The Trump Doctrine: What Comes Next After His Election Win?

On November 5, 2024, President Donald Trump won his second election, by a landslide, beating Vice President Kamala Harris in an election where he won the electoral vote 312-226, and won 52% of the popular vote relative to Kamala’s 48%. This election was drenched in controversy, so of course, this result led to mixed feelings throughout the country, but what does Trump getting elected actually mean for the policies of our country, and why was this election so controversial and close? In this article I’ll be looking at some of President Trump’s primary campaign platforms and pointing out some problems that they may have.

Donald Trump has been very direct about many of his policies, many of which have raised concerns within many groups of people, one of those policies being his approach to raising tariffs. In theory, these tariffs are actually a good thing because it reduces America’s dependency on other countries. The tariffs promote the internal economy because people are less willing to buy international goods if the price tag is higher. In reality though, it hurts our country more than it helps. Tariffs put a tax on international products that are generally cheaper, making lower class families less able to afford necessary products in their day-to-day life. If the products that were previously affordable to them go up massively in price, lower class families end up not being able to buy things they need to survive. President Trump, however, believes that it’s worth the damage and the risk to impose the tariffs in question, which is creating animosity between him and lower class families.

In the mind of many Republicans around the world, progressive taxes are unjust. Why is it that someone who’s made a lot of money would have to be taxed extra because of their success? The primary argument in favor of progressive taxes is that it helps the lower class citizens of our country not collapse into economic debt, while still raising enough taxes because of the money earned for upper class people to support our economy, and this has been widely accepted as the tax that’s best for our citizens. Trump, however, has proposed a different plan for collecting taxes, and that is to not tax citizens at all. In a staged Fox News event, Trump stated, “There is a way. You know in the old days when we were smart–when we were a smart country, in the 1890s and all, this is when the country was relatively the richest it ever was–it had all tariffs. It didn’t have an income tax. OK?” The specialists in the Washington Monthly were appalled by this statement, saying that “Trump is plainly stating he believes Americans would be better off if we turned back the proverbial clock 130 years–to a time when our system of raising revenue was severely regressive and contributed to the massive inequality that defined the “Gilded Age” of the 1880s and 1890s.”

Another one of his policies, focused on abortion rights, has attracted a lot of attention from both sides of the issue, and especially women throughout the country. Because there was nothing ever stipulated in the Constitution or any of the amendments about abortion rights, President Trump believes that abortion rights should be up to the states, not up to the federal government. This has attracted a lot of “pro-life” people, who believe that abortion in itself is murder, and should be illegal throughout the country. On the other side of the debate, there are people who believe that it should be the choice of the women, and having the government decide what women can or can’t do with their bodies is dangerous, illegal, and opens up potential for the government to acquire more control over people's lives in the future. After President Trump won the 2024 Presidential election, a collection of 13 states imposed a full abortion ban, with eight states imposing a partial ban on abortion. Despite how outspoken Trump was about his desire to ban abortions, many states actually voted for Trump but chose to not impose abortion bans, Arizona, Nevada, Mississippi, Missouri among them.

In his first campaign, Trump became infamous for his desire to “build a wall” around the border between Mexico and the United States. While he didn’t go through with this, his current ideas about the border seem no different from the opinions he held in 2016. He’s very outspoken about his ideas on immigration, and he has repeatedly stated in the past that immigrants are a problem in our country. This presented itself in his New Hampshire rally on December 16th, 2023, where he said “They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done. They poison — mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America. Not just the three or four countries that we think about. But all over the world they’re coming into our country — from Africa, from Asia, all over the world. They’re pouring into our country.” 

There is a difference between his campaign in 2016, and his campaign now. In 2016, he primarily wanted to close the border with Mexico, but now he’s moved on to closing the border for immigrants around the world, despite the fact that immigrants play a leading role in our country’s economy. According to an article done by USAafacts, immigrants make up 19% of the jobs currently filled in our country; consequently, closing the border could be damaging towards our economy in the future.

Trump has also been outspoken about his belief that the education system shouldn't be teaching the things it is today. He believes that “critical race theory and transgender insanity”, have no place in schools, and that they should be driven by that. On top of that, he also plans to scrap the Department of Education (DOE)  in its entirety. However, according to the Washington Post, “Details were often sketchy and some of Trump’s promises contradict each other. Others may be difficult if not impossible to fulfill.” This plan seems increasingly less likely to be implemented, especially considering that the federal government itself has no jurisdiction over what schools do, it’s up to the state and local boards of the respective schools. Because of this, Trump’s chances of being able to change what schools are allowed to teach are incredibly low. A major issue that parents hold with critical race theory is that it makes white students feel guilty for being white. They believe that teaching white students about how white people oppressed other races in the past could make them hate their own racial identity, and feel guilty for the actions of white people in the past; however, according to an article by The Hechinger post, “In our experience, for many white students, learning about systemic racism is in fact not harmful, but generative.” Any feelings of guilt that a student may have need to be addressed by the school, instead of being left for the student to address.

Moving on to his policies on current events, regarding the issue of the Russia- Ukraine war, Trump has stated on numerous occasions that he isn’t willing to send in armed forces to defend Ukraine, in fear of getting into a war with Russia. Many Ukrainian citizens, however, believe that Trump's desire to not get involved, and him pulling military funding doesn't stem from him not wanting to go to war with Russia. They believe he’s doing it to aid Vladimir Putin, someone who Trump has stated numerous times, is his friend, but also his political ally. Trump stated that if elected he would, “end the Russia Ukraine war in 24 hours,” but he hasn’t specified how. 

Finally, Trump's opinions on the Israel and Palestine conflict. First, before he was elected, and before he started campaigning on a large scale, Trump was using the Biden administrations support of Israel as a way to pull in Palestinian voters, going as far as to visit a Lebanese restaurant and saying “You’re going to have peace in the Middle East, but not with the clowns you have running the US right now.” (middleeasteye). However, later into election season, he was seen campaigning towards Israeli citizens instead. Trump was seen talking to Jewish donors in a roundtable event, saying that "If you get me elected, and you should really be doing this … we're going to set that movement [the pro-Palestine solidarity campaign] back 25 or 30 years," (middleeasteye). All in all, his policies on this topic have changed so drastically, it’s hard to determine where he actually stands on the issue itself.

These policies do raise a few questions about the future of our country, because the one thing that seems to stay consistent between Trump’s proposed actions is that they aren’t sustainable and would lead to some kind of major collapse, whether it’s related to foreign affairs, or in the economy itself. The thing most Americans should really be worried about is what policies Trump is actually going to put into place, because the plan he has in place now won’t work if implemented.