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Donald Trump Returns to Power, Ushering in New Era of Uncertainty, The New York Times, November 6, 2024
The US presidential election, along with elections for the US Senate, House of Representatives and state and local offices and issues was held yesterday. Donald Trump won the presidential election and is now president-elect. Two front-page articles from The New York Times follow, one focussed on the US and one on the impact around the world:
“Donald Trump Returns to Power, Ushering in New Era of Uncertainty”
By Shane Goldmacher and Lisa Lerer, Nov. 6, 2024
He played on fears of immigrants and economic worries to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris. His victory signaled the advent of isolationism, sweeping tariffs and score settling.
Donald J. Trump rode a promise to smash the American status quo to win the presidency for a second time on Wednesday, surviving a criminal conviction, indictments, an assassin’s bullet, accusations of authoritarianism and an unprecedented switch of his opponent to complete a remarkable return to power.
Mr. Trump’s victory caps the astonishing political comeback of a man who was charged with plotting to overturn the last election but who tapped into frustrations and fears about the economy and illegal immigration to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris.
His defiant plans to upend the country’s political system held appeal to tens of millions of voters who feared that the American dream was drifting further from reach and who turned to Mr. Trump as a battering ram against the ruling establishment and the expert class of elites.
In a deeply divided nation, voters embraced Mr. Trump’s pledge to seal the southern border by almost any means, to revive the economy with 19th-century-style tariffs that would restore American manufacturing and to lead a retreat from international entanglements and global conflict.
Now, Mr. Trump will serve as the 47th president four years after reluctantly leaving office as the 45th, the first politician since Grover Cleveland in the late 1800s to lose re-election to the White House and later mount a successful run. At the age of 78, Mr. Trump has become the oldest man ever elected president, breaking a record held by President Biden, whose mental competence Mr. Trump has savaged.
His win ushers in an era of uncertainty for the nation.
To roughly half the country, Mr. Trump’s rise portends a dark turn for American democracy, whose future will now depend on a man who has openly talked about undermining the rule of law. Mr. Trump helped inspire an assault on the Capitol in 2021, has threatened to imprison political adversaries and was denounced as a fascist by former aides. But for his supporters, Mr. Trump’s provocations became selling points rather than pitfalls.
As of early Wednesday, the results showed Mr. Trump improving on his 2020 showing in counties all across America with only limited exceptions. Mr. Trump had secured the necessary swing states — including Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — to guarantee him the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House.
Republicans also picked up at least two Senate seats, in Ohio and West Virginia, to give the party a majority in the Senate. Control of the House of Representatives was still too close to call.
In a victory speech in West Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Trump declared that he was the leader of “the greatest political movement of all time.”
“We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible,” he said, adding that he would take office with an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
Mr. Trump seemingly had to win two races this year.
First, he overcame Mr. Biden, who quit the race after a halting debate performance raised questions about the president’s fitness to serve four more years. Then, he defeated Ms. Harris in a caustic 107-day crucible of a campaign that was ugly, insult-filled and bitter. Mr. Trump questioned Ms. Harris’s racial identity at one point and frequently denigrated her intelligence. They clashed over wildly divergent views of not just the issues facing the country but also the nature of democracy itself.
Mr. Trump has systematically sought to undercut some of the country’s foundational principles, eroding trust in an independent press and the judicial system and sowing doubts about free and fair elections. He has refused to accept his loss four years ago, falsely claiming to this day that a second term was stolen from him in 2020. Instead of hindering his rise, his denial took hold across a Republican Party he remade.
Now, Mr. Trump has vowed a radical reshaping of American government, animated by his promises of “retribution” and of rooting out domestic opponents he casts as “the enemy within.” He has pledged to oversee the biggest wave of deportations in U.S. history, suggested deploying troops domestically, proposed sweeping tariffs and largely advocated the greatest consolidation of power in the history of the American presidency.
Pointing to the mob of Trump supporters who sacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, violently trying to prevent the certification of his defeat, Ms. Harris’s campaign loudly cautioned that Mr. Trump in a second term would be “unhinged, unstable and unchecked.” But voters heeded neither her warnings nor those of some of the most senior former Trump administration officials and military advisers who testified to his autocratic instincts.
After nearly a decade as the dominant face of the Republican Party, Mr. Trump and his blunt-force approach to politics seemed to lose their shock value. Instead, for millions of disillusioned Americans mistrustful of institutions and of a political system that they felt had failed them, his agent-of-chaos persona became an asset.
Mr. Trump’s campaign had aimed to put together a new political coalition anchored not just by blue-collar white voters but working-class Black and Latino voters, as well. By Wednesday morning, there were some early signs the campaign had succeeded.
