Term-limited and immune from accountability, Trump’s power is unprecedented

Donald Trump enters office at the zenith of his power. His first year will be marked by the most extensive use of executive power under the Constitution in United States history. A political reality that normally applies to incoming presidents is not in play for Trump. Trump is now term-limited and does not have to face the voters again. Trump can exercise power to do what he wants and what he believes is right. At least until the midterm elections in 2026, there is nothing the voters can do to curb his exercise of his power.

With Republican control of the House and Senate, there is virtually no likelihood Trump will be impeached or removed from office. Most importantly, the Supreme Court ruled in July 2024 that the president is immune from prosecution for “official acts” he undertakes. If Trump ignores laws passed by Congress or refuses to abide by court decisions that would block his policies, he will be immune from accountability under those laws and court orders. Trump’s power in this presidential term, in other words, is the closest to absolute than of any other US president.

There are four pillars to Trump’s policies. Nativism and the protection of America’s borders and stopping illegal immigration. Protectionism through the use of tariffs to prevent imports from flooding American markets and to rebuild America’s industries and factories. Isolationism, to keep America out of foreign wars and international institutions that constrain American policy and programs. And nationalism, to “make America great again” by ensuring that all engagement with the world benefits America first and foremost. The ledger should always be tipped towards the benefit of the United States. These pillars define Trumpism.

Trump’s agenda with the rest of the world will be confrontational. None of this will come as a surprise to Australia’s leaders and policymakers.

There was a strong consensus among Australian and American officials I spoke to for this book about Trump’s character and temperament. Their view was that Trump will never change; he is erratic, unhinged and foments chaos; he is arrogant, has no sense of history, and is completely transactional.

Donald Trump’s approach to international relations is unlikely to change.Credit: Getty Images

With respect to those he sees as enemies, he never apologises, recants or retreats. He never expresses regret for his actions. When under attack for scandalous behaviour or abuse of power, Trump has one playbook: deny, denounce, discredit, defame. Trump will challenge, again, the structures erected after World War II to promote security, peace and prosperity across the globe. This is the world order that Trump wants to raze. As discussed in this book, Australia must maintain its membership in all the international organisations Trump wants to pull the United States out of: several agencies of the United Nations (including the World Health Organisation and the World Trade Organisation), the Paris Agreement and the International Criminal Court. Australia should continue to stand with the world and the integrity of these institutions.

With respect to Australia’s relationships across the Indo-Pacific, Trump will focus on several pressure points. How much of the regional architecture will Trump want to continue supporting? Australia and the United States are in the ASEAN Regional Forum, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Pacific Islands Forum. Australia is joined, together with the US, Japan and India, in the Quad. The US, Australia and Japan have a trilateral co-operation agreement with respect to stability in the Taiwan Strait. The US, Japan and South Korea have a working group on regional issues, especially North Korea. Australia, Japan, the Philippines and the United States are engaged in maritime security agreements. Will Trump support or seek to dismantle or downplay these arrangements? China opposes the Quad. Will Trump seek openings with China by neglecting attention to or demoting the role of the Quad?

As the Trump presidency begins, Australia has pursued deeper strategic engagement, building firmer relationships with Asian partners and landing high-quality trade deals. In short, strengthening Australia’s independent relations across Asia – separate and apart from its alliance with the United States – all in order for Australia to continue to be fully engaged with the Asia-Pacific, notwithstanding whether the United States is retreating from the region. Foreign Minister Penny Wong has amply fulfilled this mission, and it will redound to Australia’s benefit in the coming Trump years.

In this context, there is optimism among those most closely associated with AUKUS that it will not only survive but continue apace. As AUKUS was an initiative conceived and executed by President Joe Biden, Trump may have some misgivings over its patrimony. More likely, Trump will interrogate the deal like the business chief executive he is: what is the flow of money, jobs and technology, and who benefits the most, the United States or Australia? Trump may prompt a renegotiation to get more favourable terms and returns to the US. AUKUS should survive this process.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (left) and US President Joe Biden before an AUKUS meeting in 2023. AUKUS is likely to survive Trump despite Biden’s involvement in its birth.Credit: Bloomberg

On trade, Trump will unleash the most comprehensive suite of tariffs since the protectionist policies of the 1930s. Trump has threatened tariffs of up to 20 per cent on all goods imported into the United States, and tariffs of 60 per cent on all imports from China. Tariffs imposed on Australian exports would go against the grain of the tariff-slashing United States-Australia Free Trade Agreement, concluded 20 years ago.

This will be an early test of Australia’s relationship with Trump and his administration. Australia has had a structural trade deficit with the United States for over 75 years. Australia is not, and should not be, a target of Trump’s wrath on trade. Whether Australia is exempted from the Trump tariffs will be crucial in framing the relationship in the next several years.

Trump’s tariffs will start a trade war with China. When Trump did this in his first term, Australia was swept up in the hostilities, with China’s retaliation encompassing Australia’s trade relationship with China. Why should Australia support Trump’s trade war with Beijing and invite a reprise of the complete disruption of Australia’s trade with China? It took four years to get this back on track. There is no need for Australia to go through it again. Trump may also revive consideration of punishing China by “decoupling” the US economy from China’s. Again, Australia should resist any positioning that parallels such a stance with respect to China.

But if Australia opposes Trump’s trade war with China, will Trump challenge Australia?

Trump’s policy settings will have a profound effect on the US economy, which will in turn affect Australia’s economic future. Many of the Trump tax cuts enacted in 2017 expire at the end of 2025. Extending the law will add $US4.6 trillion ($7.37 trillion) to the US deficit over the next 10 years. Trump’s tariffs could cost each consumer $US2600 a year in higher prices for goods. Mass deportations are expected to trigger extensive labour shortages, again leading to higher prices for goods and services. The result could be both higher inflation and lower growth. These developments could harm prospects for any lessening of the cost-of-living pressures on households in Australia, leaving in place in this year’s election here a regime of high interest rates.

