Wed Nov 6

Trump has vowed to be a ‘dictator’ on day one. With this day now coming, what exactly will he do?

Written by: Jared Mondschein, Director of Research, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

Trying to predict what Donald Trump will do during a second term in office is a fool’s errand.

It is all the more challenging considering Trump has prioritised winning re-election far more than discussing a detailed policy agenda. In many ways, Kamala Harris had the same strategy of maintaining an ambiguous policy agenda, though to obviously lesser success.

With that said, Trump comes back to the White House after not only four years of a prior tenure in the Oval Office, but also an additional four years since leaving office. These many years in the public eye may not tell us exactly what he will do, but they do give us an indication of his priorities.

Trump’s ambiguous policy agenda

Many point to Trump’s policy agenda as lacking both consistency and coherence.

On one hand, he has touted his Supreme Court nominees ^[1] for overturning Roe v Wade. On the other, he shied away from talking about abortion on the campaign trail and encouraged fellow Republicans not to legislate conservative restrictions.

On one hand, many of his top advisors from his first term in office wrote the exceedingly conservative and controversial Project 2025 manifesto ^[2]. On the other, he has distanced himself from it and the people who wrote it, saying he had never even read the document.

And on one hand, Elon Musk, one of Trump’s biggest supporters and financial backers, has claimed he could cut ^[3] the size of government, government spending and even a number of federal agencies. On the other hand, most economists have said the Trump campaign’s economic agenda would dramatically expand the federal deficit ^[4] more than Harris’ proposed policies.

It should be noted, however, there definitely is one area where Trump has never wavered: trade.

Trump has maintained a protectionist stance for many decades, so we can expect consistency here. However, it remains unclear how much his Republican colleagues from rural parts of America will support such protectionist policies.

The agenda for a ‘dictator on day one’

The most well-known – and probably the most infamous – of Trump’s promises for his return to the White House was his statement about being a dictator “only on day one ^[5]”.

This quote became a well-known part of the Biden and Harris campaigns’ stump speeches against Trump. It’s perhaps less well-known what exactly he would do.

He initially pledged ^[6] to immediately close the border with Mexico and expand drilling for fossil fuels. On the campaign trail, he broadened his first-day priorities to also include:

firing ^[7] Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has charged Trump in two federal cases
pardoning ^[8] some of the rioters imprisoned after the January 6 2021 riots
beginning mass deportations ^[9] for the estimated 11 million people living in the United States without legal immigration status
and ending what he has called “Green New Deal atrocities ^[10]” within President Joe Biden’s framework for tackling climate change.

Trump also, in a surprise to immigration activists, said he would also “automatically” give non-citizens in the country permanent residency ^[11] when they graduate from college.

What about his Cabinet?

The old adage that “personnel is policy” applies to Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

When Biden appointed Kurt Campbell ^[12] to lead the White House’s Indo-Pacific efforts on the National Security Council, the move made clear that an “allies and partners” approach would define his administration’s policy in Asia.

And when Trump appointed Mike Pence to be his running mate in 2016, it made clear to traditional Republicans that Trump would have a “Republican insider” in an influential position in his administration.

Trump has made clear that Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will play sizeable roles in his administration, but it remains unclear exactly what they will do.

Musk has promised to cut government regulation and red tape and Kennedy has pledged to “Make America Healthy Again ^[13]”. On a practical level, however, it’s still too early to tell what type of role the two celebrities will have – particularly given Trump cabinet appointees will require Senate confirmation.

Trump and Kennedy have grown closer in recent months. Evan Vucci/AP

While the Republicans are going to control ^[14] the Senate again, this doesn’t guarantee it will support his appointees. A slim Republican majority in the Senate in 2017 did not support all of Trump’s agenda.

The high staff turnover that defined Trump’s first term of office may once again define his second term. There was also sometimes little coherence between his appointments. For example, Trump national security advisors Michael Flynn and John Bolton had little in common beyond a shared antagonism for the Obama administration’s policies.

At the same time, deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger ^[15] ultimately stayed for nearly the entirety of the Trump administration. He not only led much of Trump’s strategic policies toward Asia, but also defined the term “strategic competition ^[16]”, which will likely outlast both the Biden and Trump administrations.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Ultimately, if Trump’s second term in office is anything like his first term, then the prognostication about his policy agenda and personnel appointments will continue for some time.

It’s therefore less valuable to guess what Trump will do than to focus on the long-term structural trends that would have continued regardless of who is in the White House.

After all, the Biden administration maintained or sought to expand man of the Trump administration’s efforts abroad, including his “Free and Open Indo-Pacific ^[17]” policy, tariffs, and the Abraham Accords that normalised relations ^[18] between Israel and several Arab states.

At home, the Biden administration built on Trump policies that included government support for domestic manufacturing, expansion of the Child Tax Credit and increasing restrictions on large technology firms.

And furthermore, even a Harris administration would have been unlikely to view China as a fair economic partner, deploy US troops to the Middle East, or oppose NATO allies increasing their defence spending.

Trump will undoubtedly remain unpredictable and unconventional, but it would be a mistake to think there are not clear areas of continuity that began before Trump and will continue long after him.