Trump’s latest

After a deeply divisive election campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump has generated more controversy on the domestic and international front even before he has taken charge. After creating a direct conflict with the CIA over alleged Russian interference in the US election process, Trump has continued to anger major world powers. While courting peace with Russia, the US president-elect has already created major diplomatic unrest in China. Trump’s overtures to Taiwan as well as his CIA director nominee’s dismissal of China’s claims to the South China Sea have angered the Chinese establishment. Beijing has warned that its One-China policy is non-negotiable. In the meanwhile, Mexico has roundly rejected Trump’s suggestions that the country would ‘eventually pay’ for the proposed US-Mexico border wall – one of Trump’s major election promises. However, Trump’s economic protectionism already seems to be having an effect, with Ford’s decision to cancel a major car manufacturing plant to be built in Mexico thought to have been made due to pressure from the president-elect.

Over the past weekend, 70 countries told the US president-elect that his plans to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem would derail peace efforts. As world powers met in Paris to discuss how to keep the talks channel open between Israel and Palestine, France called Trump’s plans a threat to peace. The president-elect, though, has resolutely continued to show disregard for common sense. The best hope from the conference can only truly be to get Israel and Palestine talking again — without any input from a Trump-led US administration. Not one to shy away from even further controversy, Trump then decided to call Nato ‘obsolete’ and the EU a ‘vehicle for Germany’, provoking an even stronger reaction from European leaders. This he followed up by calling the CIA chief a ‘fake news leaker’ after an intelligence dossier on Trump’s links with Russia was leaked. Within the US, Trump has once again ignited a second string of protests against him after new promises to clamp down on immigration. Trump’s election to office has begun to mobilise many the nascent movements with progressive political agendas in the US. It would be interesting to see which direction the Black Lives Matter, Climate Change and pro-immigration movements go when faced Trump is settled in the Oval Office. Trump’s inauguration day is already set to be a tense affair, with record protests planned all over the US, as the US – and the world – confront the realities of President Donald Trump.