Trump's sledgehammer politics are now wreaking havoc in every sphere

The Herald Scotland

2 days ago

Bouie of course was speaking about US president Donald Trump and his MAGA political movement's current onslaught within almost every sphere of American life and politics.
Casting an eye across the wider global geopolitical landscape this weekend, it would be hard to disagree with Bouie's assessment, and in fact fair to say that almost everywhere you look right now Trump's combative and confrontational kind of politics are leaving their mark.
Just last Friday Trump moved to reignite his global trade war laying bare the administration's bubbling frustration with resistance from both corporations and foreign countries unwilling to rapidly kowtow to Washington's demands.
It was last month that the US president unleashed his so-called 'liberation day' tariffs on many of America's trade partners. What then followed was a period of relative calm as Trump tried to reassure uneasy markets, but once again the US leader has come out shooting, targeting the European Union with new 50 percent tariffs and declaring that he was no longer interested in reaching a trade deal following days of sluggish negotiations.
'It's time that we play the game the way I know how to play the game,' Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. 'I'm not looking for a deal. We've set the deal - it's at 50 percent.'
It's hard to overstate the impact such tariffs might have, delivering as they would a resounding blow to key manufacturing sectors from cars to chemicals aerospace and other goods. According to figures from the European Commission, the US is the EU's largest single trade partner, accounting for just over 20 % of goods exports worth more than €530bn in 2024.
Germany, Ireland, Italy and France are the leading exporters by country. This includes more than €200bn of machinery and vehicles, €160bn of chemicals and €25bn of food and drink.
I wouldn't be inaccurate to say that Friday's tariff threat from Trump caught many European officials off guard not least given it came following comparatively cordial talks with the US at last week's G7 finance minister summit in Banff in the Canadian Rockies.
(Image: Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) at the opening bell on May 23, 2025)
Trade gauntlet
The US was 'treating us like friends again', one European official was quoted by the Financial Times (FT) as saying, but now once again the EU is having to think again about the US president's laying down of the economic and trade gauntlet.
Not content with locking economic horns with the EU, Trump also had Apple and other smartphone manufacturing giants like Samsung in his crosshairs demanding they make their phones in the United States or face a 25% tariff.
'I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone's that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,' Trump posted Friday morning on Truth Social. 'If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.'
Trump met with Cook in Riyadh at the beginning of the president's Middle East trip recently. In Qatar, he called out Cook for his plan to build US-bound iPhones in India.
'I had a little problem with Tim Cook,' Trump said while in Qatar. 'I said to him, 'Tim, you're my friend. I treated you very good. You're coming in with $500 billion.' But now I hear you're building all over India. I don't want you building in India.''
If the EU had been lulled into a false sense of security, then Apple CEO Cook more than likely saw Trump's tariff challenge coming after their recent Qatar encounter.
But time and again it seems the leaders of other nations, trade blocs, heads of businesses and other organisations and institutions continue to find themselves blindsided by the US president.
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Trump's capacity to turn on a political sixpence and his ever increasing willingness to adopt a confrontational approach to policy and negotiations is well established but still it continues to wreak havoc. This after all is a man who has turned diplomacy into a combination of bitter spectator sport and smackdowns, the chosen arena for such events almost invariably the Oval Office.
Few can forget that infamous recent encounter between Trump, US Vice president J.D Vance and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Last week saw a near rerun with South Africa's president Cyril Ramaphosa being the latest victim of an attempted 'diplomatic' mugging in the Oval Office.
Broadcast on live television it no doubt brought delight to Trump's MAGA faithful who believe the white race to be under siege.
Trump's notion of 'genocide' against white Afrikaners as implied by him, will help fuel MAGA's extreme paranoias that the same might happen were the US to relax its border controls.
As a FT editorial rightly pointed out, 'for the neutral observer - and potential tourist or investor - South Africa's reputation was ritually trashed in prime time.'
To his credit, Ramaphosa a veteran of the bitter days of resistance to apartheid rule remained unflappable. As the FT also observed 'the entire optics of the event, in which Trump deferred to white golfers over a Black president and cabinet ministers, evoked nasty echoes of apartheid'.
(Image: US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem speaks to staff for the first time)
White genocide lie
No one doubts that South Africa has its serious problems especially with crime, but Trump's accusation of a 'white genocide' is both untrue and his onslaught in the Oval Office yet another reminder that everything and anything is open to attack.
This say some observers should not be seen as individual challenges, but more significantly part of a wider concerted strategy.
That very point was recently made by the US political and cultural commentator David Brooks.
'So far, we have treated the various assaults of President Trump and the acolytes in his administration as a series of different attacks. In one lane they are going after law firms. In another they savaged U.S.A.I.D. In another they're attacking our universities. On yet another front they're undermining NATO and on another they're upending global trade,' observed Brooks in the NYT last month.
