Trump’s plan for the presidency, in his own words

Camille Camdessus, Agence France-Presse

Mass expulsions? Political revenge? World peace? A new golden age? As Donald Trump vies for another term in the White House, America is abuzz with speculation over how life might look with the ex-president back at the helm. In a series of interviews and campaign rallies, the Republican has offered some clues. Here are Trump’s plans for the United State and the world, as set out by the candidate himself. President Joe Biden’s rival in November’s election has pledged to launch the biggest deportation operation of illegal migrants in US history on his first day in office. “We’re going to get them out as fast as we can,” he has said, accusing undocumented migrants of “poisoning the blood of our country.”

The 78-year-old, known for his unfinished border wall project, has said he would be happy to “use the military” as part of the effort and would open detention camps to process targets for expulsion. “On day one of my new term in office, I will sign an executive order making clear to federal agencies that under the correct interpretation of the law, going forward the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic US citizenship,” he said in a campaign video. He has confirmed he also plans to reinstate his ban on entries from several Muslim-majority countries, as a means of “keeping terrorists the hell out of our country.”

Trump has been saying for months he could end the war in Ukraine in “24 hours,” without explaining how. Critics suggest his plan would involve pressuring Kyiv to cede territory illegally occupied by Russia in both 2014 and 2022. “I will have that settled prior to taking the White House,” he told a rally in the midwestern city of Detroit recently. “As president-elect, I will have that settled.” The ex-president is highly critical of Washington’s shipments of weapons worth billions of dollars to Kyiv, and of the funding requests from Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. “It never stops”, he told the Michigan crowd. Asked in a town hall with Fox News whether he would remain committed to NATO during a second term, he replied: “Depends if they treat us properly.”

Trump envisages tariffs of “more than 10 per cent” on all imports. US companies — and eventually their customers — pay for import tariffs, not the companies exporting the goods. Trump insists that the revenue collected will finance a “middle class, upper class, lower class, business class big tax cut.” Having waged a fierce trade war with China during his first term, he also plans to revoke the Asian giant’s “most favored nation” status, granted to promote trade. Trump claims he will “stop inflation by stopping the invasion,” arguing that his immigration crackdown will reduce housing costs and other expenses.

Trump never misses an opportunity to point out that it is partly thanks to him — and his three conservative Supreme Court appointments — that abortion rights have been considerably weakened in the United States. But he is more ambiguous about the future of access to reproductive health care.

Insisting it should be an issue for the individual states, the Republican has balked at pushing a nationwide abortion ban, a commitment that would win him support from the religious right.

“You must follow your heart on this issue but remember, you must also win elections,” he said in April. Trump slammed the door on the 2015 Paris climate accords during his first term.

If reelected, he said at a rally earlier this month, he “will stop Biden’s wasteful spending and rapidly terminate the green new scam” — a reference to the funding committed by his successor to mitigating climate change. “I will repeal crooked Joe Biden’s insane electric vehicle mandate and we will ‘drill, baby, drill,’” Trump told supporters in Wisconsin, using an old Republican slogan. “Energy costs will come down very quickly,” he vowed. “In many cases we’ll be cutting your energy costs in half.”

Trump, who was convicted in May of felony business fraud and faces three further indictments, has baselessly and repeatedly claimed his various prosecutions are a political witch hunt by Democrats. The Republican has pledged to “appoint a real special ‘prosecutor’ to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the USA, Joe Biden.” No investigation has produced evidence of any wrongdoing by Biden. He also said he was “absolutely” ready to pardon all the Trump supporters convicted of storming the US Capitol in Washington to prevent Congress from certifying the Republican’s 2020 presidential election defeat to Biden.