Donald Trump's Second Term: a look at president's executive orders and policies

CGTN Europe

CGTN Europe spoke to David Dunn, Professor of International Politics at University of Birmingham.

Transcript

00:00Well, let's talk now to David Dunn, who's a professor of international politics at the

00:03University of Birmingham. Welcome back to the program, Professor. Good to see you.

00:06So we were hearing there about some of the measures that President Trump has already brought

00:11in to tackle immigration and meet that campaign promise, if you like, of closing America's borders.

00:16How important is it, do you think, that he was seen to do that? And what effect will those

00:21measures have, do you think? Well, I think Trump is very keen to be seen to be acting very quickly

00:27and very decisively. And there's a theatrical, performative aspect to what he's doing here.

00:34Actually, in the last year, the number of border crossings has been very small. There really is

00:38no national emergency like he has declared. This is about being seen to deliver for his voters

00:45on an issue that they're most concerned about. So it's partly performative, as I say,

00:51in terms of actually the effect it will have. It'll be fairly limited. The same can be said of

00:58the actions that we'll likely see with the effort to deport undocumented migrants. There will be

01:04much publicized swooping down on people who have been in violation of the law and who are

01:11illegally in the United States, and they will be deported. But I think it's unlikely we'll come

01:15anywhere near the millions of people that he promised to deport as part of the campaign.

01:21There's a degree to which Trump's words and actions aren't always matched, but there is,

01:25I think, a determination to be seen to be doing something as part of what he's done as he's coming

01:31to office. And he also announced that America would withdraw from the WHO, from the Paris

01:37Climate Agreement. What could the absence of the United States from these organizations mean?

01:43Well, symbolically, I think that it's pretty important that they are absent from these

01:48organizations. The U.S. is the biggest funder of the WHO. And of course, the U.S. as the biggest

01:56polluter, both contemporaneously and historically, it's important that they're part of

02:01the solution and the climate process in Paris is part of that. But the bigger concern there

02:07is what else accompanies that withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. He plans to have the unfettered

02:14exploration of oil, gas and coal, the reversal of every one of Biden's green initiatives,

02:20and probably the dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency and all the sub agencies that

02:25actually monitor America's climate monitoring. So he'll do vast damage to America's ability to track

02:33and to police its climate policies, as well as having a free for all on those things.

02:38And if an America doesn't take climate seriously, given they're the richest country in the world

02:44and the biggest polluter, it's difficult for them to ask or to expect other countries to do the same,

02:49although the rest of the world hopefully will try to shame America into coming back to its

02:56climate obligations. But America is already behind its COP targets as a consequence of the first

03:03Trump administration. And this second administration is likely to do more damage to the actuality

03:09of climate damaging policies and the efforts to try and curb them. So these really are just

03:15a couple of the things that were decided on in a flurry of executive orders being signed.

03:21What does this say about how Donald Trump plans to conduct this term in office?

03:26He's an old man in a hurry, I think is what it tells us. The pace, the speed, the number of

03:34of executive orders and the range of those executive orders shows that he has really had

03:41a team of people prepared for office. And he enters office with a sense of momentum and confidence

03:48that he didn't have eight years ago. And what he has is a clear set of plans to act on his

03:54instincts and his prejudices and his promises to the electorate on a whole range of subject.

04:02So we can see and expect a fairly radical, disruptive set of policies across the issue

04:07agenda from foreign policy breaking norms there. For example, his inaugural speech didn't mention

04:14the word allies once. He only talked about them obliquely to criticize them. In trade policy,

04:20we can expect a disruption from the last 80 years of free trade and a move towards a

04:26protectionist policy, which is likely to be disruptive and inflationary and anti-growth

04:32in terms of the impact on the global scene. In terms of actually what he does to relations with

04:38Russia and Iran, it's really an open question, but of great concern here in Europe as to what

04:45he does in terms of both the specifics of the Ukraine war and the implications of his

04:50tepid support for NATO. And of course, there are other concerns about what he plans for the Panama

04:54Canal, Greenland, or indeed for Canada. The mention of manifest destiny in the inauguration

05:03speech is a 19th century reference to an imperial striding for America. It's odd to see that in a

05:1121st century speech by an American president. And of course, domestically and a whole wide of other

05:16fronts, he plans to get rid of the Department of Education to gut the powers of the FBI and

05:22possibly to use the FBI to go after political opponents. So this is a very different American

05:27president to the one that we've seen in our lifetimes. And the agenda is expansive and

05:33disruptive and it will be interesting to watch.

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