Trump was elected in significant part by the political potency of the immigration issue and the urgency of the government controlling America’s borders. We in Australia have felt the power of this issue over many years and many elections since then-prime minister John Howard famously declared, in the wake of the Tampa affair in 2001: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.” This is now Trump’s most powerful and emotive policy issue. Trump’s language on immigration has been super-charged with hate. In his re-election campaign, Trump regularly resorted to Nazi talk that immigrants “were poisoning the blood of our country” and were “vermin” to be expunged. Half the country will cheer; the other half of the country will be deeply distressed.

Trump is about to unleash an unprecedented crackdown on undocumented immigrants in the US.Credit: Bloomberg

The world will witness it. This will further colour perceptions about Trump, his policies and the nature and character of the United States.

It is in this context that several other issues will erupt and be assessed. This will be especially true on cultural issues: the treatment and rights of gay and transgender people, the future of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, issues that play on identity politics, book banning in schools. Paramount in this class of issues is the ability of the states to restrict abortion rights, and opposition to gun control.

Trumpists play the race card on voting rights issues with their support of voter ID requirements for elections. Whatever Trump pushes in the US along these lines can easily emerge here by being taken up by political leaders who see an opportunity to exploit these issues for political advantage. Abortion rights, for example, was a major issue in last year’s US presidential campaign. It is no coincidence that abortion rights came up late in the Queensland state election in October 2024, just as the issue was peaking in the US.

Trump will pardon perhaps hundreds of extremists who have been convicted of crimes for attacking the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an insurrection to overturn the 2020 election. Trump has described them as “hostages” who must be set free. Trump’s tolerance for extremists and white nationalists will continue to leach into the political culture here in Australia. Neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. In recent years, they have marched in Melbourne and Ballarat. This is also no mere coincidence.

Trump is likely to pardon those involved in the January 6 attempt to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election.Credit: Getty Images

It is clear that, over the past year, the Australian government has done much to prepare for Trump’s return to power. Extraordinary efforts at outreach to Trump and Trump’s circle of contacts have been undertaken, from ambassador Kevin Rudd’s liaisons with Trump allies and advisers to former prime minister Scott Morrison’s meeting with Trump to discuss AUKUS. That was all necessary and smartly executed. But in itself it is not sufficient to face the challenges at hand.

The main game will be the relationship between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and President Trump. It is the prime minister who will need to make – and win – directly with Trump the argument that Australia should be exempt from Trump’s new tariffs. It is the prime minister who will need to stand up to Trump’s imposition of tariffs against China and declare Australia’s opposition to Trump’s trade war policies. It is the prime minister who will need, if required, to dissuade Trump from blowing up the AUKUS deal by new terms which render the arrangement prohibitively injurious to Australia’s interests. Those will be the critical initial tests between the prime minister and the president, and will determine where Australia stands in Trump’s firmament.

The results of those tests will serve as a reckoning on Australia’s place in the Indo-Pacific and how it can protect its interests.

Neo-Nazis gathered outside the Victorian parliament last year.Credit: Chris Hopkins

There might also be a reckoning on the US-Australia alliance itself. We are allies, and we are allied, because we share the same values: democracy, liberty, freedom, universal suffrage, the rule of law, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly. But Trump threatens to cripple America’s democracy. Trump will command the biggest deportation of immigrants in American history and bring in the military to execute it. Trump will use the National Guard and perhaps US troops under the Pentagon to control protesters. Trump wants to impose his will and loyalty across the bureaucracy. Under the terms of Project 2025, Trump will require civil servants to sign loyalty oaths.

What if the struggle for democracy and the soul of America fails in 2025, 2026 or 2027? What happens if President Trump declares martial law, if troops are deployed to cities across the country to put down protests and restore law and order, if Trump disobeys court orders, including from the Supreme Court, to cease and desist acting under the authority of his executive actions, if Trump ignores laws and spending decisions enacted by Congress, if Trump orders the detention and imprisonment of his political enemies, if Trump has journalists arrested and jailed and shuts down media outlets that report truthfully on him? If Trump directs the regulatory agencies to put certain companies he perceives as enemies out of business?

If Trump dismantles American democracy, the American continent will no longer be populated by the United States. The states will be bitterly divided. There will be immense unrest. The country will no longer be the United States.

Trump redux therefore poses an existential question: how could Australia remain allied with a country that has discarded the fundamental values of democracy which have bound these two nations together? How can Australia be allied with a country that is drifting towards autocracy and authoritarianism?

As we absorb Trump’s reascension to the presidency, what decade does this feel like? With this election, the post-war world era is now over. The architecture established after World War II – the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation, the World Health Organisation, international accords on climate change and the environment, human rights bodies – are a shadow of their former stature. NATO will be under immense stress from Trump. We have authoritarian dictators invading other countries to extend their raw power. Isolationism has gripped the superpower that has been the engine of democracy, the United States, and trade wars will be unleashed.

With isolationism and a retreat from the world, protectionism and tariffs and trade wars in vogue, with nationalism coloured by nativism on the rise, it is beginning to look and feel like the 1930s. Few are alive from those times. As philosopher George Santayana and Winston Churchill observed, those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. We should remember how that decade ended.

This is an extract from What Trump’s Second Term Means for Australia by Bruce Wolpe, published by Allen & Unwin, $26.99rrp, available on January 14, 2025.