He’s Person Of The Year, again! But Trump’s most powerful years are ahead

Every December, as it has since 1927 with Charles Lindbergh, Time magazine selects and features the most consequential Person of the Year (13 United States presidents, other world leaders, popes). Sometimes it has not been a person, as such, but a tectonic societal shift (the personal computer, the #MeToo movement).

Donald Trump, just named Time’s 2024 Person of the Year, was first elevated to that title after his 2016 election victory. He is consequential because he has returned to power even after attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, even after supporting the insurrection on January 6, 2021, and notwithstanding being twice impeached and convicted of a felony.

President-elect Donald Trump speaks during Time magazine’s Person of the Year announcement at the New York Stock Exchange.Credit: AP

This year, no one else was on so many people’s minds as Trump. In Time’s judgment, Trump was “the person who had the greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year”.

Time might have conferred the accolade jointly on Trump and Elon Musk, given Musk’s astonishing fusion of more than $US250 million in campaign contributions with his dominance over his X platform to help make Trump president. If influence is power, Musk has it. With ceaseless hours at Trump’s side to help shape his presidency, and his establishment and funding of a Musk think tank that will generate edicts for Trump to impose to re-sculpt the government, Musk has effectively supplanted JD Vance to become Trump’s vice president. Musk’s power is second only to Trump’s.

For the next two years, Trump will be at his zenith. He will never have to face the voters again, which means he can act with impunity as he makes decisions to advance Trumpism and all that he wants to accomplish. Trump’s Republican Party, which he now owns, controls both houses of Congress, so there will be no more impeachments. His attorney-general and chief of the FBI will go after his political enemies. His secretary of defence will ensure that his generals follow his orders – overseas and in the streets of America’s cities.

Public servants will take loyalty oaths or be purged. Trump will take money appropriated by the Congress away from programs he does not like and divert it to his priorities. On the world stage, Trump will present more like Putin, Xi and Orban than Starmer, Macron and Albanese.

Trump has already broken the norm of the US having “one president at a time” with his pre-inaugural threats to Mexico, Canada and China on trade and his forays into concluding the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East on his terms.

His first inaugural address eight years ago featured the dystopian theme of “American carnage”. We will see how deep he wallows in that dark pool on January 20, 2025. Immediately after his address, when he arrives in the Oval Office, Trump’s march through the first 100 days will formally begin.

Political newsletter Axios reports that “Trump advisers are running out of words to describe what’s coming in January”. “They say he feels empowered and emboldened, vindicated and validated, and eager to stretch the boundaries of power.”

Trump will sign dozens of executive orders repealing everything he can that Biden did with his executive démarches four years ago, such as on climate, abortion rights, immigration, gun control and student loans.

Trump’s nominees will face confirmation hearings and votes in the Senate. There will be firestorms around Kash Patel to head the FBI, who wants to close the FBI’s building, expel its agents around the country and prosecute Trump’s enemies; Robert Kennedy Jr as secretary of health and human services, who wants to take a baseball bat to how Anthony Fauci practises medicine, but is opposed by 75 Nobel laureates; Pete Hegseth at Defence, under fire for sexual misconduct, alcohol abuse and financial mismanagement; and Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, who many see as an asset to Putin.

Any who are knocked back will be replaced by other loyal Trumpists with the same mandates. They will do all that Trump wants.

Trump will move to pardon and release from jail hundreds of his foot soldiers who stormed the Capitol on January 6. After Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter, Trump will not even be singed by the critics.

Trump will begin the detention and process of deporting hundreds of thousands of immigrants across the country. He will unveil legislation to get his budget, close the borders, cut taxes and fight over the public debt limit to avoid a default of the United States.

Trump will begin to implement his campaign promises – over and above the threats against Mexico, Canada and China – to impose across-the-board tariffs of up to 20 per cent on all goods coming into the US and up to 60 per cent for imports from China.

Will Australia be in these crosshairs? There is absolutely no basis on which Trump’s tariffs on Australia can be justified. Trump loves a trade surplus. Australia has a structural trade deficit with the US. Australia has a free trade agreement with the US. New higher tariffs are incompatible with the letter and spirit of that trade pact.

But there is a real threat here. Trump has just ripped up the trade agreement he negotiated in his first term with Canada and Mexico. If Trump can do that to those allies he can do it to Australia. This could be the first hard test in the Australia-US, Albanese-Trump relationship.

Trump – let’s call him Person of the Century, so far – is on a high. The year ahead will be savage. The waves of Trump’s first 100 days will hit Australia’s shores too.

Bruce Wolpe is a senior fellow at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. He has served on the Democratic staff in the US Congress and as chief of staff to former prime minister Julia Gillard.