Donald Trump has set out to radically reshape the institutions of power in the US, moving rapidly to impose his far-right agenda.
He has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to step up raids and arrest and deport thousands of immigrants. Trump has even threatened to imprison up to 30,000 in Guantanamo Bay. This is a continuation of his racist scapegoating designed to blame migrants for crime and unemployment.
He has attacked medical treatment for transgender kids and banned trans women from women’s sports, pardoned the fascist rioters who stormed the Capitol building, pulled out of the Paris climate agreement and opened up more land for oil drilling.
Trump’s agenda is one of brazen capitalist reaction. His support for capitalism and the rich was symbolised by the collection of tech billionaires seated in the front row at his inauguration.
He is promising a set of ultra-neoliberal policies, including savage cuts to the public sector, tax cuts for the rich and a bonfire of regulations imposed to stop business trashing the environment. Trump has always said he measures his success by the health of the stockmarket—and letting profits rip.
His “first buddy”, billionaire Elon Musk, has begun purging and dismantling whole government departments. In all the aim is to sack up to 10 per cent of government workers.
The USAID department is being demolished, with practically all its 10,000 staff sacked.
Aid has long been a tool of US power, extended to governments around the world willing to serve US imperialist interests.
But the effort to present the US as a benevolent power has meant it also provides billions for HIV programs, healthcare, food aid and immunisations across war zones and the global south.
Trump, however, has not had everything his own way.
He backed down on his initial plan for tariffs against Canada and Mexico after a huge backlash in Canada and pressure from US auto companies.
Car manufacturers in the US pointed out that individual components in US-produced cars such as engines can cross the Canadian and Mexican borders eight times. Tariffs would see them taxed every time they cross. Trump is now saying he will impose tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.
The courts have also blocked some of his blatantly illegal measures, restoring birthright citizenship for anyone born in the US and stopping his efforts to freeze all federal funding grants including to states, local councils and universities.
Building resistance
Trump can be beaten. His supporters are a minority—he won the votes of only 33 per cent of potential voters, with more than one third not bothering to vote at all.
But resistance on the streets is crucial to forcing Trump to back down. So far this has been more muted than at the beginning of his first presidency.
Too many left-wing activists and campaigners fell behind the Democrats and Kamala Harris’s election campaign in the hope of keeping Trump out of office. But the Democrats personify a political system that has continually failed ordinary Americans, run in the interests of billionaires and the rich.
Their failure has left many of those opposed to Trump’s agenda demoralised.
But opposition is growing. Thousands have joined protests in defence of immigrants in more than a dozen states, including California, Minnesota, Michigan, Texas, Ohio and Arizona.
Businesses across the country shut down as part of a “day without immigrants”, designed to show how reliant the country is on immigrant workers.
In Los Angeles, several thousand joined a march that closed part of the 101 Freeway for five hours. There have also been school walkouts, as students protest to defend their parents and families.
Others are organising to defend immigrants against ICE raids directly. In early February, 1500 people turned up to a legal briefing in Denver, Colorado to help provide legal assistance and make sure undocumented immigrants know their legal rights.
In his last term, Trump was forced to back down again and again in the face of mass opposition. He had to end the imprisonment of migrant children in cages at the border following massive public outrage.
When he praised fascists and far right groups that gathered in Charlottesville in 2017 as “very fine people”, mass protests of tens of thousands nationwide came out to denounce racism and the right, leaving Trump isolated.
Trump will do nothing for working class people—and neither will the Democrats. Building a mass movement from below that connects his attacks on immigrants, trans people and women with his support for the billionaires can drive him back. This means socialist politics has to be at the heart of the resistance.
By James Supple
