Trump upends US institutions, policies to assert authority

Last week’s summit of leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) was intended to challenge the post-Soviet global order which has been led by the erratic United States under Donald Trump. The fact that China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian and North Korean’s Kim Jon Un were key figures at the summit prompted Western media to dub it a gathering of autocrats.

They are not alone.

Trump has been labelled an autocrat by independent US media which have argued his tendency to assert overall command has been repeatedly displayed during his second term in office. The charge prompted him to claim, unconvincingly, “I’m not a dictator. I don’t like a dictator.”

His remark followed his deployment of armed troops to patrol the streets of Washington DC. He contended this was required to counter crime although the crime rate has fallen in the US capital. He apparently had the power to act in Washington as it is not a state but a separate “district” which hosts the President, Legislature, and Supreme Court.

On the US front, he dispatched thousands of National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June to accompany immigration officials on raids to arrest illegal migrants. California governor Gavin Newsom protested this action and a federal judge ruled last week that Trump’s deployment is illegal. Trump has said he could order National Guard intervention in Chicago, Baltimore, New York City, San Francisco and Oakland, California, cities run by Democrat mayors.

Newsom warned that Trump’s threats to send National Guard troops to other cities could lead to the creation of a “national police force with the president as chief.” According to the US Constitution’s division of powers, states are in charge of state-wide law enforcement. This being the case Trump has already overstepped his authority in California.

He has withheld or threatened to withhold billions of dollars in funding for research programmes at US universities which practise discrimination in admissions by favouring limited numbers of applicants from underprivileged or minority groups. Under Trump’s watch the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the home of former National Security Adviser John Bolton, a Trump critic. Trump has filed lawsuits against media critical of him and fired a statistician because she reported jobs data which he considered unfavourable.

He has insinuated that former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, is a “traitor.” Trump has tried to take over the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, and declared the government would confiscate a 10 per cent stake in Intel Corporation which designs, manufactures, and sells computer components.

Trump has said certain exhibits at the Smithsonian complex of museums require presidential approval. Federal cases have been lodged against Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff for launching impeachment proceedings against Trump during this first term and New York Attorney General Letitia James who prosecuted Trump for fraud. Trump’s decoration of the Oval office fireplace, mantle and surroundings with gold reveals his vulgar taste and monarchist aspirations.

On the foreign front, he has imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico, Britain, Europe, India, China, Vietnam, and Thailand. He claims his aim is to repatriate US firms that have outsourced operations or rely on imports. He said this would bring business home, build manufacturing, and boost employment. Raising tariffs disrupts global commerce which has, for years, been committed to the free trade model. Trump’s tariffs are likely to increase prices of essential goods and fuel inflation. He has also used tariffs to coerce commercial partners to submit to his international agenda and has been accused of “bullying.”

Trump pulled out of the World Health Organisation and the Paris climate change agreement. Trump is now building on this destructive architecture.

During his first term in office, Trump unilaterally upended affairs in this region. He recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, shifted the US embassy there, and refused to designate Israeli settlements as illegal, which they are under international law. These issues were meant to be negotiated by Palestinians and Israelis. Trump closed the US consulate in East Jerusalem, which served Palestinians, shuttered the Palestinian mission in Washington, and cut funding for the UN agency caring for Palestinian refugees and from USAID which supported projects in Gaza. Trump withdrew the US from the UN educational and cultural organisation, UNESCO due to Palestinian membership.

After beginning his second term in January, Trump continued to adopt anti-Palestinian policies. He has funded and armed Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and has refused to put pressure on Israel to ceasefire, end its blockade of humanitarian aid, and halt the war.

In violation of a 1947 protocol requiring the US to allow foreign leaders unfettered access to UN headquarters in New York, the US has denied visas for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to attend the opening of the General Assembly. He followed the example of fellow Republican Ronald Reagan who barred Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from the 1988 Assembly session. It belatedly met in Geneva to hear Arafat deliver his landmark address in which he called off the armed struggle and endorsed the two-state solution involving a Palestinian mini state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza instead of demanding a return to the whole of the Palestinian homeland.

Trump’s autocracy has the support of majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate of the Republican party which Trump has fashioned to suit his purposes. Following his rejection of the election of Joe Biden in 2020, Trump claimed fraud. Trump urged loyalists to try to prevent his Congressional confirmation by mounting an attack on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Back in office he has pardoned some rioters convicted of crimes.

In April, a survey of more than 500 political scientists found that the US was shifting rapidly from liberal democracy to a form of authoritarianism, National Public Radio reported. Scholars who were asked to rate US democracy gave it 67 out of 100 after his 2024 election and several weeks into his second term the figure had fallen to 55. Some scholars defined the US model as “competitive authoritarianism” rather than a one-party state.

Trump has achieved this shift away from democracy by using executive orders to weaken checks and balances traditionally observed by the executive, legislature and judiciary.This amounts to a dangerous challenge to the practice of democracy in the US.