After completing 100 days of his second term in office as President of the United States (POTUS) of America, the world’s most economically, academically and militarily powerful nation, it’s now quite clear to all except the most intellectually arid elements of American society (their number alas, is not insignificant), that it’s the beginning of the end for Donald J. Trump as the 47th POTUS.
Archaic international trade policies driven by 19th century frontier economics threaten to wreck the post-World War II rules-based international order painstakingly built by several enlightened American presidents beginning with Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, all the way down to Barack Obama. To please and appease his MAGA (Make America Great Again) blue-collar working class constituency, which has lost traditional rust-belt manufacturing shopfloor jobs as American industry has moved higher up the value chain, Trump has unleashed a trade/tariffs war upon the world.
It’s baffling that President Trump and his economic advisers have not grasped the 21st century reality that employment at scale can’t be created in America’s traditional industries. Even if America’s steel, automobiles and manufacturing industries can be revived behind the protection of tariff walls, fast AI advancements and robotics have ended the era of labour-intensive factory assembly lines. In the circumstances, a shift in focus towards skilling, reskilling and upskilling laid off labour for industry and services sectors of the world’s largest and most inventive economy is the best option. And no nation on earth is better equipped to reskill and upgrade its labour force to add value to industries of the future, than America.
Moreover, it’s doubly foolish of Trump to have declared war on America’s great universities which are magnets for global talent and envy of the world. President Trump has threatened to cut off their research funding from government ministries, departments and agencies. Surely he is aware that the great inventions and innovations, and sheer intellectual power that enabled America to win two world wars and emerge as the most affluent nation in global history, emerged from America’s 6,000 institutions of higher education. Only they have the capability to quickly upskill this country, abundantly endowed with resources — land, labour, capital and enterprise — to resolve problems of unemployment, homelessness, medical care deficiency and rising wealth and income disparity.
Instead of allying with the academy to address these snowballing problems, Trump has opted to antagonise them. Simultaneously with his arbitrary mid-term deportation of foreign students for minor civic offences, contempt for the hallowed tradition of due process, Trump is rapidly antagonising the powerful judiciary and the eastern seaboard WASP establishment. Such banana republic rampages of President Trump in a 250-year-old democracy governed by law and due process, is certain to prove his downfall well before his term in office is scheduled to end in 2029.
