Donald Trump | Rajdeep Banerjee

Donald Trump has won the US presidential election in a surprise victory that has shocked the poll pundits around the world. Trump’s populist, protectionist rhetoric has helped him win the presidency. The agony of the white working middle class has finally led to Trump’s way to the Oval office. The blue-collared whites have seen squeezing living standards and rising inequalities. Globalisation resulted in massive movements of capital around the world, but in the process created a majority of Americans being relegated to a stricken middle class. Trump has been successful in consolidating this massive chunk of voters, finally culminating in his win.

Trump has been very aggressive in his policies. He wants to brand China a currency manipulator which can even trigger a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. He has also promised to renegotiate NAFTA. Trump has openly criticised the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has not yet been ratified. He wants to negotiate fair trade deals so as to create American jobs, increase wages, and reduce the trade deficit. He has consistently attacked Hillary Clinton as the person who supported NAFTA. He has also opposed Hillary’s support to China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, and allowing China to run up $1 trillion in cumulative trade deficits with the United States.

Trump has promised to prioritize the jobs, wages, security of the American people and establish new immigration controls to boost wages and to ensure that open jobs are offered to American workers first. He has even declared to protect the economic well-being of the lawful immigrants already living in the States by curbing uncontrolled foreign worker admissions. He professes to introduce an ‘America’s Infrastructure First’ policy. Investments in transportation, clean water, a modern and reliable electricity grid, telecommunications, security infrastructure, and others will be his top priority. Trump has promised to create millions of new jobs in construction, steel manufacturing, and other sectors. Highlighting on the need of infrastructure investment, he has argued that such investment will make America more competitive, create jobs, increase wages for American workers, and will reduce the costs of goods and services for American consumers.

On eliminating terrorism, Trump promises to pursue aggressive joint and coalition military operations to destroy ISIS, international cooperation to cut off their funding, expand intelligence sharing, and cyber warfare to disrupt and disable their propaganda and recruiting. On the issue of indicting Clinton, Trump has alleged that Clinton lied to the Americans regarding the use of her private email server set up in the basement of her home while serving as Secretary of State. She had allegedly sent classified information jeopardizing the national security of America by allowing her emails to be hacked by foreign intelligence services. FBI Director James Comey’s statement that Clinton was extremely careless in handling very sensitive, highly classified information but was not criminally liable has also been criticised by the Trump camp. He has continuously targeted Hillary as the one who has been responsible for sending American jobs overseas which has led to rebuilding of foreign countries at America’s expense.

Trump rightly exhorted in his victory speech “Every single American will have the opportunity to realize his or her fullest potential.” A gargantuan challenge lies ahead for Trump.

Donald Trump has edged out others and is now the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party for President of the United States in the 2016 election. His political positions on various issues like illegal immigration, free trade agreements, H-1B visas, tax laws, rising crime and poverty have raised many eyebrows.

On illegal immigration from Mexico, Trump alleges that Mexico’s leaders have been taking advantage of the United States by using illegal immigration to export the crime and poverty in their own country. This has resulted in loss of hundreds of billions in healthcare costs, housing costs, education costs, welfare costs. He has proposed making a boundary wall and also Mexico should pay for the wall and, until they do, the United States should, among other things impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages, increase fees on all temporary visas issued to Mexican CEOs and diplomats, increase fees on all border crossing cards, increase fees on all NAFTA worker visas from Mexico and further increase fees at ports of entry to the United States from Mexico.

He has also heavily come against the Schumer-Rubio immigration bill as he sees it as nothing more than a giveaway to the corporate patrons who run the political parties. Real immigration reform puts the needs of working people first and not wealthy globetrotting donors. Those who come to the United States on temporary visas but refuse to leave will have to subjected to penalties as such people are threat to national security. Individuals who refuse to leave at the time their visa expires should be subject to criminal penalties as this will also help give local jurisdictions the power to hold visa overstays until federal authorities arrive. Alleging disastrous consequences of failed government policies, he rues that nearly 40% of black teenagers and nearly 30% of Hispanic teenagers are unemployed. For black Americans without high school diplomas, the bottom has fallen out as more than 70% were employed in 1960, compared to less than 40% in 2000.

Commenting on the unabated influx of foreign workers, he has criticised it as it holds down salaries, keeps unemployment high, and makes it difficult for poor and working class Americans, including immigrants themselves and their children, to earn a middle class wage. Nearly half of all immigrants and their US-born children currently live in or near poverty, including more than 60 percent of Hispanic immigrants. Thus there is need to control the admission of new low-earning workers in order to help wages grow, get teenagers back to work, aid minorities’ rise into the middle class, help schools and communities falling behind, and to ensure our immigrant members of the national family become part of the American dream.

On the issue of H-1B visas, more than half of H-1B visas are issued for the program’s lowest allowable wage level, and more than eighty percent for its bottom two. Raising the prevailing wage paid to H-1Bs will force companies to give these coveted entry level jobs to the existing domestic pool of unemployed native and immigrant workers in the U.S., instead of flying in cheaper workers from overseas. Again this will improve the number of black, Hispanic and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been passed over in favor of the H-1B program.

Trump had supported the Project Exile where if a violent felon used a gun to commit a crime, he was prosecuted in federal court and was imprisoned for five years with no parole or early release. Trump has also criticised the Obama Administration decision of releasing 76,000 aliens from its custody with criminal convictions since 2013. He suggests that all criminal aliens must be returned to their home countries, a process which can be aided by cancelling any visas to foreign countries which will not accept their own criminals, and making it a separate and additional crime to commit an offense while here illegally.

On the tax front, Americans are now promised a simpler tax code with four brackets – 0%, 10%, 20% and 25%. The new tax code will eliminate the marriage penalty and the Alternative Minimum Tax while providing the lowest tax rate since before World War II. No business of any size, from a Fortune 500 to a mom and pop shop to a freelancer living job to job, will pay more than 15% of their business income in taxes. This lower rate will make corporate inversions unnecessary by making America’s tax rate one of the best in the world.

Trump alleges that America fully opened its markets to China but China did not reciprocate. Its Great Wall of Protectionism uses unlawful tariff and non-tariff barriers to keep American companies out of China and to tilt the playing field in their favour. Trump has threatened that America under his presidency will bring China to the bargaining table by immediately declaring it a currency manipulator. It will also protect American ingenuity and investment by forcing China to uphold intellectual property laws and stop their unfair and unlawful practice of forcing U.S. companies to share proprietary technology with Chinese competitors as a condition of entry to China’s market. It will also try to reclaim millions of American jobs and reviving American manufacturing by putting an end to China’s illegal export subsidies and lax labour and environmental standards.