Comprehensive Impacts of Trump’s First Year: World
General Introduction
2017 was a surreal year. Just when we think things can’t get any worse, lo and behold, a new tweet comes out. Or a new policy is introduced. Or a new world leader is so offended that we get closer to doomsday. Trump’s election has normalized and publicized the proverbial anonymous yahoo comments, and it’s hard to imagine that he still has a small but loud base of support and that people chose this narcissistic, sexist, racist sociopath consciously. He has exemplified our slow, subtle transformation from intelligent citizens to mindless consumers to salivating spectators who have a constant need for entertainment and outrage.
I always said that when voting for president, what we’re really voting for was the Supreme Court. I am going on record to say that I was wrong. Dead wrong. Trump has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are so many ways a president can be harmful other than by Supreme Court appointments. To be sure, judicial appointments are one major way that Trump is detrimental to the country, and it will take at least a generation to recover from those appointments alone. But this document shows that a president can do deep and lasting damage in many ways.
Although I vacillate between disgust and defeat and anger, I am trying very hard to channel all of those feelings into fighting against our spiral toward Idiocracy. The only way to do this is for everyone who is eligible to actually get out and vote in every single election. This November’s midterm elections will tell us if Americans are really ready for progress or if they’re apathetic enough to continue our moral, ethical, and constitutional decline.
There have been several year-end round-ups about Trump’s first year. Many of them are laughably revisionist. But there were some informative ones. Axios created a great chart of search trends for some of the biggest news events of the first year, showing how we’ve all jumped from one four-alarm news fire to another. Rolling Stone summarized the damage of Trump’s first year. And Roger Cohen with the New York Times editorialized our frightening reality in If This is America.
This piece is meant to be a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of Trump’s first year as President of the United States of America (let that sink in). There are many things that happened during the campaign that are not included. Included are impacts from January 20, 2017, to January 31, 2018 (in some cases, February 1). There are sure to be things missing, but I have done my best to record these impacts. The impacts are listed under 19 different categories:
3. Women & Families;
4. LBGT;
6. Ethics;
7. Targeting free press/free speech/Privacy;
8. Health & Safety;
10. Education;
11. Transportation/Infrastructure/Housing;
12. Immigration;
13. Social Contract;
15. General Governance;
16. Character;
18. World; and
19. Some good news. Because there is always some good news.
Of course, some of the impacts may fit under multiple categories. For example, does Trump’s encouragement of police to treat suspects violently fall under Health and Safety or Law Enforcement? Or maybe Ethics or Character? There are many such conundrums, and I have tried to categorize each example appropriately. Some may disagree on the categorization. And that’s OK. As a researcher, I’m still pondering good ways to visualize all of this data, but in the meantime, it’s listed here. Fair warning: This is long. The items may not necessarily be in chronological order.
Since this will take me months to write, I will publish each section as I complete it. This is the penultimate article and covers Trump’s impact on the world and foreign policy.
I want to acknowledge Amy Siskind’s weekly list of subtle changes that experts in authoritarianism say to watch out for. Amy’s in-depth listings were invaluable, and a must-read itself.
Buckle your seatbelts.
The World & Foreign Policy
Trump has unquestionably made the United States a laughing stock of the world and has diminished the country’s standing across the globe. The global influence of the United States has also dwindled; The Economist noted how the US has “turned inward, hurting itself and the world.” Further, as Trump breaks with more than seven decades of foreign policy standards, reporter Mark Lander described how he has “transformed the world’s view of the United States from an anchor of the international order into something more inward-looking and unpredictable.” As Trump continues parroting “America First,” the rest of the world moves on and progresses around us in trade agreements. In fact, while Trump falsely claims that he’s boosting the United States’ influence around the world, most world leaders view the US as in a retreat. As reporters Tracy Wilkinson, Alexandra Zavis, and Shashank Bengali noted,
China has now assumed the mantle of fighting climate change, a global crusade that the United States once led. Russia has taken over Syrian peace talks, also once the purview of the American administration, whose officials Moscow recently deigned to invite to negotiations only as observers.
France and Germany are often now the countries that fellow members of NATO look to, after President Trump wavered on how supportive his administration would be toward the North Atlantic alliance. And in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the U.S., once the only mediator all sides would accept, has found itself isolated after Trump’s decision to declare that the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
One activist suggested that China and Russia are especially laughing at the United States. The world has seen what David Brooks describes as “the all-time record-holder of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the phenomenon in which the incompetent person is too incompetent to understand his own incompetence.” The German paper A Der Spiegel went further and proclaimed Trump an outright danger to the world, and one politician in the UK referred to Trump as a dangerous racist “asteroid of awfulness that has fallen on this world.” In Germany and across Europe, important allies are skeptical of Trump and are prepared to part ways and draw red lines on major policy and international issues.
