taken: as Trump tries to make America great again, its Latin and Western allies too will be forced back to making their own countries “great again” without American support, or more probably against contending American interests. It means that Collective West (and NATO or EU) will no longer be a monolithic collective, especially with the rise of BRICS.

For the Eastern hemisphere (or Rest of the World, Global South, multipolar world etc. – new terms will surely emerge to reflect a new reality) Pax Americana will be buried by Max Americana. American engagement will be highly transactional, furthering short-term business interests without any overarching global ideology. While the Cold War period was one of “democracy versus communism”, the period since then was of trade liberalization and globalization. Trump’s inward focus means even that is consigned to the dustbin of history: imposition of tariffs, irrelevance of World Trade Organization (indeed perhaps even the UN), use of force to settle disputes etc. may be the norm in the years ahead. The impact of such a shift is already being felt in Europe which is reacting by electing its own-country-first promoting right-wing parties and politicians.

That limited vision also comes with severe contradictions. While Trump arm-twisting Netanyahu and forcing a ceasefire in Gaza was welcome, another development pointed opposite to the entrenched Zionism in US politics that is hugely influenced by Jewish funding via AIPAC. Among his first acts as president, Trump removed Biden’s sanctions against Israeli land grabbers in the West Bank; and his own Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner stands very much to gain from such land-grabbing. This is not going to restore America’s declining image and clout in West Asia or the Muslim world.

For small countries like Nepal (Trump has called Nepal “Nipple” and Bhutan “Button”!), gone are the days of looking up to the US for both development and diplomatic support: we will have to fend for ourselves living between our two giant neighbours. Most significant will be the final nail in the coffin for the development industry of Trump’s actions. The Age of Aid was already in decline since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, with the closure of UK’s DfID as well as other such organizations of Nordic countries. USAID had already been severely downsized by administrations as far back as Bush and Obama with it losing its palatial grandeur of Rabi Bahawan to be confined to a few rooms in the basement of Maharajganj.

Now, Trump, among his first act as president, has suspended foreign aid for 90 days pending a thorough review. Earlier he had said that all aid should be stopped and converted to loans with tough strings. No one should be surprised by this: US debt has exploded to unmanageable limits overshadowing its largest-in-the-world defense budget prompting fears that US might even default! Under such conditions, discarding foreign aid would be no more than discarding wrapping paper. Aid addicted countries like Nepal better prepare for such an aid-less world in the Age of Trump!