by Chidanand Rajghatta
In fact, initial poll data suggests Trump's win is powered substantially by the so-called Trexit states in America's Rust Belt -Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan -which have lost thousands of factories and millions of jobs.
Donald Trump had made no secret of the fact that he supported, and predicted, Britain's Brexit vote and his victory in the US presidential election is expected to dramatically change American foreign policy , particularly where it relates to trade, commerce, and immigration.
From scrapping unfavorable (to the US) trade deals to abandoning US allies if they do not pony up protection money, to allowing more countries to have nuclear weapons, Trump has threatened a drastic recasting of Washington's long-held, bipartisan foreign policy consensus. While some of it may be attributed to campaign rhetoric and political polemics, his rank-and-file supporters will hold him to his word on many issues.
In fact, initial poll data suggests Trump's win is powered substantially by the so-called Trexit states in America's Rust Belt - Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan -which have lost thousands of factories and millions of jobs. Although economists have argued that more jobs have been lost to automation and the microchip than to outsourcing or offshoring, Trump had tapped into the motherlode of resentment among blue-collar workers with little or no college education who are uncompetitive and out-of-whack in the global workplace.
The result could be tumult in the global marketplace. In the auto industry, in the textile industry, in the info-tech services industry -in every sphere where the United States has ceded ground to rest of the world over the past three decades, partly because it is uncompetitive.
And then there are the other promises and pledges, threats and tantrums: Like the blanket ban on Muslims entering the United States, which he kept fine-tuning and carving exceptions to, till it became unclear where exactly he stood on that. And building the "great, big, beautiful wall" on the southern border with Mexico, which even immigration and border security experts think is never going to happen, and won't solve the problem if it does.
Besides, to pull off all these, Trump needs not just the executive authority that he will have, but congressional support and judicial backing. Although Republicans will retain both wings of the legislature, there are many GOP lawmakers who are Trump critics and will not exactly roll over.
And notwithstanding the ability to now tilt a Supreme Court bench (now ties at 4-4 between liberal and conservative justices) to a conservative bent by filling an existing vacancy, there will still be legal challenges to anything deemed unconstitutional.