The 2024 election is the second time Mr. Trump has defeated a woman trying to break through the nation’s highest gender barrier — the presidency — after he prevailed over Hillary Clinton eight years ago. His history of sexual misconduct, along with his three appointees to the Supreme Court and their role in ending the constitutional right to an abortion in 2022, transformed the race into a referendum on gender and women’s rights.
But abortion may not have been as salient an issue as it was in the 2022 midterm elections. Florida on Tuesday became the first state since Roe v. Wade was overturned to reject an abortion-rights ballot measure.
Polls heading into the election showed a country divided at historic levels along gender lines. Men, including many younger male voters, powered Mr. Trump’s popularity, as women were at the heart of Ms. Harris’s coalition.
It was also the first election in which a major candidate was a felon. Yet the specifics of Mr. Trump’s crimes were rarely broached by Ms. Harris, who instead tried to focus on kitchen-table issues.
In May, in a criminal case brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Mr. Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts for covering up hush-money payments made to a porn star during the 2016 race. In a sign of the extraordinary circumstances facing him, Mr. Trump awaits sentencing tentatively scheduled for later this month, just as he will be ramping up the presidential transition process.
The race featured more than $1 billion in television advertising alone, as Ms. Harris, 60, offered herself as the vanguard of a new generation of leadership focused on the middle class, rolling out a series of policy plans to tackle grocery prices, housing costs, child care and elder care. She flipped her position on the border, promising a crackdown after arguing when she ran for president in 2019 that it should not be a crime to enter the United States without authorization.
Mr. Trump cast her as responsible for many of the country’s problems, countering with an array of sloganeering tax cuts: no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime, among them. He denigrated her as a “stupid person,” and called her “failed” and “dangerously liberal.”
Ms. Harris called for turning the page on the divisive Trump era. “We are not going back,” she said, and crowds chanted the line back. But she could never fully wrest the mantle of change away from Mr. Trump, given her perch as the current president’s second-in-command.
The Biden administration may have accelerated the country’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, engineered a softer landing than most economists expected and passed a raft of sweeping legislation tackling manufacturing, climate change and infrastructure. But rising food and housing prices caused a painful economic pinch that packed a political punch.
Mr. Trump also promised to disentangle the country from conflicts abroad, a turn toward isolationism that found a fresh audience with a war raging in Europe between Russia and Ukraine for nearly three years, and with the Middle East on the precipice of a wider conflagration. His election raises questions about the future of NATO and the American backing of Ukraine; Mr. Trump has long spoken glowingly about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Seeking to blunt the political backlash faced by his party since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, the landmark decision guaranteeing a federal right to an abortion, Mr. Trump adopted a stance of leaving abortion rights to the states.
Mr. Trump formally declared his candidacy nearly two years ago, just days after the 2022 midterm elections. The reality, though, is that he barely stopped running after losing the 2020 election.
He withstood a ban by social media companies after the violence of Jan. 6, corporate donor boycotts, a $454 million civil fraud judgment against him in New York and multiple indictments, including one for a conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Mr. Trump crushed his Republican rivals into submission. In the 2022 congressional primaries, he unseated eight of the 10 Republican lawmakers who had voted for his second impeachment. Then he swept through the 2024 presidential primaries, winning every state but one after refusing to debate his opponents.
His supporters rallied behind him as a candidate of destiny even before a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed his ear in July, at a rally in Butler, Pa., days before the Republican National Convention. “Fight, fight, fight,” he shouted as he pumped his fist in the air and blood dripped down his face.
Eight days later, Mr. Biden, isolated at his Delaware home after testing positive for Covid, withdrew from the race. Ms. Harris’s entry unleashed a burst of money and momentum. The Democratic Party quickly consolidated behind her as she closed the polling gap with Mr. Trump. In September, she outmaneuvered and baited himat their only debate.
But Mr. Trump’s enduring appeal helped him navigate a bitter final phase that included his former White House chief of staff saying that Mr. Trump met the definition of a “fascist.”
The label did not stick for many voters. Instead, come January, he will again take office as commander in chief.
See more on: 2024 Elections: News, Polls and Analysis, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden
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“Four More Years of Unpredictability? The World Prepares for Trump’s Return.”
By Damien Cave and Catherine Porter, Nov. 6, 2024
Damien Cave reported from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and Catherine Porter, from Paris, with contributions from more than a dozen Times reporters around the world.
Donald J. Trump has said he would transform America’s relationship with allies and adversaries. He has pledged to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, increase tariffs and deport millions.
With Donald J. Trump’s sweeping election victory on Tuesday, the world is now preparing for another four years of unpredictability and “America first” protectionism that could reset the ground rules of the global economy, empower autocrats and erase the assurance of American protection for democratic partners.
