U.S. Trump cabinet: ‘This is a choice where policy has already been set’

CGTN Europe

Donald Trump has confirmed his new cabinet which includes Tesla and X owner Elon Musk.  Hosuk Lee Makiyama, the Director for the European Centre of International Political Economy, has answered some key questions about the appointments. #trump

Transcript

00:00I think this is a choice where policy has already been set and which focus very much on

00:07selling the policy. So you would have personalities that are able to connect with the voters

00:14and yeah and the congress perhaps rather than actually devising policy. We don't see much

00:22policy experience behind any of these names we've seen so far. Commentators, journalists

00:28understandably like to draw a line between one administration and the next. The reality

00:35is rather different isn't it? It's rather blurred. Indeed there is a tradition for at least the last

00:4430 years about having a smooth transition and continuation of government and I think this is

00:49something that has been going on for quite a bit and also we need to remember that on the

00:55technical level below the level of assistant secretaries they are actually not swapped,

00:59they stay on their posts. So there is a continuation and also we should remember

01:04that there in many areas there is a huge overlap especially in areas like how you relate to China

01:11and Europe between the Biden administration and the Trump administration. The Biden administration

01:16didn't barely change any of the trade policies or the economic policy, didn't actually

01:21revert on for example on the tax reforms that Trump administration put through in 2017.

01:28Well let's talk about that, that's the past, let's talk about the future. How might this

01:32cabinet's approach to foreign policy in particular, China in particular, differ from previous

01:39administrations? Well this administration comes in with a huge political capital and also policy

01:48space in terms of having the congress and having the senate and in addition it has been very clear

01:56about what it wants to do. It wants to have a full-on trade war with not just with China but

02:02also with Europe and its allies. It's going to go back on many of the decisions that have been

02:07taken around for example military support to Ukraine. That basically means what we can see now

02:13is that as for as long as Trump administration is going to hold on, the republicans and the

02:20Trump administration are going to hold on to the support of the house republicans, it's going to

02:25be very front-loaded on areas where Trump is going to need the support of the house which basically

02:34means taxes, budgets and anything related to that and also trade.

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