Following former President Donald Trump’s electoral win last Tuesday, six Northwestern faculty experts painted a worrying picture of his second term in office in a Monday post-election panel. They focused on topics ranging from international relations to immigration politics.
Organized by the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, the panel featured history Prof. Michael Allen, Pritzker Prof. David Dana, global health studies Prof. Sarah Rodriguez and political science Profs. Karen Alter, Julie Lee Merseth and William Reno.
Allen predicted that Trump will wreak more havoc during his second term, citing his use of the military against demonstrators during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
“My guess is that Trump will ramp up the level of conflict in the U.S. and outside it by using defense establishments that are the most lethal in U.S. history,” Allen said.
Alter focused on Trump’s major pivot on trade politics, which includes enacting tariffs against China.
Alter said Trump has a 19th-century vision of tariffs, which primarily funded the U.S. government when it did not have an attached income tax. Trump also supports a strong-valued dollar, which Alter said “undermines our export capability.”
“There’s going to be tremendous corruption that’s going to be less visible under the surface,” Alter said. “Because tariff and economic security policies can be used to reward friends and punish people who are not your friends.”
Dana said current climate policies under the Biden administration — including the Inflation Reduction Act, tax credits and subsidies, and money toward clean energy development and electric cars — have disproportionately benefited states that primarily supported Trump during the presidential election.
Even more problematic, Dana said, is the Trump administration’s obsession with supporting the oil and gas industry in the U.S.
Merseth covered Trump’s policies on deporting undocumented immigrants, increasing border security and ending birthright citizenship. In particular, she criticized Trump’s rhetoric often conveying anti-immigrant sentiments.
The Trump administration’s “broadly and deeply restrictionist campaign agenda” will be reinforced by former acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan, who Trump announced as his “border czar” on Monday, Merseth said.
On the U.S.’ potential exit from NATO, Reno said as an organization founded on “extended deterrence” — which promises automatic mutual assistance for member countries of NATO — the U.S. has already left NATO with its actions concerning Ukraine.
Rodriguez, a medical historian, discussed global health implications of Trump’s administration including the withdrawal of financial support from the World Health Organization and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the reinstatement of the global gag rule and the blocking of domestic abortion access.
Merseth said none of Trump’s policies are “new moves in his playbook” and are energizing a narrow and highly racialized definition of U.S. national identity.
“So as we move into and through this post-election period, very real personal anxieties are grounded in reality,” Merseth said. “I think it’s important to recognize the political urgency of this moment, even as we’re working to sort of process our own experiences of it.”
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