To understand Trump 2.0, you need to go back to the future

If you want to understand what the Trump 2.0 presidency is going to look like, pay attention to what many listeners will have tossed aside as a bit of rhetorical bluster, says James Morrow.

If you want to understand what the Trump 2.0 presidency is going to look like, pay attention to what many listeners – particularly in America – will have tossed aside as a bit of rhetorical bluster.

Not the Kennedy-esque promise to go to Mars (Donald Trump’s serious, and given the new space race with China, he’s right).

Nor the promises to kick out foreign gangs or “drill, baby, drill.”

And not even the brutal evisceration of Joe Biden and his “powerful and corrupt establishment”, even as the now former president sat there grim-faced, having more or less proven Mr Trump’s point for him by pre-emptively pardoning key members of his family.

Rather, the key can be found in his call to re-rename Alaskan mountain Denali back to its original name, Mt. McKinley.

This isn’t just about undoing a bit of politically correct name play from the Obama administration.

US Vice President J.D. Vance and US President Donald Trump react during inauguration ceremonies in the Rotunda of the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Picture: Getty Images North America/AFP

It is about looking to the presidency of William McKinley, who presided over a massive period of American expansion while using tariffs to lift the American economy out of a depression.

Under McKinley, who served from 1897 to 1901, the US took control of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, as well as the Philippines.

Mr Trump, meanwhile has already signalled his push to retake the Panama Canal and maybe even absorb Greenland.

McKinley was author, as a Republican Congressman, of the Tariff Act of 1890, which slapped import duties of nearly 50 per cent on a range of goods.

The act also gave the president the authority to impose tariffs on countries that acted “reciprocally unequal and unreasonable” towards American goods – an early foretaste of Mr Trump’s tariff diplomacy.

The Republican McKinley’s election in 1896, like Mr Trump’s victory last year, also re-drew the electoral map, cementing his party’s control of the industrial Midwest.

Under McKinley, Spain was kicked out of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and the US

And under McKinley, the American economy bounced back after the panic of 1893 which smashed businesses, the share market and the unemployment rate.

McKinley’s presidency ended when he was shot by an assassin in 1901; Mr Trump, having already been winged last year in Butler, Pennsylvania, will surely be hoping the similarities end there.

But as a way to understand what Mr Trump is aiming to do over the next four years, it pays to go back to the future.

Originally published as To understand Trump 2.0, you need to go back to the future