(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump is headed back to the White House, vowing to upend relations with allies and enemies alike and facing few of the constraints that limited his “America first” push last time.
From slapping steep tariffs on imports and threatening to slash trade with China to pressuring allies to pay more for defense, if Trump delivers on even a few of his campaign promises, he could trigger new political and economic upheaval with wars raging in Europe and the Middle East.
Trump’s return is “a wake-up fire, not a wake-up call,” said Elizabeth Saunders, a professor of political science at Columbia University.
In his first term, opposition from Congress and members of his own administration kept Trump from following through on some of his more radical ideas. This time, he’s expected to fill key Cabinet posts with staffers more willing to do his bidding. And he can point to his second election victory as evidence of public support for overhauling America’s approach to the world.
“He has very few fixed beliefs, but he has three that we can say,” Saunders said. “One, he really doesn’t like alliances, especially big multilateral ones. Two, he really doesn’t like multilateral trade deals. He wants to get out of them and then make them bilateral ones. And three, he admires authoritarian regimes.”
Trump’s allies argue that his unpredictability is an asset, keeping rivals off guard, and point to his record of keeping the US out of new wars during his first term as proof his “peace through strength” approach works.
“We want a strong and powerful military and ideally we don’t have to use it,” Trump told supporters as he claimed victory early Wednesday. “I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop wars.”
Still, the hard-fought campaign fueled growing trepidation in many allied capitals, worried by Trump’s threats to demand more from allies and expand protectionism. The US accused rivals of seeking to meddle in the vote, both for and against Trump, who’s often boasted of his good relationships with authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China.
Trump has defended his personal ties to leaders of US rivals like China’s Xi, saying they allow him to deliver tough messages. He told the Wall Street Journal in October that he wouldn’t have to use military force against a Chinese blockade of Taiwan “because he respects me and he knows I’m f——- crazy.”
Trump has given few details on his plans on many key issues. But aides have laid out some dramatic possible options, including a complete economic decoupling from China, deploying nearly 200,000 US marines to Asia and resuming testing of nuclear weapons.
Those were among the ideas laid out by his last national security advisor, Robert O’Brien, in a Foreign Affairs article that was shown to top campaign officials before publication. “Unpredictability” would be a key policy tool, he wrote.
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On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to bring an end to the fighting in Ukraine even before he takes office on Jan. 20 by pushing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Putin to reach an agreement.
Trump hasn’t spelled out how he would achieve a settlement to a war heading toward its fourth year. But his running mate, JD Vance, described a plan that would leave Putin in control of large swaths of territory that his forces occupy and grant his demand that Ukraine not be allowed to join NATO. Critics, including Vice President Kamala Harris, call those terms capitulation for Kyiv.
“The only way to quickly bring the war to an end is to force the Ukrainians to stop fighting. That is something the Ukrainians won’t do,” said Evelyn Farkas, a former Pentagon official and executive director of the McCain Institute. “So under a Trump administration, the war in Ukraine will go on because the Europeans and others will provide support to Ukraine if we don’t.”
But without the US leading the push to support Ukraine, Europe’s divisions on how strongly to confront Russia would become more evident, potentially fracturing the bloc.
In the Middle East, Trump has said he will support Israel unequivocally in its fight against Iran and its proxies, but has called for a quick end to the war in Gaza, something that’s so far eluded the Biden administration.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had a tense relationship with President Joe Biden, congratulated Trump on his “huge victory” early Wednesday.
Trump has also advocated raising pressure on Iran, though he hasn’t laid out just how he would do that. Vance has said the US doesn’t want a war with the Tehran.
Trump has sown doubts about US military support for Taiwan as China has stepped up pressure on the island it views as a rogue province. In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek in June, he said the US had been “stupid” and the “immensely wealthy” island should pay more for American protection.
Some of Trump’s first moves could come in trade policy, where a president has broader power to act without congressional approval. He pledged to raise tariffs to levels not seen since the early 1900s, with the potential to drastically shift trade flows, fuel inflation and sap growth in countries around the world.
His threat to slap 60% levies on goods from China would all but cut off trade with one of the US’s largest trading partners, although some allies have suggested it’s more of a negotiating tactic than a policy prescription.
“Trump 2.0, I think we know what he wants to do and I think he has the tools,” said Columbia’s Saunders. “So I don’t think there’s huge mystery. I think it’s a question of how exactly does it play out? What institutions or people, if any, would stop him?”
--With assistance from Nick Wadhams.
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