At home it’s no better. As Susan Glasser reported, “Seasoned diplomats who have seen Trump up close throw around words like ‘catastrophic,’ ‘terrifying,’ ‘incompetent,’ and ‘dangerous.’” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also called Trump a “fucking moron.”
His domestic and foreign policy have not only been a disaster, but have brought us closer to nuclear war since the Cold War, and his travel ban has impacted many around the globe. The Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warned that Trump might “blunder his way into World War III.” Thanks to the increased nuclear tensions (as well as climate change denial), The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists officially moved its Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to “midnight.”
In addition, by the end of his first year, nearly a million fewer tourists worth billions in revenue were coming to the United States in what is now referred to as the “Trump Slump.”
· Fewer than half of people surveyed around the world had a favorable rating of the United States under Trump, compared to 64 percent when President Obama left office, and fewer than a quarter of people worldwide were confident that Trump would make good foreign affairs decisions. In fact, most people around the world consider Trump as to be “arrogant, intolerant, unqualified, and dangerous.” In fact, global confidence in United States leadership plummeted under Trump, putting the US below China in worldwide approval. Trump’s worldwide approval is the lowest that the Gallup poll had ever recorded since beginning the global leadership poll. In 7 NATO countries, people and political leaders have more faith that Putin would do the right thing in global affairs than Trump, often by huge margins.
· Because of Trump’s unpopularity, the US has dropped to eighth place in US News and World Report’s “Best Countries” ranking with other countries viewing the US as less trustworthy and more politically unstable since Trump took office. Tourism to the US is also down because of Trump, costing the US $4.6 billion and 40,000 jobs.
· Yet Trump likely wouldn’t even know who considers him a buffoon. Trump told a Japanese audience that he had no idea how many countries there were in the world.
· While tourists no longer want to come here, many do for various reasons. But the Trump-appointed Supreme Court allowed the third version of Trump’s travel ban to go into effect, leaving hundreds of thousands of people unable to work, study, or vacation here, and leaving families, professors, students, doctors, and medical care recipients in the lurch.
· In what has been called his “most reckless decision yet,” Trump risked a war with Iran and lost all diplomatic credibility by refusing to certify Iran’s full compliance with the nuclear agreement it reached with the U.S. and several other world powers under President Obama.
· After this decision, the world’s leaders were shaken and wondering whether postwar alliances with the United States can survive as potential Trump decisions could plunge transatlantic relations into crises.
· Trump slashed foreign aid while the world’s largest humanitarian crisis in 70 years was declared in three African countries suffering from famine.
· While this largest humanitarian crisis is happening, Trump cut the number of refugees allowed into the country substantially.
· He also let United States citizens suffer. He let a the Jones Act Waiver expire, a 10-day shipping waiver for Puerto Rico so that foreign ships could no longer bring aid to the island from U.S. ports after Hurricane Maria. He also threatened to abandon Puerto Rico altogether, tweeting, “We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders . . . in P.R. forever!”
· Trump continued to recklessly antagonize North Korea, saying that North Korea would “be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” In response, North Korea said that it was preparing to send intermediate-range missiles near Guam. North Korea stated, “President Trump understands only absolute force,” as the country announced a plan to attack waters near Guam. In the continued back and forth, Trump tweeted that the US military is “locked and loaded.” When asked by a reporter if the U.S. will go to war with North Korea, Trump responded, “I think you know the answer to that.” At Trump’s first UN General Assembly, he threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea. In response, North Korea called Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.” Trump then directed joint naval drills with the South Korean military on the Korean peninsula, to which North Korea threatened an “unimaginable” nuclear strike. Later, Trump continued taunting North Korea, tweeting how the nuclear launch button on his desk is “much bigger” and “more powerful” than that of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and that his button actually “works.” When two authoritarians get into a pissing match, no good can come of it. The escalating tensions with North Korea have left South Korea scared and confused.
· Trump also got into a pissing match with Turkey, a NATO ally. Trump restricted Turkey’s visa services, suspending visa processing. In response, Turkey suspended non-immigrant visa services at all Turkish diplomatic facilities in the United States.
· North Korea isn’t the only country that Trump is antagonizing. Reporter Jorge Guajardo described how Trump’s insults are “pushing the Mexican political system into dangerous territory,” resulting in political candidates in Mexico who fight to be the most anti-US, which could result in impacts to both Mexico’s and the United States’ economy, immigration systems, fight against terrorism, drug cartel traffic, health, environment, transportation, water, and disease control.
