James Johnson is co-founder of JL Partners. He was the Senior Opinion Research and Strategy Adviser to the Prime Minister 2016 – 2019.
What would a second Donald Trump presidency look like? With Trump leading in the polls in both the Republican primary and the presidential election, it has turned from an eccentric hypothetical into the most likely outcome. A lot can change over the coming months, but Trump is on track to be the 47th president of the United States, and be the first president since Grover Cleveland (who was 22nd and 24th) to get back into office after an election defeat.
Last month, I did a road trip through Georgia to speak to voters who will determine whether Trump gets into the Oval Office once more. This is ‘Swing Country’: a two-hours drive south-east of Atlanta into the rural Washington and Baldwin counties. Biden won Georgia by a knife-edge 11,000 votes in 2020, and it is fundamental to who holds power next.
I posed the question to independent voter Nicholas, a graduate student living in Milledgeville, who painted a bleak picture: another “divisive impeachment… bitter partisanship even worse than it is now… bad foreign policy”. Nicholas said that Trump would cosy up to Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, and that his modus operandi would be to “get as much revenge on everyone he possibly can”.
Eric, an independent, who usually leans Republican, came at it from another angle. Without the need for GOP allies or the prospect of a third term, Eric doubts that Trump would “be as strongly fighting for conservative ideas” this time round. Christy, a state employee and Democrat, said there would be a resurgence of the divisive politics that plagued the country during Trump’s first term. She found the stress of that so much last time that she started a course of anti-depressants. Joseph, an army veteran, was more sanguine: “I mean, we survived last time”.
Here is my attempt to try and read the runes of Trump 47.
Despite the hundreds of thousands of words spent on it, Trump has been remarkably quiet about his position on Ukraine. He talks about ending the war in a single day, but has said much less about the issue than his primary rivals. Nonetheless the reading of people around him, and his private relationship with arch-Ukraine sceptic Tucker Carlson, suggests that his election would be bad for Zelensky’s war effort. The dealmaker would seek a deal: he would likely pressure the Ukrainian president to meet with Putin and sue for peace, leaving a Russian military presence in occupied parts of Ukraine and significantly heightening the chance of a second Russian offensive in several years’ time.
Two caveats to this. First, Trump might like a deal but he dislikes being spurned even more. Were Putin were to throw something back at him or anger the president, then he might end up swinging back to Zelensky.
Second, do not underestimate the potential for Trump’s decisions to be affected by his emotional reaction. When Assad gassed children, Trump’s horror at the images of the results directly led to a military response in 2018. Trump may have been the architect of the Afghanistan withdrawal, but do we really think he would have stayed the course if the same images of American humiliation happened under his watch? If presented with evidence of Putin atrocity, Trump might change course.
And are we really headed anywhere differently under Biden? With stalemate in Ukraine, the White House is already making noises that suggest doubt about its long-term commitment to the fight.
Nonetheless, a Trump win is probably worse for Zelensky than a Biden win. This is ironic, since there is a good chance the Ukraine war might not have happened under Trump’s watch – even if by accident. The unpredictability of the Commander in Chief may have left Putin unwilling to take the gamble; it is certainly unlikely that Trump would have broadcast that there would be no American no-fly-zone over Kyiv in the way that Biden did.
There would be all sorts of other tensions on the world stage in the event of a second Trump presidency. The man who famously muscled past other leaders at a G20 summit would be back in force. Expect questions over NATO funding, a lack of engagement on international climate policy, and the traditional macho rivalries with leaders like Emmanuel Macron to come to the fore all over again.
Tariffs would put an end to any thawing of the US-China relationship, and Iran would be in Trump’s headlights. Again, though, do not understate the importance of a deal. There is nothing Trump likes more than a grand bargain and if he can make one, he may make it in the least likely places. One only needs to look at his engagement with Kim Jong Un to know that.
Global trade, starting to flicker back into life after a dire few years post-pandemic, may slow down once more with the imposition of the tariffs Trump has long spoken about. This would hurt exporter nations like China and Germany the most. If Britain can get a trade deal back on the agenda, then this could work out positively for post-Brexit Britain, but it would need sacrifices on the UK side, too, that a technocratic Sunak and a Trump-tepid Starmer would be eager to avoid.
In domestic policy, we are headed for the real deal. Trump’s campaign staff have been briefing for months that, this time, deep state officials will not stand in their way. There will be no appointment of ‘sensibles’ such as Rex Tillerson or James Mattis in the first presidency. Civil servants and officials are being screened for adherence to the Trump worldview. Do not expect a big hitter to be appointed Vice President: Trump will want someone who doesn’t think for themselves. Expect that to mean tougher policies on the border, an extension of Trump’s tax cuts, and a cultural assault on the Washington bureaucracy.
Robert Kagan wrote recently in the Washington Post that this means we are headed for dark days. “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.”
Kagan is a distinguished and respected foreign policy expert, but appears to have fallen into the well-trodden path of Trump hyperbole. The separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution means any president is severely limited in what they can do. Congress is likely to stay divided or with small margins on either side.
Even if it is not, there are plenty of Republican lawmakers who would side with a Democratic minority to kill laws the president might push. Trump did not succeed in subverting an election from the White House at the height of his power. He is not going to be able to do so with his age limiting a tilt at an unconstitutional third term, and the 2022 midterms having meant that very few election-deniers are in posts of importance in the states. A wild ride, yes, but a Trump presidency is not going to mean the end of America.