Trump's first week in office

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Just a day before his inauguration, President Donald Trump told his supporters at a rally in Washington that there would be a lot of "fun" from January 20. He asked his supporters not to forget watching television. He made those remarks because he knew what he was up to. He lived up to his promise and within minutes of his inauguration signed a slew of executive orders. He did not bother to go to the Oval Office and instead signed those orders in front of his supporters. At the stroke of a pen Trump upended 78 executive orders issued by his predecessor Joe Biden. Other decrees included declaring national emergency to evict illegal immigrants, deploying troops along the Mexican border, withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, and pulled the US out of the World Health Organization.

While, through his order to evict illegal immigrants, Trump wanted to target Mexican illegal immigrants, it also affected those who were cleared by the US authorities for resettlement in the US. Afghans in particular were the causality of that order. As many as 1,660 Afghans, who worked for the US military and their contractors during their campaign in Afghanistan, were barred from boarding flights to the US. They were issued visas after a gruelling and painstakingly slow process under several different pathways, including the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program or the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP). The group includes unaccompanied minors awaiting reunification with their families in the US as well as Afghans at risk of Taliban retribution because they fought for the former US-backed Afghan government, said Shawn VanDiver, head of the Afghan Evacuation coalition of US veterans and advocacy groups and a US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The US decision also leaves in limbo thousands of other Afghans who have been approved for resettlement as refugees in the US but have not yet been assigned flights from Afghanistan or from neighboring Pakistan, they said.

Approximately 25,000 Afghans, who are eligible for the US refugee programme, were given temporary stay by Pakistan at the request of Washington. Those Afghans fled the country after the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. Pakistan had agreed to the US request, expecting that the process of their resettlement would take only a few months. However, more than three and half years after the Taliban returned to power, the cases of such Afghans have not yet been processed. Pakistan was in touch with the Biden administration, which assured Islamabad that all such Afghans would be resettled to the US. The foreign office for the first time disclosed that the Biden administration had agreed to relocate all such Afghans to the US by September 2025. But now that the new administration has suspended the programme for at least 90 days, it is next to impossible that the deadline would be met. Meanwhile, Pakistan has made it clear that the stay of such Afghans is not open ended. This particular issue is an early test for the Pakistan-US bilateral relationship.

While President Trump fulfilled most of his election promises, he seems to have avoided resorting to radical steps against China. Trump had promised to impose 60% import tariffs on Chinese goods, besides a raft of other measures against America's bitter adversary. However, he has yet to make good on those claims. Instead speaking virtually at the World Economic Forum (WEF), Trump did not rule out the possibility of having a "very good relationship" with China and expressed his desire to visit Beijing at the earliest.

On Ukraine, before his election, Trump was adamant the conflict would be resolved within 24 hours of his inauguration. There is no clarity yet on that. Instead he linkened the Russia-Ukraine conflict with international oil prices. He asked Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries to slash oil prices in order to pave the way for resolution of the Ukraine war. His first week in office was no short of fun, and the entertainment is certainly going to continue.