Until now donald trump has only received 56,000 votes within the internal process of the Republican Party to choose its nominee for the November presidential elections in USA but the overwhelming victory he obtained with them in the Iowa caucuses has accelerated the idea that his candidacy is inevitable. In a potential duel with Joe Biden, with polls and sensations in hand, many also see a victory for the former president as probable. And his possible return to the White House is already plaguing conversations in the centers of economic and political power, both American and global, where reactions move on a spectrum ranging from normal to the worry and even the fear.
The gap has become evident at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. There, both in speeches and public statements as well as in private conversations, the American economic elites have transmitted a message that accepts Trump’s potential victory without fuss.
One of the ones that has had the most echo is an interview he gave to the economic channel CNBC Jamie Damonthe CEO of the bank JP Morgan Chase. Although he did not directly predict the former president’s victory, Damon called for “taking a step back and being honest.” He defended that in his first term the Republican was “in a way right about NATO, about immigration, the economy grew quite well and the tax reform worked.” And he assured that “people underestimate both the political objectives of those who support Trump and some of his achievements.”
“The US is going to be fine”
The banker had initially urged donors to support the Republican race Nikki Haleywhich this Tuesday has a trial by fire in New Hampshire after coming third in Iowa. And in the Swiss mountains she predicted that the negative conversation being launched about the extremism of the MAGA movement, the acronym in English for Make America Great Again that is synonymous with Trumpism and that President Joe Biden and Democrats identify as a threat to democracy, “it will hurt Biden’s campaign.”
Sam Altman, the founder and CEO of OpenAI, also defended in Davos that “the US is going to be fine, no matter what happens in these elections.”
That message of comfort in the face of a possible second Trump presidency is being established in the American corporate world, which looks with discontent at Biden’s policies and, beyond the stridency of the Republican’s first term, believes that he would repeat a political model as then. which for the most part applied a classic republican manual. And speaking anonymously to ‘Politico’, a former official in Trump’s Treasury Department assures that the business world “is increasingly comfortable with the idea that it could come back and it may not be as bad as predicted.”
Worry and fear
On the other side of the spectrum are the concern and directly the fear that many global economic, political and diplomatic leaders show regarding what a second Trump presidency could represent for, for example, the war of Ukrainethe trade policies wave NATO.
Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, has openly stated that “it was not easy the first time and if there is a second time it will not be easy either.” International diplomats in Washington speak to the media on the condition of anonymity “for fear of reprisals.” And in Europe there are multiple voices that, privately and publicly, sound the alarm.
Last week Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, spoke of Trump’s potential second presidency as “a clear threat if you draw lessons from history and look at the way he conducted the first four years of his mandate.” AND Alexander De Croothe prime minister of Belgium, the country with the current presidency of the European Council, said in a speech: “If 2024 brings us back to ‘America First’, Europe will be alone more than ever. As Europeans we should not fear that prospect, we must accept it,” he stated, calling on Europe to become “stronger, more sovereign, more self-sufficient.”
Ukraine and NATO
Two of the aspects of foreign policy that could be most affected by a Trump presidency are the war in Ukraine and the US commitment to NATO, although there is uncertainty about their exact plans.
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The former president, who has assured that he would resolve the Ukraine conflict in 24 hours but without explaining how, satisfies an increasingly isolationist base. He would deal with a Congress, with great possibilities of remaining divided and where a minority of far right, in which they have already managed to link foreign policy issues such as aid to kyiv with polarized and explosive domestic issues such as immigration. And any delay in military aid to Ukraine would be almost impossible for the Europeans to balance and would give a strategic advantage to Vladimir Putin, which is buying time. According to the Czech president, Petr Pavelthe Russian leader has already ruled out having any peace negotiations until the winner is known in the US.
Regarding the Atlantic Alliance, doubts are also many. His campaign website has only one cryptic phrase (“we must finish the process we started of fundamentally reassessing the purpose and mission of NATO”). Trump allies insist that all he will try is to continue pressuring members to spend more money on their own defense but others believe he may try to launch a US departure from the alliance. and these days Thierry Bretonwhich is part of the European Commission, has revealed that in Davos in 2020 Trump warned Ursula von der Leyen privately that the US would not come to the rescue of Europe if it were attacked militarily and directly threatened to leave NATO. “She’s dead,” he would have said then.