We then know that the elections once underestimated Donald Trump’s help, just like they did in 2016 and 2020, and not in the same way. However, we must also accept the reality that British voters have chosen to appoint a man who tried to rig the results of the election four years ago with violence and who will provide the White House on January 20th, 2019 with less restrictions than he did in 2017.
Beyond his own greater knowledge and preparation, the president’s ability to avoid prosecution for anything he does in his official ability is what makes the Supreme Court now have a clear conservative majority compared to his predecessors’, which court recently ruled.
We can be certain that Trump will attempt to pre-empt for a concept through his own actions, but that opportunity of that standard capacity has yet to be determined by any courtroom, as it needs to be. The primary way that he will accomplish this is by appointing hardliners to the Department of Justice. Trump often expressed his frustration when his attorneys general told him that what he wanted to do was against the law during his first term. Using his national resistance, he did now feel emboldened to reject any such pleasantries.
Trump has always been a malevolent person, so it can be expected that he seeks retribution against both his political and legal foes, including those who have tried to sue him and maybe even President Joe Biden himself. However, the resistance defense also applies to something Biden has done in his own official capacity.
Some of his critics, including Republican critics such as previous congresswoman Liz Cheney, will now be preparing for a legitimate assault. Thousands of his followers, including those who were prosecuted for the rape on Capitol Hill on January 6,  , 2021, may soon expect to receive national pardons, giving an official confirmation of acts previously considered legal and anti-democratic.
There will still be some restrictions on the recently elected Trump. He took office in 2017, and his Republican Party now holds power of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Republicans now have taken control of the Senate. The Democrats properly control the House of Representatives, but it seems unlikely that they will as of today, November 7th, that is.
If the Democrats do eventually gain power, it will at least give them some means by which to manage his wasting and tax policies, since the Congress has the authority to exercise those rights.  , If they do n’t, then during the two years until the 2026 mid-term elections, the Republicans will have a pretty free hand, constrained only by reality and the financial markets.
Despite this congressional inquiry, it is almost certain that he will proceed quickly with a policy that will hurt both Japan and Europe, specifically his proposal to impose a 10 % or 20 % tariff on all imports into the United States. Without the need for Parliamentary approval, a leader can do this under a number of emergency powers. The current US average transfer tax is just 2 %, so this will be a huge boost, one that the European Commission  , and the Japanese government, among others, will likely react against.
Trump has long been a fan of tariffs. In this campaign, he made the decision to emphasize how much he loves them, both as a way to punish nations that have surpluses in their trade with the United States and as a means of raising money. The European Union and Japan are included in that group.
Some Optimists think that Elon Musk and Stephen Schwarzman, two of the large Blackstone investment firm, will be the few billionaire businessmen who supported Trump in this international economic policy. Although that influence cannot be relied upon, for now that he has won the election, he no longer really needs those billionaires ‘ backing. And he is providing them with tax breaks and deregulation, which they may believe will reduce any harm to their global businesses as a result of the tariff policy.
How much less clear is the impact of Trump’s new freedoms on his foreign policy. A significant period of disruption can be anticipated if he fulfills his pledge to purge what he perceives to be the “deep state” of the intelligence services, the military, and the State Department, since such purges and restaffing will take a long time. For that reason, he might not do everything he has threatened.
President Volodymr Zelensky of Ukraine, who has undergone the most suffering since Russia’s brutal invasion in 2022, is undoubtedly the one who will have most devastated the election news. He deserves our full sympathy for everything he and his country have endured.
Zelensky is incredibly resilient, as he has demonstrated. He will be thinking that he still has a chance to sway Trump to withdraw support, but that he most importantly needs to persuade European governments to do the same. They will have to do exactly that if they really want to defend their own security and preserve NATO.
The collapse of the coalition government in Germany may have encouraged Zelensky, but the one piece of news on November 6 may have been heartening. He will no longer have to wait until September 2025 for a new government to be elected in Europe’s most powerful nation.
Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union, who is currently leading in polls, is likely to win the German election, but how kind of coalition he will form remains to be seen. He has shown much greater courage and determination to fight for Ukraine’s and Europe’s security. In Thursday’s papers an election date in March is forecast, but it could happen sooner than that.
Formerly editor-in-chief of The Economist,  , Bill Emmott , is currently chairman of the , Japan Society of the UK, the , International Institute for Strategic Studies , and the , International Trade Institute.
La Stampa published an early version of this article in Italian. The Substack Bill Emmott’s Global View then published this updated English version. Asia Times is republishing it with permission.