The Great American Comeback

It was all over for Kamala Harris around 3AM Eastern Time (ET) when Pennsylvania was called for Donald Trump. Pennsylvania accounts for 19 votes in the US Electoral College, the institution that elects the president. And in the American winner-takes-it-all system, the Electoral College votes are not split. That was the end of the road for Harris’ path to 270 votes in the Electoral College, the number needed for her to go to the White House. This marked the end of a frenzied campaign after the octogenarian Joseph Biden was unceremoniously removed from the presidential ticket and Harris declared the Democratic nominee even without a primary contest.

Unlike 2016, this time Trump’s victory is emphatic in every sense of the word. He has outpaced Harris in the popular vote. He did not do so in 2016 and that was used to question the legitimacy of his victory. Such gaps between the popular vote and the Electoral College votes have happened earlier too. But those were kinder, “un-polarised,” times when a victory was considered a victory.

Trump’s victory has many messages, depending on who is reading them. But some are very clear:

One,    his second presidency will be focused on restoring America’s economic health. The country is no longer the “buyer of last” resort where fortunes of other countries were built by importing all that they produced. The export-led miracles like China and earlier, Southeast Asia and even earlier, South Korea and Japan, is now a matter of history. America now sits on a gigantic pile of debt and mounting inequalities that seem very hard to redress under Democratic Party rule. Trump will try and find ways to restore some balance by using trade policy as a tool. There is a very good chance that industrial policies—anathema to liberal, free-market, economists and ideologues—will be pursued with gusto.

Two,    unlike the Democrats who were not averse to beginning conflicts and wars in the name of “liberal values,” Trump is likely to eschew military adventures abroad. The war in Ukraine, the leitmotif of Western export of its liberal values against allegedly authoritarian rulers like Vladimir Putin, is likely to take a back seat in Trump’s priorities. The only way for Ukraine to prosecute the war in the absence of American military and economic support would be for Europe to take over the burden of funding the war. That may be difficult. The Middle East and the conflict between Israel and Iran—including Iranian proxies in the arc from the Levant to the Red Sea—may be more difficult to resolve. But Trump is known for “out of the box” thinking and this conflict should not be considered beyond resolution.

Three, India’s relations with the US had cooled down considerably in the second half of the Biden administration’s reign. This was primarily due to India not joining the bandwagon against Russia. On surface, the US and India, continued to profess sound relations and to an extent the “core” of the bilateral relationship remained intact, but the edges had begun to fray, badly. American interference in South Asia—Bangladesh being the prime example—has not gone down well in India even if official bromides continue to be administered regularly. With Trump, this may change. There are bound to be frictions between the two countries on trade related issues. This was also the case during the first Trump presidency. But the weaponisation of “values” to arm-twist India under Democratic rule may not have the same edge under the second Trump administration.

Last, for the world as a whole, the second Trump administration may end up bringing economic relief. As conflict diminishes and inflationary pressures that have built up due to continuous spikes in commodities and broken supply chains could be at an end.

Donald TrumpgeopliticsinflationKamala HarrisRepublican PartyUS economyUS Elections 2024