The countdown is on to Monday, January 20, when President-elect Donald Trump becomes the 47th leader of the United States. Unfortunately, his second term likely will result in higher prices for consumers, verbal skirmishes with foreign leaders, and the real possibility of military troops dispatched to allies Greenland and Panama because he wants to take over those countries.
MAGA adherents and other Americans who voted for Trump got played, and the sooner they realize it the better. Trump has already admitted he probably can't do anything about high prices, after running on inflation and pledging to lower grocery costs during the campaign. "Look, they got them up. I'd like to bring them down. It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard," Trump said in an interview with Time magazine after the election.
If Trump implements his promise of imposing tariffs on imported goods, those, too, will likely result in higher prices on an array of consumer products, as well as potentially disrupt the supply chain. We already have experience with that, thanks to Trump's first term. "In fact, experts say Trump's much-talked-about tariffs proposals would likely exacerbate supply chain woes," NBC News reported. "It already happened during Trump's first administration, when ocean container shipping market rates spiked more than 70% in 2018 after he announced new tariffs, according to Reuters."
If Trump really wanted to do something about imports and the supply chain, he'd go after the Houthi pirates who have disrupted shipping routes by attacking ships in the Red Sea for nearly two years. But instead, Trump thinks transgender people serving in the military are a danger to the country. And, soon after taking office, he will likely reinstate the ban on trans service members that he instituted in 2017 during his first term, and which President Joe Biden rescinded in 2021.
In fact, the war on trans people will get ugly and only intensify. Trump knows it's a talking point that riles up his supporters, especially the issues of gender-affirming health care and trans girls playing on girls' sports teams. Bathroom battles are back on the front page after Congressmember Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) didn't want her trans colleague, Congressmember Sarah McBride (D-Delaware), using women's restrooms on Capitol Hill. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) dutifully went along and implemented the rule change.
Now, Mace has her sights set higher, by introducing a bill that would ban trans people from using restrooms that match their gender identity on federal property. That could include national parks, federal office buildings, and airports. Good grief.
Social media sites have grown coarser, led by Trump's "first buddy," Elon Musk, and his X platform. In recent weeks, Musk's been joined by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose Facebook, Instagram, and Threads platforms will also change now that he's announced there will be no more fact checkers to moderate anti-LGBTQ and other hateful content. Meta and Amazon are doing away with diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, following in the footsteps of several other corporations that made the switch last year. It's all an effort to cozy up to Trump, who has convinced the MAGA world that fairness and respect are out of fashion and that people can now be vilified online for who they are. It's shameful.
Immigration, of course, is another top priority for Trump, and has severe ramifications for so many undocumented people. While Trump has pledged to "launch the largest deportation of criminals in American history," as reported by the conservative Washington Examiner, Axios noted that there aren't that many criminals who could immediately be deported. "Less than 0.5% of the 1.8 million cases in immigration courts during the past fiscal year — involving about 8,400 people — included deportation orders for alleged crimes other than entering the U.S. illegally, an Axios review of government data found," the outlet reported.
What's far more likely to happen is that plenty of non-criminals will be caught up in these immigration roundups, and that's why so many undocumented and documented people alike, including LGBTQs, are terrified. That's just what Trump wants — he needs to instill fear in people in order to build himself up. We'll be interested to see what business leaders think — many companies depend on immigrants (legal or not) for work in dairy farms, poultry processing plants, and agriculture. If they're suddenly without these vital workers, you can bet prices on those food items will shoot up — another example of how Trump won't be able to keep his promise to the MAGA faithful.
If there is an overarching theme to all of this, it's that it's Trump's world now. No longer content to confine himself to U.S. borders, he believes he can do whatever he wants, whether it be steamrolling over democratically elected leaders around the globe or adding to mental health stressors that so many LGBTQ people, immigrants, and others already routinely deal with here at home. Trump and his cronies are laughing all the way to the White House, as they prepare to enact policies that will make the rich wealthier and the rest of us fight for the scraps left over. That's no way to run a country like the U.S.; unfortunately, too many voters didn't see it that way.
Whatever resistance there is, it's not as broad as eight years ago. We will need to rely on local and state leaders to enact policies and programs that will help people get out of poverty, assist with higher education, access health care and child care, and stand up to the authoritarianism that is engulfing this country. The right-wing takeover of the presidency, Congress, and the U.S. Supreme Court has real world consequences. Hopefully, Americans will soon realize the horrific downsides and wake up before it's too late.
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