'But that's the wrong way to think about it,' Brooks continued. 'These are not separate battles. This is a single effort to undo the parts of the civilisational order that might restrain Trump's acquisition of power. And it will take a concerted response to beat it back,' Brooks then went on to warn.
That attack on American universities was again in the forefront of Trump's political assault these past few days. Last Thursday Secretary of US homeland security Kristi Noem sent a letter to Harvard telling its administration that the university's student and exchange visitor programme certification had been revoked, 'effective immediately'.
The decision is widely seen as part of a deepening crackdown in recent months by Trump on elite institutions which he accuses of promoting 'woke' ideology and failing to tackle antisemitism.
In a post on the social media platform X that published her letter, Noem wrote: 'It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enrol foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. 'Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.'
But by Friday a US judge temporarily blocked the move providing at least temporary relief to thousands of international students who were faced with being forced to transfer under a policy that the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based university called a 'blatant violation' of the US Constitution and other federal laws, and said would have an 'immediate and devastating effect' on the university and more than 7,000 visa holders.
(Image: Harvard Yard, the centre of the Harvard campus, April 24, 2025 in Cambridge, Massachusetts)
Students' concern
The move by the Trump administration underscored rising concerns and sparked greater criticism from university and academic bodies and networks representing international students. Elsewhere, far from the United States other education institutions sought to take advantage of Harvard's predicament, with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology launching an invitation to Harvard's current and future international students to enrol with it instead.
That in itself highlighted another danger some point to about Trump's policies which are creating a 'brain drain' in the US. For many academics and researchers the US under Trump's rule is losing its allure, the most obvious reason is money, or the looming lack of it.
According to the Economist, Trump's administration has cancelled thousands of research grants since January, when he took office.
Grant Watch, a website, calculates that at least $2.5bn-worth have been rescinded so far, leaving researchers without salaries and unable to pay expenses.
The White House's budget for 2026 also aims to slash science spending.
Since Trump's return to office, somewhere in the region of $8bn has been cancelled or withdrawn from scientists or their institutions, equivalent to nearly 16% of the yearly federal grant budget for higher education. A further $12.2bn was rescinded but has since been reinstated by courts says The Economist.
'Most cancellations have hit research that Trump and his team do not like, including work that appears associated with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and research on climate change, misinformation, covid-19 and vaccines. Other terminations have targeted work conducted at elite universities,' The Economist report detailed.
For some American citizens Trump's reshaping of the country and its relations overseas is proving too much. This is borne out in one example by the number of Americans applying for UK citizenship which rose to the highest on record last year following Trump's return to power and UK tax changes contributing to a surge in applications by US citizens in Britain.
Over 6,100 US citizens applied last year, the most since records began two decades ago and 26 per cent more than in 2023. Applications by US citizens surged in the last quarter of 2024 in particular, rising 40 per cent year on year to about 1,700, according to data published by the Home Office.
Poor polling
In the US itself, Trump's actions are also impacting polls. A recent Economist/YouGov polling across the US, completed on May 9-12, shows 51% think the country is on the wrong track, while only 45% have a favourable impression of his job as president .Only on the issue of border security does polling favour Trump.
On inflation and prices in the shops, only 35% approve of his handling of this policy.
The president also seems to be scoring particularly badly with young voters. Around 62% of young people (18 to 29s) have an unfavourable opinion of the president, compared with 53% of the over-65.
The unease in America with his presidency has left many influential publications and commentators question the future of America under the MAGA 'vision.'
It also has some stressing the importance of seeing what Trump is doing in terms not of isolated attacks, but something that collectively threatens American democracy and therefore requires a collective response.
'Trumpism is threatening all of that. It is primarily about the acquisition of power - power for its own sake. It is a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men, so of course any institutions that might restrain power must be weakened or destroyed,' argued NYT columnist David Brooks in his pull-no-punches article entitled: What's Happening Is Not Normal: America Needs an Uprising That Is not Normal.
In his piece Brooks make the case that 'Trumpism is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit - learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice.'
An increasing number of commentators share such a view, but whether Trump listens to such criticism is altogether another matter. Both America and the world meanwhile watch and wait for what directive comes next from the White House. Nothing it seems is beyond targeting if perceived to be in the interests of the president.