By Kazeem Akintunde
America’s President-elect, Donald Trump would be sworn-in as the 47th President of the United States of America next week Monday. The event, which will take place on the West Front of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., would be Trump’s second inauguration as President and the 60th U.S. presidential inauguration. However, even before his taking the oath of office for the second time, the entire world is already on edge.
He has sent shivers down the spine of many in Canada, Mexico, and even Panama, by his pronouncement. The Cable News Network, (CNN) has already tagged him a presidential landgrabber. This is due to his desire to see Canada become a part of the USA. According to him, it would be better for Canada to become the 51st American State in the interest of both countries. And if they are not willing to dance to his tune, he has vowed to use economic force to achieve his aim. Doing so, he believes, would get rid of the artificially ‘drawn line’, and it would guarantee a better national security for the US.
Their refusal, he said, would be met with economic sanctions, one of which would be the imposition of a 25 per cent tariff on goods from Canada going into the US market. It is a known fact that such a tariff would significantly hurt Canada’s economy. But Trump does not care.
Almost C$3.6bn ($2.5bn) worth of goods and services crossed the border daily since 2023, according to the Canadian government figures. Justin Trudeau, Canadian Prime Minister, who is facing a lot of heat at home has offered to resign, hit back at Trump, saying there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of the two countries becoming one.
Trump, with his America-first rhetoric, has left many Canadians seething with rage. If they could have their way, many are battle-ready for the insult. But when does Trump care about other people’s feelings? He believes that Canada becoming an appendage of the USA would reduce the inflow of drugs to the USA. One of such common drugs is Fentanyl.
Although the amount of fentanyl seized at the US-Canada border is significantly lower than at the southern border according to US data, Canada has promised to implement a set of sweeping new security measures along the border, including strengthened surveillance and adding a joint “strike force” to target transnational organised crime. But Trump is not pacified. Instead, it would seem that the ridicule of another sovereign country is high on his agenda.
While Trump has said that he was not considering using military force to make Canada part of the United States, he is however, worried about its neighbour’s military spending.
Canada has been under pressure to increase its military spending as it continues to fall short of the target set out for NATO members. Its defence budget currently stands at C$27bn ($19.8bn, £15.5bn), although the Trudeau government has promised that it will boost spending to almost C$50bn by 2030. Will that make Trump happy?
Another close neighbouring country already feeling the heat of Trump’s second coming is Mexico. After the November presidential election which he won with a landslide, Trump has been on the neck of one of America’s biggest trading partners, Mexico, threatening to rename the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. As expected, that did not sit well with Mexico’s President, Claudia Sheinbaum, who has also said that it would be beautiful to rename United States of America as Mexican America.
While recently displaying a 17th-century world map showing North America as Mexican America, she pointed out that the Gulf of Mexico was the name recognised by the United Nations several decades ago, and that nothing would change it. Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Mexico, threatening to impose stiff tariffs on imports from one of the United States’ biggest trading partners unless it halted the flow of illegal migrants and drugs across the border. He has also revived a threat from his first term to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist groups.
After provoking his neigbours in Canada and Mexico, Trump seems not to be done yet, as both Greenland and the Panama Canal are next on his radar. He says the United States needs those two areas for economic security, and warns that he wouldn’t rule out exercising military or economic coercion to achieve his aim.
Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, has rejected Trump’s designs on Greenland, but said she’d continue to welcome American interest and investment. She said that the people of Greenland would continue to hold fast to Greenland, and that the future of Greenland would be defined by the Greenlanders, and ‘not the rest of us.’ ‘’It is their country that we are talking about here, and it is Greenland that, in my eyes, can determine and define Greenland’s future,” she said.
Greenland has a population of about 57,000 and is a fully autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. It has oil, natural gas and mineral resources, but its economy is reliant on subsidies from Denmark and from fishing. Still, Trump recently expressed doubt about Denmark’s control of Greenland, despite Greenland’s status as an autonomous territory. “Nobody even knows if they have any right, title or interest,” Trump said, inaccurately, of Denmark and Greenland.
Greenland’s government has twice rebuffed assertions of interest in the territory by Trump, with Prime Minister Mute Egede saying just before Christmas that “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale.” Recently, Egede gave a New Year’s speech, pushing for Greenland to remove “the shackles of colonialism” and gain full independence from Denmark. “It is about time that we ourselves take a step and shape our future, also with regard to who we will cooperate closely with, and who our trading partners will be,” Egede said.
