No US President in history may have created such damage, engendered so much chaos globally or wreaked such harm to so many at a fast or widespread scale as Donald Trump has managed to 100 days into his second term. The global economy is rattled, the stock and bond markets roiled by uncertainty and oil and gas prices are down along with the US dollar, which is now being viewed as not the haven it used to be. In attempting to reset an established world order using selective tariffs based on a country’s trade history with the US, Trump has sent forecasts of the global economy sliding downwards as the world’s two largest economies engage in a trade war that shows only nascent signs of being sorted out. It is the sheer anxiety caused by tariffs as high as the Trump Tower that has gripped the world and sent countries scrambling to sign trade deals with the US. If Trump believes he has the world running to his feet, he may be wrong by a country mile as major trading partners like the EU are preparing to resist. If Trump began with the agenda that he would ‘Make America Great Again’ he has not achieved that either with even the Japanese, the largest holder of American bonds, looking to park their funds elsewhere. It is the overall pattern of unpredictable behaviour swinging to and from extremes that has engendered a rollercoaster ride for all and a precipitous fall in the President’s rating that is worse than any other President, dead or alive, after his first 100 days in office, including his own first term that began in 2017. And, quite predictably, Trump rages at the pollsters rather than try to understand why they fell. At home, Trump has done more in the field of human relations to hurt so many in such a short time as to come close to being an American calamity. His total disregard for civil liberties, contempt for pluralism, reckless disregard of the separation of powers and legal constraints as he pursued his own agenda marks such a departure from the norms as to pile outrage on the Constitution. Why, he even pardoned aides who assaulted police officers in the raid on the Capitol Hill and, worse, appointed them to government. Trump put fear in the minds of not only illegal immigrants but also in people living there legally while attempting to also take away citizenship by birthright that has been a feature of America for over 200 years. While none questions the legitimacy of a country asserting its sovereignty in the matter of who can live there or be its citizen, the methods employed have outraged the world. No American administration can claim to have been devoid of questionable practices, but the Trump administration may have hit new lows in promoting private interests, tipping rich donors backing the Republicans on when to invest in stocks and the President enriching himself in promoting a cryptocurrency in his name and likeness. And what his top acolyte Elon Musk has done with the department of government efficiency in jettisoning jobs may take a lot to undo. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize as a potential war buster, Trump has singularly failed as mediator in the Gaza and Ukraine wars. And in foreign policy, his first big defeat came in the victory of the Liberals in Canada under Mark Carney who may have been on the chopping block until Trump threatened the country by wishing to take over the land and its resources.
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