If anyone thought President Trump’s second term might kick off with less “America First” bravado than his first did, his swaggering and at times brutal inauguration speech in a bitterly cold Washington laid that notion decisively to rest.
In strident and occasionally threatening terms, Trump derided his predecessor, Joe Biden, and all but dismissed every president that has gone before him, saying no U.S. leader had faced the challenges he had done, and that God had saved his life following an assassination attempt in order to “make America great again”.
Watched over by a beaming ‘bro-hood’ of U.S. tech billionaires, including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Apple’s Tim Cook, who enthusiastically rose to their feet to applaud Trump’s promises, the 47th president announced that “the golden age of America begins right now”.
He pledged a raft of sweeping reforms, from ending illegal border crossings to unleashing oil drilling, combating drug gangs, taking back the Panama Canal, re-naming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, and putting an end to diversity, equity and inclusion programmes. He even promised to plant the Stars and Stripes on Mars, much to Musk’s delight.
“From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world,” he declared, calling what went before under Biden “a horrible betrayal”. “We will give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy and their freedom.”
In a move likely to alarm the progressive left, Trump said the United States would from now on only recognise two genders, male and female, calling it a “revolution of common sense”.
In practical terms, the dawn of Trump 2.0 will send reverberations across the world.
The 78-year-old president was set to sign some 200 executive orders on his first day in office – scores more than any other recent president – including withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accords, which remain the globe’s best effort to cap global warming at less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Trump also kept alive expectations that he will impose sweeping tariffs on major trading partners, saying that for too long America had provided financial support to the rest of the world and that from now on “we will tariff and tax other countries to enrich our citizens”.
The fact Trump’s big-tech CEO supporters, who reportedly paid $1 million each to attend the inauguration, were seated closer to the president for the ceremony than those who will serve in his administration underlined the importance Trump places on their patronage, and vice-versa.
Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon, as well as Musk’s group of companies, all have a critical role to play in the digital and social media economy, while also positioning themselves as dominant players in the emerging AI landscape. These are the industries that will shape the United States and the wider world in the decade to come. The tech leaders are betting heavily that Trump will help them retain their dominance, even in the face of regulatory and competitive challenges from Europe or China.
The U.S. constitution may mean Trump only has one more term. But he left his audience in no doubt that he would use the coming four years to fundamentally overhaul the United States and seek to re-assert its global supremacy.
“America will soon be greater, stronger and far more exceptional than ever before,” he declared to another ovation. “For American citizens, January 20th, 2025, is Liberation Day.”
The rest of the world has been put on notice.
