DONALD Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States (US) on January 20 2025. This was his second coming after serving his first term as the 45th president between 2017 and 2021.
His inauguration speech was as surprising as his election victory, given that Trump had allegedly committed transgressions that disqualified him from standing for election for the highest office in his country. But this is America. It is a superpower that allows those with power to bend the rules which is why today, they have Trump as their 47th President.
Before his election victory, Trump was dragged to court to answer to several allegations ranging from paying to silence a prostitute, attempted vote rigging, inciting violence, commercial fraud to espionage. As it now stands, the US is not about moral imperatives or the epitome of democracy as it claims to be. It is a supremacist country that harbours a huge desire to dominate the world. None other than Trump can help the Americans to achieve that goal.
Under his Make America Great Again (MAGA) campaign, Trump made his intentions clear that he wants to re-establish America as a superpower again. This chimes so much with white supremacist ideas because it puts “America first” to make it “greater, stronger and far more exceptional than ever before”.
In his inauguration speech, he made it clear that “a tide of change is sweeping the country, and America has the chance to seize this opportunity like never before.”
He also indicated that support for current major wars may be reduced or stopped as he noted that “we have a government that has given unlimited funding to the defence of foreign borders but refuses to defend American borders.” He has made it clear in media interviews that stopping these wars will be a welcome development.
Trump also reiterated his intentions to reverse what he termed “horrible betrayals that have taken place and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy and, indeed, their freedom.” To do so, he signed several executive orders among which included returning illegal immigrants and designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organisations.
True to his protectionist policies, Trump promised to immediately begin the overhaul of the trade system to protect American workers and families.
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“Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries,” he promised to “tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich American citizens.” The world saw this coming. It was one of his major policy positions during his first term. The only challenge is that he re-introduces this policy when the world has moved on and is no longer bothered by the US as a major trading partner.
One of the biggest headlines from his speech and executive orders was on diversity, equity and inclusion. After many decades of being politically arm-twisted to adopt the American policies on diversity, equity and inclusion, Trump has put an end to this in what he described as “the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.” He added that “we will forge a society that is colour-blind and merit based.”
And with that, he announced, “as of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.”
This is big and scatters millions of dollars that have gone into socialising the world on diversity, equity and inclusion. So many African leaders, dead and alive, would wish for a chance to say: “We told you so”, while those with genuine concerns will feel let down. A country such as Uganda was placed on soft sanctions for refusing to adopt some of American diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
American workers in the diversity, equity and inclusion departments are already feeling the heat as they have been placed on paid leave while dismissal plans are being finalised.
This is a huge game changer for both Americans and the beneficiaries of its funding on diversity, equity and inclusion programmes across the world.
As if that is not enough, Trump’s administration has frozen all foreign aid for 90 days. All aid programmes around the world that depend on US funding have been halted after the State Department memo issued soon after the inauguration to “stop work”. This follows Trump’s executive order “to freeze foreign assistance for 90 days”. The immediate impact of this will be felt by American workers but overall given that the country is one of the largest humanitarian donors, cutting life-saving aid to countries facing critical conditions will have major consequences.
Notwithstanding the current severe impact of climate change across the world due to carbon emissions which has caused the year 2024 to be the hottest on record, Trump has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement — an important global treaty seeking to control and reduce carbon emissions to rein in climate change.
“America will be a manufacturing nation once again and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have — the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on earth — and we are going to use it. We’ll use it.”
From the look of things, there seems to be more surprises coming judging by his attitude and that of the team he has assembled to run his administration. The road ahead is bumpy and only time will tell how America’s Trump will impact his country and the world.
