By Majyd Aziz
Fasten your seat belts. Americans (and the world) are in for a roller coaster ride that would envy even Disneyland. They are witnessing the advent, in real time, of Make America Great Again. The slogan is the vision, and the objective is a new no-holds-barred United States of America.
Donald J Trump may sound mercurial and whimsical, but actually his words, comments, and deeds are neither farcical nor shooting from the hip. His constituency is the humongous crowd of conservatives, rednecks, and fundamentalists all over the fifty states. He has his agenda well-choreographed and researched. He is in no mood to deviate from his game plan no matter what the world thinks of him.
The world will hee and haw, but the world is not his stage. He had in the past proved his forte when he hosted the TV series “Apprentice”. Neither are those Americans who vent their frustration through caricatures, cuss words, memes, and jokes on talk shows. These Americans, taking advantage of the First Amendment, can beat their chests, pull their hairs, and emit their anger and dissent, but let’s face it: Trump is here to stay for four years. The party has just begun.
POTUS took the world by storm from the moment he took the oath as Number 47. He audaciously demanded that Canada join the Union as 51st State and warned Mexico to bow to his terms. Then he went after Greenland. Of course, all three plans are on the backburner because he switched to tackle the immigration issue.
Out with undocumented immigrants, he roared. The US Supreme Court endorsed his demand. Yes, time to clean up despite the fact that a lot many immigrants were working on farms in rural America and many others were gainfully employed as gardeners, cooks, factory workers, and in the construction sector, to name a few. He is dead against granting birthright citizenship.
The US Supreme Court judgement in his favor has bolstered his campaign. At the same time, he pronounced the edict that visa applicants from over a dozen countries should not take the trouble to apply for US visas. They can visit Ulan Bator or Timbuktu for all he cared.
Trump also went after countries exporting billions to the USA. He came up with arbitrary imposition of import duties, which nearly disrupted the global trade regime.
Fortunately, he is an expert in U-turns and provided few months of respite while keeping up the pressure on these countries to make a deal otherwise to get ready and face the music.
China was his main target until Beijing made his eyes pop out when China enumerated a list of items, minerals, and commodities that are crucial to America. Thus, he kept on fiddling around with the duty structure and came up with an agreement with China. Some countries did not even wait and openly announced that they were ready to play ball under rules set by him.
Trump is fixated on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Hallelujah. If Obama can get it, why should he too not be the recipient? Lady Luck smiled on him pretty soon. Pakistan-India conflict gave him the opportunity to use his “Art of Deal” and both nations acquiesced to his advice to agree and maintain a ceasefire. If that was not enough, Netanyahu got into the act and began bombing Iran and killing the top Iranian brass and scientists. Iran cannot be allowed to build nuclear strategic assets.
No way, Jose. But Iranian leadership was not sitting and savoring apple pie. The devastation caused due to Iranian retaliatory measures stunned not only Israelis but the world.
Never take Tehran for granted was the message. While Israelis cooped up, scared and shaky in bunkers, the physical infrastructure was systematically destroyed on the outside. All claims of Israeli invincibility and braggadocio went down as Iranian missiles ravaged the belligerent nation.
Trump, just to satisfy pro-Israelis in the US, did his part in bombing selected edifices, but then out of the blue came his advice that enough is enough and there should be a ceasefire. Trump also took credit to defuse the tension between Rwanda and Congo.
Now he has to expertly use his negotiating skills to get Putin and Zelensky to sit and smoke the peace pipe. Will he be able to get this done within the next quarter? If so, then Pakistan was on the right track in officially nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
What will then be the Trump plan to really Make America Great Again? For one, he wants American businesses and industries back into the country. No more outsourcing, no more manufacturing, no more huge investments in foreign lands. Come back under the Stars and Stripes.
A tall order, especially for mega corporations at this stage. Today, less than 8% of workers have jobs in the manufacturing sector and most of them do not possess the skill set to work in modernized factories. Today, factories use robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and high tech technology. Reskilling workers to be part of the new ecosystem would be a gargantuan task for most of the corporations.
Moreover, the wages and salaries in the US are already exorbitant. In fact, the higher cost of production would also impact on these workers because they too are consumers. Will Trump fast-track the return of industries, or would there be a longer period before all this, if ever, is possible?
Trump is primarily a businessman, and he looks to the world through the entrepreneurial prism. Hard sell is his forte and he excels in this respect. He has the knack to increase his own wealth during his tenure. He will also strongly market and peddle American military hardware to whichever country he finds an opportunity.
The Middle East rulers are his favorite customers while he wants pacifist countries, such as Japan and even Switzerland, to enhance the defence budget. He will also use all powers in his arsenal to induce South American countries to do the same.
At the home front, he is beginning to flex his muscle by using law-enforcers to achieve his objectives. This isn’t playing well across the fifty states, but he has his hands on his hips and guns in his holsters. Like the scenes from Wild West movies.
Americans will witness what happens to citizens in countries contemptuously known as Banana Republics. Too soon yet, but then the slogan for The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave is Make America Great Again.
American political advisor Stephen Miller once stated that “everybody who stands against Donald Trump are the people who have been running the country into the ground, who have been controlling the levers of power. They’re the people who are responsible for our open borders, for our shrinking middle class, for our terrible trade deals.”
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025