
Donald Trump: Only Pyrrhic Victories?
The eagerness and determination with which the president is acting indicate that he is aware that time may be running out faster than he wishes.
Everything suggests that Trump knows that he has little time to show results, which he is unlikely to be able to achieve exclusively with the policies he is implementing at the moment.
This is the only way to explain why he has accelerated his repertoire of aggressions and announcements to the four winds: immigrants, China, Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Gaza, the Palestinians, fentanyl, USAID... and all in just one month.
The President has been rampant with announcements, which can be interpreted in two ways: either he is in a hurry for reasons we will analyze later, or he is "fishing with dynamite" to see what he can capitalize on politically. In the first case, there is full awareness of the difficulties of his second government; in the second, he would be a man improvising. However, the latter possibility seems unlikely, for although Trump is opportunistic, he rarely acts without a plan.
Let us return to the initial idea: the march of the new Trump administration has been determined and frenetic. What is surprising is that it has already yielded results. For example, he has threatened tariffs on Mexico and Canada, which ended up accepting his conditions to protect the border and prevent more fentanyl from reaching young Americans, according to his speech. He has quickly initiated mass deportation processes and has pressured Colombian President Gustavo Petro. He has put the Panamanian president on the ropes and succeeded in getting U.S. government ships to pay no tariffs to cross the canal. Then, he announced his interest in Greenland and now he is targeting the Gaza Strip.
No one can deny that, in these first weeks, Trump has won several battles. According to The New York Times, approval of his measures is in the majority among public opinion:
"Many Americans who otherwise dislike President-elect Donald J. Trump share his bleak assessment of the country’s problems and support some of his most contentious prescriptions to fix them, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Ipsos," the newspaper informed.
The same media outlet reported that 47% of respondents said they were excited to optimistic about Trump's new term.
In this first month, Trump has achieved his goal of keeping his supporters satisfied. But there is a question that, for a keen observer and follower of the President, should raise concern: are these not Pyrrhic victories?
Specific cases
Let's look at some examples.
1. The Panama Canal: After threatening even the use of military force, his government presented as an achievement the free passage of its ships through the canal. However, according to the media Panama America, the impact is minimal, since only 38 U.S. warships cross the canal per year.
2. Mexico and Canada: Both countries gave in to pressure, but was it necessary to escalate the conflict instead of resorting to diplomacy?
3. Colombia: Trump succeeded in silencing Gustavo Petro on deportations, but the result is not unlike Joe Biden, who sent 475 flights with deportees during his term and in 2024 alone expelled 14,000 undocumented Colombians.
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In each of these cases, Trump has expended a disproportionate amount of energy to achieve results that, with another approach, he could have achieved without so much confrontation.
The dilemma of time and reality
This is where another element of analysis comes in: it appears that Trump is in a hurry to demonstrate that he did everything he could to deliver on his campaign promises. That is, he himself might be aware that his room for maneuver is short.
Why? Because reality is stubborn and it could soon become evident that many of his promises -such as deporting a million illegal immigrants or raising tariffs- will not solve anything or could even generate bigger problems.
Some key questions:
Has Trump not considered that raising tariffs could raise prices and complicate monetary policy, increasing the risk of economic slowdown?
Is it not clear to him that deporting a million immigrants does not significantly change the situation, as there are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US, many of whom contribute to the economy?
There could be a scenario in which the U.S. public realizes that, even if his immigration policy is an "unqualified success," it does not solve anything. Moreover, if his economic decisions generate inflation and less growth, his supporters could turn against him.
From our perspective, Trump is fully aware of these limitations. Sooner or later, he will have to moderate his quarrelsome tone, because solving America's problems is not just a matter of aggressiveness.
In the end, reality will impose itself on the president who, with great fanfare, announced that the U.S. had entered a "new Golden Age".
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