 "President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, on Tuesday. AP")
President Donald Trump has had a busy first week in office.
The first day saw Trump sign a flurry of executive orders – the most in history on the first day of a presidency.
Meanwhile, the roundup of immigrants under Trump’s promised ‘largest deportation programme in history’ has begun.
Also, Trump issued a number of pardons including to the January 6 insurrections.
And his cabinet is taking shape with Kristi Noem in charge of Homeland Security, and Pete Hegseth heading up the Department of Defense.
Let’s take a closer look at Trump’s first week back in the White House shaped up.
Executive orders
Trump’s first day back in the White House began with a veritable flood of executive orders.
There were reports that Trump signed as many as 100 executive orders.
These ranged from ranging from cracking down on immigration, delaying the ban on TikTok, doing away with birthright citizenship, proclaiming that America recognised only two genders, creating the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), ending Work from Home (WFH) for government employees, ordering the US to withdraw from the World Health Organisation and the Paris Climate Accords.
Some of the orders – including on birthright citizenship , deportations and Doge are already being challenged in the courts by civil rights groups.
As per USA Today, Trump has ordered health agencies to stop communicating to the public.
Lawrence Gostin, a professor of public health law at Georgetown University, told The Guardian that Trump’s moves on the WHO and health agencies “could be sowing the seeds for the next pandemic”.
Trump also moved to rid the US federal government of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI).
His government has put all US federal employees on DEI on paid leave. The White House has also announced that all DEI programmes will be ended in two months.
Trade war and tariffs
The United States and Colombia have traditionally been partners. But Sunday saw Trump and his counterpart Gustavo Petro clashing over the deportation of migrants. They imposed tariffs on each other’s goods in a show of what countries could face if they intervened in the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration. But it was short-lived.
For now, a full-blown trade war has been avoided. On Sunday night, The White House said that Colombia has agreed to the “unrestricted acceptance” of immigrants who entered the US illegally from its country and that President Donald Trump will not levy a 25 per cent tariff “unless Colombia fails to honour this agreement.”
“The Government of Colombia has agreed to all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in the statement. “Based on this agreement, the fully drafted IEEPA tariffs and sanctions will be held in reserve, and not signed, unless Colombia fails to honour this agreement.”
Earlier, the US president had ordered visa restrictions, 25 per cent tariffs on all Colombian incoming goods, which he said would be raised to 50 per cent in one week, and other retaliatory measures sparked by Petro’s decision to reject two Colombia-bound US military aircraft carrying migrants. After increasing pressure from the US, Colombia gave in.
Colombia is not alone. Trump has also threatened to impose 25 per cent tariffs on all goods from Canada and Mexico on February 1, risking more trade wars.
According to economists, if tariffs are imposed it would send Canadian and Mexican economies into recession. In the US, prices of gases, gasoline and other imported items could rise.
In what came as a surprise, Trump seems to have spared China for now. In a television interview last week, he said he would rather not impose tariffs on the Asian giant.
“We have one very big power over China, and that’s tariffs, and they don’t want them,” Trump told Fox News in an interview that aired Thursday in the US. “And I’d rather not have to use it. But it’s a tremendous power over China.”
Border crackdown, roundup of immigrants
As per The Guardian, Trump has also announced a “national emergency” on migration.
US troops are currently being sent to the southern border with Mexico.
As per USA Today, the Department of Homeland Security has begun deputising thousands of additional federal law enforcement officers to begin arresting immigrants.
These include including US Marshals and DEA agents.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday announced that “deportation flights have begun.”
Leavitt shared pictures on X of people being loaded into a military plane.
However, problems have already begun.
NBC reported that Mexico has refused to let a military plane with immigrants land on Thursday.
A US official and a Mexican official later confirmed the decision.
Mexico’s foreign ministry, in a statement late on Friday, said the country had a “very great relationship” with the US and cooperated on issues such as immigration.
“When it comes to repatriations, we will always accept the arrival of Mexicans to our territory with open arms,” the ministry said.