Despite a lack of substantive foreign policy debate in the campaign, Mr. Trump has made several statements that — if turned into policy — would transform America’s relationship with both allies and adversaries. He has pledged to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, a promise many assume amounts to the withdrawal of American aid for Ukraine, which would benefit Russia.
More broadly, he has made clear that he intends to make the world’s most powerful country more isolationist, more combative with tariffs, more openly hostile to immigrants, more demanding of its security partners, and less engaged on global challenges such as climate change.
Many believe the impacts could be greater than anything seen since the start of the Cold War.
“It accelerates the already deep trend of an America looking inward,” said James Curran, a professor of modern history at the University of Sydney. “Allies are going to have to save the multilateral furniture while it’s still around — they have to hope that America buys back in.”
By now, after witnessing his first term, the world already knows that the only certainty with Mr. Trump is uncertainty. He has often said that keeping the world guessing is his ideal foreign policy. And as the votes were counted, some officials around the world responded with public reassurances, stressing that elements of their relationships with the United States would not likely change.
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani of Italy told Sky News that he believed Trump had “a natural sympathy for Italy” and that he was “convinced that we will work well with the tycoon’s new administration.”
In Mexico, President Claudia Sheinbaum emphasized this week that there would be “good relations” with the United States because of the need to work together to address immigration and drugs, just days after Mr. Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Mexico of between 25 percent and 100 percent.
In Kenya, Ndindi Nyoro, a lawmaker with President William Ruto’s governing coalition, said he thought Mr. Trump’s economic policies would be better for African countries, many of which are struggling with growing inflation and crushing debt.
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“Republican policies have always been better for Africa & the Global South,” Mr. Nyoro wrote on Facebook.
India has also been watching the American contest with interest and little concern, trusting that as the world’s most populous nation and fifth largest economy, it would still be courted as a counterweight to China.
Bracing for a Return to Transactional Diplomacy
The extremes of what Mr. Trump campaigned on — from sky-high tariffs against foreign products, to mass deportations and stiff resistance to wars and alliances deemed too messy or costly — have already put many nations on edge.
China, with its own economy in the doldrums, faces the likelihood of much broader, and higher tariffs than those already applied during Mr. Trump’s first term and continued by President Biden. Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at Renmin University in Beijing, said a second Trump presidency would “inevitably diminish global trust and respect for the United States.”
Few of China’s neighbors, wary of Beijing, see cause for celebration in Trump’s victory.
South Korea and Japan expect to be pressured into paying more to have American troops based in their countries. Mr. Trump has pledged to make South Korea pay $10 billion annually. South Korea currently pays a little over $1 billion.
Vietnam, which has seen its trade imbalance with the United States surge as manufacturers move from China to avoid tariffs, could face retaliatory tariffs like those Mr. Trump has threatened to impose on Mexico.
Fears of a Less Secure World
Some diplomats in Asia have said that with Trump in power, they also expect China to intensify pressure on Taiwan, if not invade the self-governing island it claims as its territory. In their view, China may calculate that former President Trump would not go to war for a democracy that he has accused of “stealing” the microchip industry from the United States.
People on the island, where Mr. Trump was well-regarded in his first term, have become less sure that he can be trusted.
“With Donald Trump, there are large amounts of uncertainty,” said Lev Nachman, a political scientist at National Taiwan University in Taipei. “And it’s a matter of uncertainty that comes with great risk for Taiwan.”
For Ukraine in particular, Mr. Trump’s return means a fog of additional danger. His claim that he will be able to broker an end to the war immediately along with his warm relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia have fueled worries that he would force the Ukrainians into a bad deal by cutting off American military support.
In Russia, there were hints of glee over Mr. Trump’s victory, even as the Kremlin held off on offering immediate congratulations. One of Mr. Putin’s top lieutenants, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said Wednesday that Mr. Trump was preferable for his cold, corporate acumen.
Mr. Trump, Mr. Medvedev said, “dislikes spending money on various hangers-on,” referring to Ukraine’s president.
Anxiety and Unease Among Democratic Partners
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said last week that he “understands all the risks” of a Trump victory. But on Wednesday he wrote on X that he appreciated “President Trump’s commitment to the ‘peace through strength’ approach in global affairs.”
But many of Ukraine’s supporters in the region are “woefully unprepared for a return of Trump,” said Georgina Wright, a European politics expert at the Montaigne Institute in Paris. Analysts and officials on the continent expect a trade war, a bigger bill for NATO and military aid from Washington, the Trump-encouraged spread of anti-democratic populism, and a greater risk of Russia widening its territorial ambitions.
Mr. Trump has implied that he would not abide by the NATO article requiring collective defense, which kept Europe mostly peaceful and democratic for decades. At one point during his run for office, he said he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that had not paid sufficient money to the alliance.
