Remember how they said he’ll never really run, then they said they’ll never make him an actual nominee and then they said he cannot possibly win. Well they were all wrong, horribly wrong. Donald Trump is the next POTUS; thanks to some less than usual promises he made to the American people. Let’s review those promises and also review what it will mean to us, Indians that Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States:
Donald Trump wants to deport all illegal immigrants currently residing in the US or an estimated 8% of the nation's current workforce. He plans to put in place a “special deportation task force” and of course to build that “beautiful” wall along the border between the US and Mexico. This worked well with the popular perception that immigrants are stealing American jobs and are responsible for all the crime in the country.
Trump repeatedly tapped into American paranoia about terror threats and particularly Islamic terror. His promise to ban Muslim immigrants worked well with this paranoia as well as Islamophobia that exisits in large portions of the American populace, especially after the 9/11 attacks by Al Qaida where so many people died. At one point in time 67% of polled Trump supporters said they supported him because of this promise.
The ‘forgotten American’ feels badly done by and feels he was getting a raw deal. Trump promised that by reducing taxes and using other measures, he would make life easier for the middle class… the class of predominantly caucasian, low income, poorly educated citizens that make up the bulk of his support base.
Trump famously said that Climate Change is a myth manufactured by the Chinese and that attempts to curb it is a waste of effort and money. Read some of his tweets on the matter; which roughly translate as: its cold outside so global warming is nonsense; it’s all the fault of the Chinese.
In spite of his now famous I love Hindu, I love India remark there are likely to be Indians among those illegal immigrants he wants to deport. It remains to be seen whether he wants to deport all immigrants without proper papers, just the Mexicans, just the Muslims or just everyone.
We know that Trump is a little fuzzy on actual issues; his ideas about foreign policy are not an actual philosophy; more a jumbled mish-mash of incoherence. In India there is some expectation that US will now be an ally of India against the Chinese-Pak axis. However the fact is that Trump wants Japan and South Korea to be better armed against China; this is certainly not in our interests or that of Asia in general.
Trump has expressed the sentiment that Indians are stealing American jobs but it is also true that he has personal business ties with India. He may have repeated his inward-looking, anti outsourcing stance, but it is unclear how this will translate on the ground.
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