Pardons
Hours after his inauguration at the US Capitol, Trump signed a pardon of 1,500 rioters who had stormed the same building four years earlier to try to overturn his election loss to Joe Biden.
A piece in Fox News noted that among those Trump pardoned were those who violently assaulted police officers.
The Guardian put the number of people convicted of assault on January 6 as over 250.
As a piece in NPR noted, Trump did so despite a recent poll showing 6 in 10 people were against such a move.
However, Trump made the move despite the poor optics because of the loyalty his supporters showed him.
Cabinet taking shape
Meanwhile, Trump’s cabinet is beginning to take shape.
This after former Fox News host and combat veteran Pete Hegseth was confirmed as the US’ defence secretary late Friday in a dramatic tie-breaking vote.
Hegseth, who has faced allegations of heavy drinking and aggressive behaviour toward women, has vowed to restore a ‘warrior culture’ in the US army.
Vice President JD Vance arrived to break the 50-50 tie, highly unusual for Cabinet nominees and particularly defense secretaries, who typically win wider bipartisan support.
The US Senate on Saturday confirmed South Dakota governor Kristi Noem to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a key agency in Trump’s push to clamp down on illegal immigration.
What do experts say?
Instead of chaos and fights, the first days of Trump 2.0 have been marked by what appears to be careful planning, steely discipline and intense messaging.
“In the past administration, there would be logjams and bottlenecks because there were people who didn’t agree with him,” a senior White House source told Fox News.
“Now we have a whole infrastructure and staff that’s built around him, in support of him. When he says something, it’s getting done. It’s a testament to him and the team that he built.”
Internationally, Trump appeared at the Davos forum on a huge screen, towering over the gathered global elite.
Trump has told other countries to either make products in America or face tariffs.
All week, he repeated his territorial threats against Greenland and Panama, calling their sovereignty into question even as he asserted America’s.
“Trump is saying: I’m in control,” said Peter Loge, the director of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.
Even Trump’s foes say the last five days represent a stunning contrast to his first term when infighting and poor preparation scuttled many of his most ambitious policy initiatives.
“In terms of just the scope of all this and the speed, his team has shown the results of extraordinary preparation,” said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian and former director of the Nixon presidential library.
They say that Trump, at the moment, is probably at the zenith of his power.
Which means there’s only one place to go from here.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said “Trump would love to restore the so-called imperial presidency" that existed from Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s until Richard Nixon’s fall in 1974, said Sabato.
However, Sabato added that the “era was long gone and Trump lacks the strong public support necessary to sustain the tough image he’s projecting.”
While Democrats and the anti-Trump “resistance” that opposed his 2016 victory have largely fallen silent for now, there is already legal action against key parts of his agenda.
“We all know Trump. He can’t change and won’t change, so over time much of the public will tire of his antics, just as they did in his first term,” said Sabato.
Trump may face a challenge maintaining the Republicans’ narrow congressional majority in the House of Representatives in two years. The party of the incumbent president often loses seats in midterms. If that happens, it would result in the already narrow legislative path closing for Trump altogether.
“Trump has a decisive mandate from the American voters to bring dramatic reforms to Washington,” said Mike Davis, a close Trump adviser on judicial matters.
“That political mandate will fade if he doesn’t deliver - and deliver fast.”
Democratic strategist Joe Caiazzo agreed Trump has acted quickly.
“The pace of this shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. Trump made it abundantly clear he was going to act quickly, he was going to act boldly, and he was going to do exactly what he told voters he would do,” Caiazzo told Fox News.
But he said “the things he is doing is going to directly negatively impact working families from coast to coast. It’s also a signal he has no respect for the rule of law.”
“….What Americans voted for was cheaper groceries. What Donald Trump is going to give us is a litany of policies that work to deteriorate our institutions, that work to enrich the wealthy and solidify his standing among the oligarchy in this country," Caiazzo concluded.
With inputs from agencies