Four Years of Trump by Ziyad Hadi

Ziyad Hadi

Pakistanis and much of the world have reacted with a mixture of fear and confusion to Trump’s victory. However many commentators are stating that non-US residents have little to fear. Their reasoning is that most of Trump’s policy statements are in regards to domestic issues, not foreign policy. While these policies are reprehensible, commentators attempting to play down the global implications of a Trump administration assure us that these policies are either 1) patently unachievable (e.g., building a
$20 billion wall across a 2,000 mile frontier, or banning 1.5 billion people from legally entering the country); or 2) do not have much effect on non-US residents.

Trump’s foreign policy statements have been amorphous at best, and the specific domestic policies mentioned below are of limited international effect. However, the purveyors of such arguments ignore other domestic policies espoused by Trump that will have far-reaching ramifications on Pakistan and the world at large.

Firstly, one of the few beliefs championed by Trump is that climate change is a hoax. He has stated that he will withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The Agreement aims to implement the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in order to slow and reverse global warming. If the US refuses to fund and adhere to its obligations thereunder will China? Will India? US withdrawal could have repercussions on the global environment, particularly on Pakistan. This is because the Indus River is sensitive to global warming because a high proportion of its flow is derived from glaciers — which are melting due to warming and will result in the destruction of the Indus river system. This phenomenon could have been slowed by implementation of the Paris Agreement allowing us vtime to take counter measures.

Secondly, Trump is a supporter of deregulating the US financial sector and has stated that he would repeal the Dodd-Frank Act. Dodd-Frank, was passed in the aftermath of the 2007-09 financial crisis. It attempted to create transparency and allow regulators to spot activities which caused the Great Recession. Trump wants to repeal the Act and has not stated any intention of replacing it. This would replicate the non-regulated runaway financial sector that was the primary cause of the Great Recession. Thirdly, Trump’s idea to create jobs is to impose tariffs on imports, specifically on goods imported from China and Mexico. The reason is that they would force US companies to move their manufacturing units back to the US from there. But US companies could move these units elsewhere. But Trump suggested he would impose tariffs on other countries as well. This could cause international trade wars and retaliatory tariffs. As Pakistan is a developing economy which relies on the export of manufactured goods, this could have harmful effects on Pakistani exports. Another line of argument is that due to the various checks on Presidential power embedded in the US Constitution, Congress will be able to prevent Trump from doing anything destructive. However, this argument does not apply to the Trump policies. Firstly, as the GOP has historically been anti-regulation, deregulation of the financial sector would be unlikely to meet resistance in the GOP-controlled Congress. Secondly, US statutes passed in 1917, 1974, 1977, and the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, empower the President to impose import restrictions, tariffs and retaliatory trade policies without the consent of Congress. And finally, as the US ratified the Paris Agreement through executive order, withdrawal therefrom could also be done this way.

But perhaps the most insidious result of the 2016 US Election is the re-energisation of extremist Muslims resulting from the fact that Trump was elected. The IS has been suffering from a decline in volunteers. Jihadi propaganda can be simplified to “America elected this man”, followed by a clip of a Trump rally where he calls Muslims immoral, hate-filled jihadis. After seeing this, how much easier does it become to sell the “Islam vs the West” narrative to Muslim youths?

So perhaps the international community’s greatest fear should not be in relation to what Trump may do, but rather in respect of what has already been done by the American electorate.