1 Profile of the new US president (BBC) Long before
he was a contender for the US presidency, Donald Trump was America's most
famous and colourful billionaire. Once considered a long shot, Trump is now the
next president of the United States.
The 70-year-old businessman had the last laugh when
he defied all predictions to beat much more seasoned politicians in the
Republican primary race. Mr Trump is the fourth child of New York real estate
tycoon Fred Trump. Despite the family's wealth, he was expected to work the
lowest-tier jobs within his father's company and was sent off to a military
academy at age 13 when he started misbehaving in school.
He attended the Wharton School at the University of
Pennsylvania and became the favourite to succeed his father after his older
brother, Fred, chose to become a pilot. Fred Trump died at 43 due to
alcoholism, an incident that his brother says led him to avoid alcohol and
cigarettes his entire life.
Mr Trump says he got into real estate with a
"small" $1m loan from his father before joining the company. He
helped manage his father's extensive portfolio of residential housing projects
in the New York City boroughs, and took control of the company - which he
renamed the Trump Organization - in 1971.
His father died in 1999. "My father was my inspiration,"
Mr Trump said at the time. There are Trump Towers in Mumbai, Istanbul and the
Philippines. Mr Trump also built an empire in the entertainment business. From
1996 until 2015, he was an owner in the Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen
USA beauty pageants. He has written several books, and owns a line of
merchandise that sells everything from neckties to bottled water. According to
Forbes, his net worth is $3.7bn, though Mr Trump has repeatedly insisted he is
worth $10bn.
Trump has been married three times, though his most
famous wife was his first - Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech athlete and model. The
couple had three children - Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric - before they filed for
divorce in 1990. He married actress Marla Maples in 1993. They had a daughter
named Tiffany together before divorcing in 1999.
He married his current wife Melania Knauss, a model,
in 2005, and the couple have one son, Barron William Trump. His children from
his first marriage now help run Trump Organization, though he is still chief
executive.
He took inspiration from the successful campaign to
get Britain out of the European Union, saying he would pull off "Brexit
times 10". He will be the first US president never to have held elected
office or served in the military, meaning that he has already made history
before he is sworn in as America's 45th president in January.
2 Asia on edge over Trump win (Ravi Velloor in
Straits Times) Asians who listened to Mr Donald Trump's victory speech will
take comfort from his vow to rebuild America, "get along with all other
nations willing to get along with us" and double the growth rate of an
economy that is still considered the market of last resort.
Beyond that, for now at least, a Trump presidency
looks like a stare into the deep unknown. While Asian leaders have come forth
to greet the president-elect and vowed to work with him, there is no denying
that Mr Trump's domestic-focused diatribes on trade, immigration and jobs all
cause deep unease, particularly to those that rely on open economies to keep
their growth engines ticking.
There is no question that for the immediate future
at least, the all-important Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will be on hold. Had
Mrs Hillary Clinton won, there was a chance that Mr Barack Obama might have
tried to push it through during his lame-duck period in office. But given the
message delivered by voters, it would be morally wrong for Mr Obama to push TPP
further.
Mr Trump has threatened to slap as much as 45 per
cent duties on Chinese goods entering the US market. He also has threatened
during the campaign that the US may leave the World Trade Organisation under
his watch. Government leaders in India, Asia's third biggest economy, worry
that his stiff positions on immigration and jobs may hurt their outsourcing
industry at a time when their business model is under threat.
More worrying is the prospect of a renewed arms
race, especially if Mr Trump should show signs that he will turn away from the
region. His foreign policy positions - that Japan and South Korea should do
more in their own defence - could presage the unleashing of a nuclear arms race
in north-east Asia as Seoul and Tokyo prepare for the contingency of a reduced
US commitment to the region.
3 Trumponomics is more of the same (Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian)
So America’s ruling classes have lost to a billionaire who plays at being a man
of the people. Donald Trump ran against the hierarchy of his own party, without
the blessing of commentators or the big CEOs, without the speeches to Wall
Street or the funding from Silicon Valley. Amid all the justifiable dismay
expressed, don’t forget one thing: Hillary Clinton was the establishment
candidate; it was Trump who ran as the perennially unfancied outsider.
Trump is an outsider politician leading an
insurgency of self-declared outsider Americans: the white men who feel homeless
in their own country and the coal-mining and rustbelt states that got written
off by both parties – but that won’t produce outsider policies. But Donald J
Trump won’t be the president who reads the last rites for neoliberalism – for
the simple reason that the empty-headed narcissist has no idea what to replace
it with.
What the head boys and head girls miss is just how
old-fashioned Trumponomics is. Look at the people around him. Among his top
economic advisers is Stephen Moore from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative
thinktank last seen laying down many of the policy planks for Ronald Reagan.
Sure enough, the policies are pure Reagan: slashing
red tape and business taxes, “a major tax cut” on income, a repeal of estate
taxes and a hankering for high interest rates and sound money. His latest position
is that “I would like to see an increase [in the minimum wage] of some
magnitude. But I’d rather leave it to the states.” Gee thanks, Donald!
You can see the paradox. Much of Trump’s base was
voting against the great unravelling of America’s social contract. They were
rebelling against Reaganism and its love for Wall Street over Main Street, its
property boom and industrial bust. Yet what they’re about to get is more
Reaganism, from a man whose glory years were the Reagan years.
A revolt isn’t a revolution. The head prefects in
our politics and media see disorder and immediately cry insurrection. That’s
what they did in Britain after the Brexit vote and it’s how they’ll mark 20
January, 2017, the date of President Trump’s inauguration. Just as they called
those events wrong, so they’ll call the aftermath wrong.
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