A year on from his second inauguration, Trump 2.0 has one defining word: power
- Written by: Bruce Wolpe, Non-resident Senior Fellow, United States Study Centre, University of Sydney
As Donald Trump celebrates the anniversary of his second inauguration as president of the United States and begins his sixth year in office, his greatest asset is power. He covets absolute power.
The greatest threat to how Trump completes his term is how he wields his power.
Indeed, in the most foolish act in foreign policy in Trump’s presidency, he has threatened punitive tariffs on Denmark and seven other NATO allies in Europe to force the sale of Greenland to the United States. They are outraged. This is a ridiculous ploy that will not deliver Greenland to Trump.
Trump’s escalation in Denmark has already strengthened Putin’s iron resolve to get as much of Ukraine as he can. Prospects for ending the war in Ukraine are now near zero.
On top of Trump’s pending tariffs on Europe, if Trump seizes Greenland, the consequences will shake the world – including Australia. NATO will be terminated. Australia will face an existential question of whether, under those circumstances, it must terminate its alliance with the US.
We can see in a raft of polls at this one-year mark of Trump’s second term that voters across the country are expressing growing disquiet about his management of the economy and the affordability of housing and groceries, the raids by ICE agents as they seize and deport migrants as we saw last week in Minneapolis, and uncertainty about Trump’s foreign adventurism in the Americas and with Iran.
Trump is exercising this power because he can. This will jolt Republicans in Congress to break with Trump on this issue – the first such rift between Trump and his party since his re-election.
Welcome to Trump’s year six.
Trumpism in his second term
Following his election victory in 2024, Trump has been faithful to three of four pillars of Trumpism that made his base a movement that has changed America:
nativism (favouring US-born citizens over immigrants)
protectionism and tariffs
America First nationalism (“Make America Great Again”).
To those ends, Trump is acting aggressively, with immigration agents arresting and deporting tens of thousands, and threats to deploy US troops in American cities to enforce these policies. Trump has imposed punitive tariffs against every trading partner – including Australia, which has a significant trade deficit with the United States. Trump demands foreign companies invest in the United States and build new factories.
But on the fourth Trumpism pillar – America-First isolationism as a driver of America’s foreign policy – Trump has redefined his foreign policy settings with grander ambitions.
Trump has rejected the history of the US waging wars to project American values: protecting Asia from communism in Korea and Vietnam; turning back brutal aggression in Kuwait; punishing the export of radical Islamic terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Trump has applied these lessons to Iran – so far. It is one thing to take out Iran’s nuclear capability. It is another to do regime change – a bridge too far back to the “forever wars” Trump despises.
Trump has buried America’s posture of globalism. He has withdrawn the US from virtually all the architecture, save the United Nations itself, erected after the second world war to ensure global security, stability and prosperity. He has ordered the US out of global organisations, and has cut billions in foreign aid.
The US attack on Venezuela was about much larger goals than arresting its leader. It was about power – controlling power over critical resources in the Americas, from Venezuela to Greenland and everything in between, from Mexico to Cuba to Canada.
Politics at home
Trump is paying a high price at home for his activism in wielding power abroad. Every day Trump spends projecting power outside the United States means he is not paying attention to the American people.
A recent poll shows 56% of US adults believe Trump has gone too far on Venezuela. 57% do not want the US to strike Iran. Even before Trump’s tariff announcement on Greenland, only 17% approved of Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland, and 71% rejected using military force to do it.
Trump’s overall polls are bad. His approval rating is 40% – nearly 10 points down since his inauguration – and disapproval is at 60%. AP-NORC also finds that “Trump hasn’t convinced the Americans that the economy is in good shape.”
CNN polling reports that 55% of those surveyed believe Trump’s policies “have hurt the economy” and that Trump is not doing enough to lower prices. Grocery prices are up sharply. The latest Wall Street Journal poll shows Trump is underwater by double digits on handling inflation, and that he is not focusing enough on the economy.
On immigration, the unrest in Minneapolis and other cities from the harsh methods employed by ICE agents is also taking a toll, with Trump’s approval on that issue lagging below 40%.
But even with all these red flags and warnings from the field, Trump is undeterred. He believes that as president, he can do anything he wants to do. Guardrails that have for decades protected America’s democracy have been cast aside.
Trump has not been blocked – yet – by an ultra-conservative Supreme Court or the pliant Republican Congress for the tariffs he is imposing, the government agencies he has shut down, the monies appropriated by Congress he has terminated, the hundreds of thousands of government employees he has fired, the military strikes he has ordered without advising, much less getting approval from, Congress.
Trump is seeking more control over the economy by seeking to prosecute the chair of the Federal Reserve Bank, an independent agency that sets monetary policy, and to pack its board with loyalists to Trump’s demands that interest rates be lowered.
Since his inauguration, Trump has instructed the Justice Department to prosecute those who attempted to bring him to justice in courtrooms and impeachment proceedings in Congress.
Trump’s musings on power
As Trump consolidates his power, Trump’s musings become imperatives. After months of expressing a desire to own it, Trump is now acting aggressively to conquer Greenland.
At home, Trump is now also musing – twice so far this month – over whether the US midterm elections will be cancelled. Trump knows the likelihood of the Democrats taking back control of the House of Representatives is high. That is precisely what he suffered in the 2018 congressional elections in his first term.
Trump told Reuters last week, “We shouldn’t even have an election,” because of all his great successes.
In January, Trump told Republicans in the House, “I won’t say cancel the election, they should cancel the election, because the fake news would say, ‘He wants the elections cancelled. He’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator.” He told them that if the Democrats take the House back they will “find a reason to impeach” him.
Any steps taken – such as declaring martial law to suspend the midterm elections – will be catastrophic. And that is an understatement.
Based on Trump’s restless mind and command of what he believes is absolute power, at stake this year are the future of democracy at home and alliances abroad.
Authors: Bruce Wolpe, Non-resident Senior Fellow, United States Study Centre, University of Sydney
