Mass expulsion? Political revenge? World peace? A new golden age? As Donald Trump seeks another term in the White House, speculation is rife in the US about what life will be like once the former president is back in power.
The Republican has dropped some hints in a series of interviews and campaign rallies.
Here are Trump’s plans for the United States and the world, as laid out by the candidate himself.
Mass deportations
President Joe Biden’s rival in the November election has vowed to launch the largest deportation campaign of illegal immigrants in US history on his first day in office.
“We will kick them out as soon as possible,” he said, accusing illegal immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country”.
The 78-year-old, known for his unfinished border wall project, has said he would be happy to “use the military” as part of the effort and open internment camps for people targeted for deportation.
“On the first day of my new term, I will sign an executive order making it clear to federal agencies that, under the correct interpretation of the law, children of illegal aliens will not automatically receive U.S. citizenship in the future,” he said in a campaign video.
He has confirmed that he plans to reinstate a ban on travellers from several Muslim-majority countries to “keep terrorists out of our country.”
Ukraine, NATO
Trump has said for months that he could end the war in Ukraine in “24 hours,” but he hasn’t explained how.
Critics say his plan would include pressuring Kiev to hand over territory illegally occupied by Russia in 2014 and 2022.
“I will resolve this matter before I even get into the White House,” he said at a recent rally in the Midwestern city of Detroit. “As president-elect, I will resolve this matter.”
The former president is strongly critical of Washington’s shipment of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Kyiv and funding requests from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“This will never stop,” he told the Michigan crowd.
When asked in a town hall with Fox News if he would remain committed to NATO in a second term, he said: “It depends on whether they treat us fairly.”
Tariffs vs. Tax Cuts
Trump envisages imposing tariffs “in excess of 10 percent” on all imports.
US companies – and ultimately their customers – pay the import duties, not the companies exporting the goods.
Trump asserted that the revenue collected would finance a “big tax cut for the middle class, upper class, lower class, business class.”
After waging a fierce trade war with China during his first term, he also plans to revoke the Asian giant’s “most favoured nation” status granted to boost trade.
Trump claims he will “stop inflation by stopping immigration”, and argues that his action on immigration will reduce housing costs and other expenses.
The Ambiguity of Abortion
Trump never misses an opportunity to point out that it is partly because of him and the three conservative appointments he made to the Supreme Court that abortion rights in the United States have been significantly weakened.
But his view on the future of access to reproductive health care is more ambivalent.
Insisting that it should be an issue for individual states, Republicans have refused to pursue a nationwide abortion ban, a commitment that could win them support from the religious right.
“You should listen to your heart on this issue, but remember, you also have to win the election,” he said in April.
‘Drill, baby, drill!’
Trump abandoned the 2015 Paris climate agreement during his first term.
At a rally earlier this month, he said that if re-elected, he would “stop Biden’s wasteful spending and swiftly end the Green New Scam” — a reference to his successor’s funding for mitigating climate change.
“I will repeal Crooked Joe Biden’s insane electric vehicle order and we will ‘drill, baby, drill,'” Trump told supporters in Wisconsin, using an old Republican slogan.
“Energy costs will go down very quickly,” he said. “In many cases we’ll cut your energy costs in half.”
Targeting Biden
Trump, who was convicted of felony business fraud in May and faces three more impeachments, has baselessly and repeatedly claimed that his various impeachments are a political conspiracy by Democrats.
Republicans have vowed to appoint “a real special ‘prosecutor’ to take action against Joe Biden, the most corrupt president in American history.”
None of the investigations have found any evidence of wrongdoing by Biden.
He also said he was “absolutely” willing to pardon all Trump supporters convicted of storming the US Capitol in Washington to prevent Congress from certifying the Republican’s loss to Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
