President Trump should not be giving oxygen to the CCP rather than to his allies and partners.
Ever since he took over as the US President on January 20, Donald Trump has seemed in a rush to operationalise his agenda. In the process, errors have been made. Slower and better may be a wiser course to follow. The Wall Street Journal just carried an op-ed by one of the foremost thinkers in the US, Walter Russel Mead, on how India is being (certainly inadvertently) alienated by the Trump administration. The US President has surprised partners such as Japan and India by making what seems to be a mating call to CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping. The response from the other side has been a frigid silence. Xi regards Trump as an adversary to be bested, and honeyed words will not dampen such a perception. Such an approach to the PRC has made several in Asia wonder if the US under Trump would stand by them in the event of a showdown, perhaps even kinetic, with China.
The list includes ASEAN, a very significant group of countries that are directly in the sights of CCP expansionism. Trump during his campaign and now as President seem polar opposites. During his campaign, Trump had signalled the danger posed to democracies such as Taiwan by China. Now, doubts are growing as to whether the US can be a reliable partner in case the sovereignty of that country comes under attack from China, as Defense Secretary Hegseth has correctly stated it might, and as early as 2027. Rather than the opposite, President Trump should not be giving oxygen to the CCP rather than to his allies and partners. Polling data suggest a consistent fall in his popularity since early into his second term in the White House. Almost every other day, the White House announces an achievement that seems invisible to those on the outside of that citadel of US executive power. A trade deal with China was announced, to silence from the other side. A war that he had pledged to end in a day once he assumed office shows little sign of abating. Reports are that Japan has walked away from the economically unwise policy of shutting off fuel imports from Russia and has resumed getting crude from Russia. As yet, the German government has yet to follow that course, but is remaining glued to the Von der Leyen line of fighting Russia at all costs, including to the country of her origin, even should Japan and the US bolt from those seemingly intent on weakening their own economies.
Should they come to office in 2028, the Democrats need to bestow the Congressional Medal of Honour on Elon Musk. He has been a prodigy in the running of Tesla, but in seeking through Trump to apply the same methods as what he employed when he bought Twitter and applied there, Musk may have erred. DOGE needs to be renamed the Department of Government Economy rather than efficiency. In his justifiable zeal at cutting costs and trimming payrolls, Musk forgot that the US Government (USG) does not function in the way a wholly owned private company does. The DOGE tax cuts have resulted in a plummeting of the popularity of the US President. Were such a process to continue, in course of time his own party may turn against Trump and decide that a replacement is needed for the survival of the majority now enjoyed by Republicans in both the Houses of the US Congress. In J.D. Vance, Trump made a wise choice, departing from the policy of several of his predecessors who chose incompetent or worse Vice-Presidents, such as Spiro Agnew by President Richard Nixon. Unlike such choices, Vance is popular in his own party and in much of the country, and hence would serve as an attractive replacement for candidate, should the welcome outcome of Trump serving a full term come about. Clearly, the term will need to be marked by an absence for almost the entire period.
That will come about only if agencies such as ICE display a different attitude to law abiding residents rather than be equally harsh to all illegal immigrants. In case the immigrant has married a person who is a US citizen, especially if the couple have children who were born in the US and are therefore citizens. The way in which non-citizen immigrants, despite being married to US citizens and having children, have been forcibly repatriated to their own countries, or worse, to El Salvador, has caused unease even among many Republicans. When he was out of office, a relative of the US President had written a book in which she had described him as totally lacking in empathy. Given that Trump is a good paterfamilias, as his sons and daughters would testify, such a charge cannot be sustained. Trump needs to show that side not just to his children but much more widely, for voters in the US with few exceptions would appreciate a President who shows more empathy and not just to his children. Another problem is in the field of foreign relations. A clear distinction needs to be drawn between friends and foes, not the same treatment to all. Indeed, on occasion showing more empathy towards foes rather than towards friends. Some of the social security slashes recommended by DOGE need to be reinstated. Hard times may befall even those who do not deserve such situations, and who are willing to work. They should not suffer because of cuts several see as recommended by one billionaire and carried out by the other. Becoming or remaining a billionaire is in itself good rather than the opposite. Judging by the sums they have given away, they are overwhelmingly generous to those less fortunate.
The next Presidential elections are almost four years away. President Trump needs to demonstrate that he merited their vote, as indeed he did. Even in the midterm elections of 2026, should his party lose its majorities in both the House and Senate, much of the Trump agenda would remain unfulfilled. Should the Republican Party lose the coming Presidential poll, the Democratic Party may dismantle almost his entire agenda. An absolute monarch has only one vote that counts, that of himself. So too Elon Musk in the companies he controls. President Trump needs to take a majority of US voters with him, if he is to enter history with his agenda intact.
