The world will become a trumpantojo. It is said, pardon the pun, of the massive use of techniques that try to deceive the eye through changes of perspectives and optical juggling. Because almost nothing will be the same from next January 20, the date on which Trump, the forty-fifth American president, will assume the 47th federal administration in the history of the United States.
The second term, interrupted by the four years of Democrat Joe Biden, makes him the first leader with non-consecutive terms since Grover Cleveland in 1892. Thanks to his resounding victory at the polls, he will not only be the tenant of the White House with more share of accumulated power – with a legislature with a broad Republican leaning and a high judiciary that has granted him immunity due to his former status as head of state in cases such as his involvement in the assault on the Capitol or the collection at his residence Mar-a-Lago of confidential documents-, but in the one with the most political and ideological ascendancy since Franklin D. Roosevelt, testified The Economist in a recent situation analysis.
Behind this discounted geopolitical movement towards another world order, MAGA emerges. That doctrine that has perfected the original motto America, first with which he triumphed in 2016. The Make America Great Again, forged with the blow of a hammer by the Heritage Foundation, it is the dagger with which Trump will coin his executive orders, previously sharpened in Project 2025 that the experts of perhaps the most ultra-conservative of the think tanks Americans, profiled especially for him. MAGA is the banner of this rupture: the ideological framework that will bury 80 years of internationalism woven into the Oval Office since World War II, and regenerate mercantilist protectionism.
Both concepts endorsed by American voters on 5N, along with the strict controls on immigration, the rejection of social justice and any demands woke up self-respecting, and a growing repulsion towards anything foreign that justifies, in the eyes of its sympathizers, any measure to correct the trade deficit or appease a supposed, but fictitious, social violence.
However, MAGA is, in addition to a trip back to the old idea of America, a recipe book of modern formulas, according to the neoliberal jargon in use. Among others, the deregulation of sectors such as technology or other industries aimed at expanding US dominance in the world, say its defenders. Because, in Trump’s eyes, it is the global order and not the first market on the planet, which has stunned prosperity and restored the dark twenties and thirties of the last century. Although it includes more ingredients, such as the hackneyed tax cuts to spur the lost economic dynamism – despite the fact that the American GDP has shown for four years an unparalleled resilience to the recessionary episodes after the Great Pandemic – and, of course, the massive increases in import tariffs.
All of this will substantially modify foreign policy. Both its list of allies, which will be reviewed and the resistance of its recent ties put to the test for possible replacements, and that of rivals. Weeks before the inauguration, unpredictability was the usual interpretation in Western foreign ministries regarding Russian aggression against Ukraine and its threat to the EU or Chinese rivalry with the US and its investment and commercial deployment in global markets.
As with Trump’s reaction to Europe or geostrategic partners such as Mexico, Canada, Japan or the United Kingdom. Or issues such as militarization, security or the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The British weekly highlights that, in any case, what the trumpism It is an increasingly large number of imitators. Right-wing national-populism, which already rose to power in Brazil in 2016 and had been in Hungary for a long decade, has now taken over Argentina and installed itself in Italy and is fighting to take power in France or Germany. Among other latitudes.
An economical sextet with high-flying falcons
This fight to preserve US preeminence in the world will have collateral damage. In the economic, climatic, technological and military fields. The international order is clearly under review. Although its objectives inevitably depend on the changes in the American economy taking effect. Hence, the four positions with the greatest executive capacity in this area are champions of loyalty to the Republican president and apostles of the Heritage theses.
Scott Bessent will be Treasury Secretary. Wall Street banker, with a long career as an advisor to Trump, founder of Key Square Group after leaving George Soros’ investment firm and, according to agents who intervene in the markets, one of the most influential voices in American financial circles, who considered it the moderate bet to apply fiscal control and stimulate the economy and employment.