Trump’s ongoing pursuit of Greenland may have raised the hackles of Denmark, which retains sovereignty over the Arctic Island, but his territorial ambitions seem to be gaining traction in an unlikely quarter – Russia.
High-profile political pundits close to Russian President, Vladimir Putin, have already voiced their support for Trump’s re-stated ambition to ‘buy’ Greenland and expand U.S. territory to include the resource-rich island — commenting that such a move would validate every other country’s expansionist territorial ambition, and most importantly, Russia’s.
With a week before his inauguration, I doubt if there is a nation on earth that is not thinking deeply on how the next four years would pan out in America and its policies under Trump. Although, he seems to enjoy a cosy relationship with Russian President, Vladimir Putin, the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine is also giving many Ukrainians cause for concern. He has already vowed to end the war within 24 hours of his inauguration.
How he intends to do that is yet to be seen. He has made his intention known to stop providing military aid to Ukraine, and such an action will significantly tilt the war in favour of Russia. If that happens, several billions of dollars belonging to America but so far invested in the war would have been wasted.
Trump is in a no-love-lust relationship with China and the cold war is expected to continue with him fully in charge. The issues at hand are the control of Taiwan by China, as well as the growing influence of China in world affairs. And he makes no bones about it when he said that he’ll impose a tax regime of 150 per cent to 200 percent on China. He believes that he enjoys warm relations with President Xi Jinping, and that China would not dare provoke him because Xi knows that Trump is ‘crazy’.
What should we expect of him on the Middle-east crisis? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once described Trump as the “best friend that Israel has ever had in the White House”. While in office during his first term, Trump moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in a move that was widely denounced by Palestinians and international law experts. He also recognised Israel’s claim to the occupied Golan Heights in Syria. His administration brokered the so-called Abraham Accords, a series of agreements that formalised diplomatic and economic relations between Israel and a handful of Arab countries.
But contrary to Trump’s claims that he would bring calm to the region, critics say his “arms for peace” framework has been a failure – as evidenced by Israel’s devastating military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, which have pushed the Middle East to the brink of an all-out-war. Trump maintained a hard line against Iran both in and out of the White House, and this is expected to continue. During Trump’s first tenure as president, the US unilaterally withdrew from a 2015 agreement that saw Iran scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for a lifting of international sanctions against its economy. In the aftermath, his administration heaped crippling sanctions against Tehran and authorised the assassination of top Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, an attack that fuelled tensions across the region.
While in office, Trump notoriously derided international bodies such as the United Nations and the NATO alliance, and withdrew from multilateral accords, including the Paris Agreement on climate change. He has accused Washington’s NATO allies of not paying their fair share for the bloc’s collective defence and has warned them that his government would not protect them if they were attacked by Russia. NATO’s charter contains a mutual defence clause for all members.
Coming back home, what should African countries expect from Trump’s second coming? Africa has not been a top diplomatic priority for Washington in recent years. The United States has lost some of its influence on the continent also. The list of issues that would involve Trump in the affairs of the continent would include trade, investment, aid, sanctions and war. Trump’s election and inauguration comes as China and Russia make significant strides across Africa. Experts believe that Trump’s foreign policy towards African countries will prioritise transactional relationships and shift away from multilateral partnerships, with aid, trade, and climate agreement now uncertain. Trump’s focus, many have warned, could be limited to how Africa fits within his broader geopolitical objectives, especially concerning his rivalry with China. Those who fall in line will be favoured, others pressured to conform, more like what he did whilst in power between 2017 and 2021. Trump has been variously described as a dealer who transacts based on what he can get.
With power effectively back in his hands in a few days’ time, Trump is one leader that cannot be taken for granted. His first and only love is America and he would do whatever that has to be done to make America great again. Many in Africa won’t like him, as he has promised to deport many illegal immigrants in the USA from his first day in office. Many African-Americans who are majorly in the Democratic party did all within their power to stop Trump’s re-election, but millions of others voted for him. As he takes the oath of office, he should be reminded that the interest of other democratic countries counts in foreign relations and that it should not be all about America. The world is changing, and it is not the same world he left behind in 2021 that he is going to meet on January 20th.
I wish him well in his second coming.
See you next week.
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