Gérard Araud, the French ambassador to Washington from 2014 to 2019 under the first Trump presidency, said that even if a second Trump presidency didn’t attempt to destroy NATO outright, his reticence about complying with its dictates had already made the alliance more fragile.
“It’s a question of credibility,” he said. “If you are Putin and on Jan. 22 you are wondering whether Trump will go to war to defend Estonia, of course he won’t. In a sense, it means that NATO will be hollowed from within.”
Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, who has suppressed dissent to create an ethnocentric, illiberal democracy in his country, was already a hero to the Make America Great Again constituency. On Wednesday, he congratulated Mr. Trump for “his enormous win” that he called “a much needed victory for the world!”
Despair about such bedfellows could be easily found in many Asian, African and European capitals. In nations that leaned on the United States to defeat fascism during World War II, there’s still a sense of shock at what American voters have done: Electing a felon who has promoted threats of violence against journalists, and said he would use the courts and the military against domestic enemies.
“I don’t see a great future for European democracies, if there is not a strong democratic America as a rock to lean on,” said Nicole Bacharan, a political scientist in Paris.
Frank Mugisha, a prominent Ugandan gay rights activist, said another Trump presidency caused him anxiety.
“I worry that Trump will do less to protect L.G.B.T.Q. human rights, and when we are under attack, he will look the other way,” Mr. Mugisha, who is among the petitioners appealing in the Ugandan Supreme Court the draconian anti-gay law that President Yoweri Museveni signed last year.
For Some, a Welcome Change
And yet, in less democratic corners of the globe, Mr. Trump’s testosterone-fueled approach has led to a measure of hope. In the Middle East, the United States has largely been seen as ineffective — unable to end the cycle of conflict or even forge a solid cease-fire. Mr. Trump, to some, represents the potential for a new way forward.
He is seen by many in the region as strongly pro-Israel but also as a deal maker.
The far right in Israel was fist-pumping a Trump victory even before the last polls had closed, figuring that he could be persuaded to side with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in any attempt to end the wars in Gaza and against Iran’s proxies in the region. With Trump’s win looking inevitable early Wednesday, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the ultranationalist minister of national security, posted a festive “Yesssss” on social media, above an earlier “God Bless Trump” post from July.
Palestinians condemned America’s support for Israel’s war, expressing a mix of fear and desperate dreams for what a new administration might bring. Hamas issued a statement that said: “Palestinians look forward to an immediate cessation of the aggression against our people.”
In Lebanon and among some of its Arab neighbors, a second Trump term seemed to be cautiously welcomed.
“He’s crazy, but at least he’s strong,” said Anthony Samrani, the editor in chief of the Lebanese daily L’Orient-Le Jour, summing up what he called the prevailing mind-set toward Mr. Trump in the Middle East.
But the widest-ranging and perhaps most immediate impact of Mr. Trump’s victory on the world may involve immigration.
He has promised that mass deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States would be among his first acts in office — and critics worry that within weeks of taking office, that could mean daily planeloads of returnees to not just Mexico, but also India, El Salvador and the Philippines.
In Cox’s Bazar, a strip of Bangladesh with refugee camps for more than a million Rohingya Muslims who fled their native Myanmar just across the border, refugees worried about Mr. Trump’s antipathy toward immigration and what it could mean for all.
Yusuf Abdulrahman, 26, a Rohingya refugee, said Mr. Trump’s nativist sentiment reminded him of Myanmar’s military rulers.
“Trump likes to get popularity by turning people against each other,” he said. “He says, ‘you people, those people,’ and that creates hate.”
Reporting was contributed by Amy Chang Chien in Taipei, Taiwan; Paulina Villegas in Mexico City; David Pierson in Hong Kong; Isabel Kershner in Jerusalem; Motoko Rich in Tokyo; Sui-Lee Wee in Bangkok; Hannah Beech in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh; Choe Sang-Hun in Seoul; Mujib Mashal in New Delhi; Maria Abi-Habib and Euan Ward in Beirut, Lebanon; Ismaeel Naar in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Ivan Nechepurenko in Tbilisi, Georgia; Elisabetha Provoledo in Rome; Anton Troianovski, Steven Erlanger and Christopher F. Schuetze in Berlin; Nataliya Vasilyeva, Ben Hubbard and Safak Timur in Istanbul; Marc Santora in Kyiv, Ukraine; Jenny Gross in Brussels; Farnaz Fassihi in New York; Abdi Latif Dahir in Nairobi, Kenya; John Eligon in Johannesburg; and Elian Peltier in Dakar, Senegal.
Damien Cave leads The Times’s new bureau in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, covering shifts in power across Asia and the wider world. More about Damien Cave
Catherine Porter is an international reporter for The Times, covering France. She is based in Paris. More about Catherine Porter
See more on: U.S. Politics, 2024 Elections: News, Polls and Analysis, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Donald Trump