The future head of the Treasury is in favor of temporary tax cuts and tariff increases rather than structural ones. For which, he provides his own recipe, the triple 3: cutting the deficit to 3% of GDP – almost 4 points below what Trump will find -, boosting activity to that level of 3% and increasing national production of oil to exceed 3 million barrels per day. Although it is also especially intransigent with the increase in tariffs for products made in Chinawhich leads one to think that it could relax the trade threat to Europe and its North American partners from the USMCA, the customs union with Mexico and Canada that Trump himself proclaimed in his first term following Nafta.
Of course, with the permission of Howard Lutnick to whom Trump has entrusted the Secretary of Commerce and the final tariff escalation. CEO and co-founder of Cantor Fitzgerald and another loyal personal advisor to Trump, he was Elon Musk’s favorite for the Treasury. Although it will assume broad power from this transcendental federal department that also supervises actions of dumping or competition, legislates subsidies to industrial, technological and other sectors under the guise of strategic, determines vetoes, or applies and withdraws aid in the name of national security. .
A whole arsenal to outline retaliation against China, the great geopolitical and economic rival of the United States, a thesis that he shares with Bessent, who is also very critical of the Fed, whose independence he has questioned by stating that he would be in favor of establishing a leadership of the Fed. Shadow Federal Reserve with an indisputable political component. In addition to declaring himself a fiscal hawk and defender of “voluminous” tax cuts.
At Trump’s side will be Kevin Hassett as director of the National Economic Council, his great advisor in the White House circle. Tax lawyer specializing in corporations, he has been the shadow ideologue of Trump’s tax agenda – in collusion with Heritage’s engine room – and says he is willing to create “a much more favorable climate for business” and coordinate everyone the economic team of the Executive. For which, he will have Jamieson Greer, appointed new US Trade Representative -USTR, in its English acronym-, in charge of precisely defining the tactics against China. Robert Lighthizer’s former Chief of Staff, who held this same position between 2016 and 2020, is part of the club of supporters of withdrawing from Beijing the advantages of its status as a permanent trading partner, of a decoupling with the asian giant in full order and to put into play a shell of protectionist measures.
They are joined by the head of Energy, Doug Burgum, Trump’s link with the oil companies and the manager of his repeated “drill, drill, drill” campaign message, and Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget and the executive arm of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in the Department of Government Efficiency that was born with the mission of adjusting 2 trillion dollars in federal spending.
Trump and Musk: the true masters of ceremonies
Even so, “Trump will be his own Trade Czar,” explains Edward Alden in Foreign Policyas he suggested to millionaire Ross Perot and his Reform Party, in 2000, when he proclaimed himself “the best USTR”, because “if our partners sit at a table with me I guarantee that the commercial scam they carry out with the US will end.” Now, “it won’t be so chaotic.” Nor as it was in his first term. The fact of not having his almighty Lighthizer, to whom he handed over the position of USTR in his first term, reveals that “he has left behind that mixture of hawks and Republican traditionalists” in trade policy.
“It will still be unpredictable,” but “it will be more insightful.” And, above all, it will continue to shake the shaker of globalization. “He will monitor the tariff strategy very closely,” he will adjust the shot, as he has said, towards Mexico, Canada or Europe and, especially, towards China. Although it will put aside the debate between commercial freedom and protectionism. The first – says Alden – “have already lost the battle” in the US. The Trump 2.0 version opens another debate: “what protectionism will the White House adopt and how many difficulties will its allies and companies have in adapting to it?”
If the rest of the world “will have to tighten its belt” in the commercial order, with direct messages to allies, rivals and countries that dare to give up the dollar, which has seen a 2024 revaluation of 16.8% until 5N and another 6% since the Republican victory, an unknown pace since 2015, companies will also have to readjust their corporate strategies. Musk will be the “disruptor in chief”, the CEO of America, according to Trump, who will overcome the emergency of a fuel for industries and the fighter against oligarchic corruption.
In plain English, Musk will be the one to dismantle the regulations, with his double standard of being the richest person in the world, one of the most influential as the owner of X, with access to all types of federal contracts for his empire – especially, Tesla and SpaceX – and his example of the closest lobbyist, prone to negotiating without lights or stenographers in Mar-a-Lago, far from the Capitol and the White House.
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