· Trump has also nonchalantly talked about — and threatened — going to war with Venezuela, leaving foreign ministers around the entire region referring to Trump as “insane,” uninformed, and dangerously unpredictable.
· Trump also continuously tweets anti-Muslim sentiments, including those from fake news sources. He continues tweeting these sentiments even after multiple State Department officials communicated to the White House that there was concern about increased threats to US embassies around the world.
· At the UN General Assembly, Trump “painted a dark vision of a world where every nation stands alone, cooperation is purely transactional, and alliances are held together by self-interest rather than shared values.”
· Also at the UN, while talking to leaders of African nations, Trump referred to the African nation of “Nambia.” Twice. In that same speech, he came across as ignorant, condescending, and tone deaf as he implied that the US and its allies were going to make African nations rich, when in fact, the US and its allies have been exploiting Africans and African nations for eternity for our own financial gain.
· He wasn’t done at the UN. In a vote for a resolution banning the death penalty for homosexuality, the United States of America joined some African and Middle Eastern nations to vote against the resolution. (Thankfully, it passed anyway!)
· Trump directed the State Department to stop funding United Nations relief efforts and to instead provide humanitarian assistance directly through USAID and faith-based groups.
· Trump also walked away from the UN’s New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, which is an effort to ease the global migration and refugee crisis. Trump claimed that the Declaration was no longer compatible with US principles or priorities.
· Trump also backed out of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global initiative that requires member nations to disclose their revenues from oil, gas, and mining assets. This is an international effort to fight corruption that targets revenue from oil and natural gas extraction and would have required companies, including American companies, to reveal all of their revenue and publicly disclose payments made to the US and other governments.
· Back at home, Trump became the first president in more than a century to not host any state dinners for visiting dignitaries at the White House during his first year (perhaps because no foreign dignitary wanted to visit him?).
· In a shocking move, Trump formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, reversing nearly seven decades of American foreign policy and setting in motion a plan to move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The decision drew criticism from across Europe and the Middle East, as well as from China and even the Pope. According to senior advisors, Trump didn’t actually grasp the ramifications of this decision and was more focused on the appearance of making a deal, not unlike in his reality TV show.
· At the UN, Nicki Haley threatened members that Trump would be “taking names” of those who voted to reject Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and Trump threatened to withhold “billions” of dollars of US aid from countries that vote in favor of a United Nations resolution rejecting the US president’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. After the vote in which 120 nations criticized Trump for his irrational decision, Trump cut funding to the UN by 25 percent.
· The US joined Israel in withdrawing from the United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), accusing it of “anti-Israel bias.”
· Trump seems to get along best with the world’s fellow authoritarians who are mostly known for their human rights abuses. In addition to holding a meeting with Philippine president Duterte, Trump also invited the dictator responsible for — and proud of — extrajudicial killings to the White House.
· Dutarte isn’t the only authoritarian Trump hob nobs with. Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting jeopardizing a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.
· Trump shut down a federal office that oversees sanctions policies after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson fired the coordinator of the office. The coordination of world sanctions now falls to just one mid-level official. As a result, the Trump administration missed a key deadline to implement new penalties against Russia that were adopted by Congress. In the meantime, Congress seems perplexed about why the sanctions that they approved and Trump signed were not being implemented.
· According to a leaked document, Tillerson is trying to centralize foreign policy decision making and accumulating power among a small and unaccountable group of senior aides who aren’t subject to any confirmation process while ignoring diplomats.
· Tillerson isn’t in control of everything he should be, though. Jared Kushner has been having secret talks with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. There is fear in the State Department that these secret discussions could backfire and tip the region into chaos.
· In Russia, The US State Department hired a private firm founded by a KGB spy to provide security for its Moscow embassy and diplomatic missions.
· The entire State Department has been sinking among low morale as the agency is experiencing a mass exodus under the Trump administration. Some senior officials have written scathing resignation letters accusing Rex Tillerson and Trump of undercutting the State Department and damaging America’s influence in the world.
· In the meantime, diplomats have been caught lying. Trump’s US Ambassador to The Netherlands made anti-Muslim comments, then denied making them, claiming it was “fake news,” before being shown the video recording of him making the anti-Muslim comments.
· Around the world, there are 35 trade deals under consideration. Trump has ensured that the US is not part of any of them except for one while Europe, China, and Japan lead the world.
The next, final article in this series will cover some good news despite Trump’s presidency. The series covering Trump’s second year will follow soon after.
