Trump’s second act: saviour or stormbringer?

In retrospect, it is hardly a surprise. The man who originally became a household name globally through his reality TV contest The Apprentice opened up his second term in the White House with all the bluster of a Game of Thrones finale.

Listening to his inauguration speech, you could almost feel Donald Trump has begun to believe in his own ‘messiah myth’ that a vocal fringe of his support base has created for him. In the aftermath of his defeat to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump cast himself as a victim of the very system he ‘fought against’. That rhetoric of grievance would go on to embolden a segment of his supporters, culminating in the infamous January 6, 2021 raid on the US Capitol.

As he ushered in his return to presidency, that narrative of victimhood transformed into one of deliverance and vindication, with a touch of ‘divine intervention’. “Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom and indeed to take my life,” he proclaimed in his address, recalling the assassination attempt that targeted him last July. “But I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”

“The golden age of America begins right now… From this moment on, America's decline is over,” Trump announced earlier in his speech. “For American citizens, January 20, 2025, is Liberation Day,” he declared proudly shortly after. The new president punctuated his inaugural address by signing a sweeping salvo of executive orders, including full pardons for hundreds of individuals convicted or still facing prosecution for their roles in the January 6 Capitol attack.

Between his speech and his executive orders, Trump appeared to have only a domestic audience in mind. In line with the populist, often bombastic statements that won him his followers and made him infamous to everyone else, the opening act of his second term prioritised consolidating his base and delivering on campaign promises over any foreign ramifications. However, intentional or not, the comments and moves have already sent ripples across the globe, leaving both America’s friends and foes wondering where they stand in the new administration’s eyes.

Undoing the ‘status quo’

Democracy can and has been a messy affair for many nations in the Global South, with allegations of electoral irregularities, misuse of power, and political victimisation frequently entering political discourse. Listening to Trump’s inaugural address, one heard the same applied to the United States for the first time, and that too from the mouth of a sitting president.

“The vicious, violent, and unfair weaponisation of the Justice Department and our government will end,” Trump declared in his speech. He followed this statement with executive orders aimed at reviewing the investigative and enforcement actions of all agencies during Biden’s tenure, with the goal of identifying instances of that ‘weaponisation’ against his supporters. The new president also directed the attorney general to investigate the US government’s dealings with social media platforms under Biden and to make “recommendations for appropriate remedial actions” in response to alleged ‘censorship efforts’.

“Our government confronts a crisis of trust,” Trump added. “For many years, the radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens. While the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair, we now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalogue of catastrophic events abroad.”

Trump was particularly fixated on the issue of immigration, both illegal and legal. “We have a government that has given unlimited funding to the defence of foreign borders but refuses to defend American borders,” he claimed. To ‘set it right,’ Trump announced, “I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will immediately be halted... And I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country.” True to his word, he issued more than 20 executive orders related to immigration policy, including designating an “invasion across the southern border of the United States,” suspending the country’s refugee programme, and redefining birthright citizenship.

On the ground, Trump's tough stance began showing its effects this week, as US media outlets reported that nearly 500 undocumented migrants wanted for outstanding crimes were arrested by federal law enforcement and ICE agents in sanctuary cities, including parts of New York and New Jersey. According to ICE officials, the arrests took place on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In another executive order, Trump withdrew the US from the World Health Organisation (WHO), a move that American public health experts warned would weaken the nation’s standing as a global health leader and make it more difficult to fight future pandemics. Citing several reasons for the withdrawal, including the WHO’s “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic” and its “failure to adopt urgently needed reforms,” the president also directed the White House Office of Management and Budget to stop future transfers of US funds to the organisation and ordered the Secretary of State to end negotiations on the WHO Pandemic Agreement. He also criticised the agency for demanding “unfairly onerous payments” from the US, while complaining that China pays less.

Climate reversal

While the world scrambles to reach consensus on climate goals and many nations, including most recently the US itself, face the wrath of extreme weather events, Trump announced a reversal on that front. He signed as many as 12 executive orders, which included withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement and repealing multiple Biden-era orders and policies regarding climate change. These actions notably included the rollback of restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, as Trump declared a ‘national energy emergency’.

“We will drill, baby, drill,” the president announced in his speech. “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.”

Peacemaker or power player?

While America’s allies, particularly in Western Europe, anticipated a second Trump presidency with anxiety, the rest of the world, including some of its rivals and nations in the Global South, looked upon Trump with some hope. Partly, this was the result of Trump’s ‘America first’ outlook that, to some extent, sought to pull the US back from its global ‘leadership’ role, which had often left many of the ‘have-nots’ in the US-led order at a disadvantage.

While he faced criticism on his stance on various domestic issues, Trump’s statements on conflict during his first term and outside of office had triggered some optimism beyond US allies. His focus on reducing military involvement abroad, withdrawing from lengthy conflicts, and advocating for a more isolationist approach resonated with some nations, especially those in the Global South, who viewed his policies as a potential shift away from US interventionism and dominance in global affairs.

On the conflict in Ukraine for instance, Trump had outlined his intentions to end the war in ’24 hours’. “They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done — I’ll have that done in 24 hours,” he said at a CNN town hall in May 2023.

And true enough, in his inaugural speech, Trump announced that his ‘proudest legacy’ will be that of a ‘peacemaker and unifier’. “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end. And, perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”

At the same time, however, he outlined his intention to “again build the strongest military the world has ever seen,” a plan that seemed less surprising when considering that his 2023-24 campaign received significant backing from military-industrial giants like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

The executive orders Trump signed also included one that cancelled Biden-era sanctions on far-right Israeli groups and individuals accused of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, which suggests he is unlikely to pressure Israel into a peacefully settling the ongoing conflict.

And while he remained silent on Ukraine in his speech, Trump revealed that his stance would be tougher on Russia the second time around.

“I think Russia is going to be in big trouble. You take a look at their economy. You take a look at their inflation in Russia,” he told reporters in the White House hours after his address. “He [Vladimir Putin] should make a deal. I think he’s destroying Russia by not making a deal,” he said, suggesting that Trump 2.0 would be reined in by the US establishment.

Curiously, Trump barely spoke about China in his inaugural address, mentioning the rival power only once when he claimed, "China is operating the Panama Canal." This move surprised many, considering the president had ignited a trade war with Beijing during his first term and had threatened to do so again while campaigning for his second.

While some experts saw this as a sign that Trump might adopt a friendlier approach toward China, others speculated that he could use the possibility of imposing new tariffs — or not — as a bargaining chip in line with his administration's ‘carrot and stick’ policy, particularly during a potential upcoming visit to China. According to a Wall Street Journal report from last week, which quoted sources familiar with the discussions, Trump told his advisers that he wants to travel to China within his first 100 days in office.

Although he may have avoided antagonising Beijing in his speech, the president did sign executive orders to review Washington’s trade dealings with Beijing, focusing on the potential for new or increased tariffs, particularly regarding the flow of fentanyl from China to the US.

Whatever, the case, Trump’s second term appears poised to be as dramatic and unpredictable as his first. Whether his legacy will truly be that of a "peacemaker and unifier" or a power player, determined to restore America’s might, remains to be seen. For now, the world watches with bated breath as Trump’s bold promises begin to take shape — and as the consequences of his decisions unfold across both domestic and international arenas.