By Staff Writer
It amounted to a bonfire of executive orders as second-time president Donald Trump and his predecessor (and previous successor) Joe Biden engaged in a veritable tit-for-tat over a few critical days and hours spanning the ending of the Biden presidency and the starting of the new Trump era.
As fast as ex-President Biden rushed through a raft of executive orders including pardons and relaxing restrictions on Cuba, the new second-time White House incumbent Donald Trump set about revoking them and forcing through a series of his own on his first day back.
INTERNATIONAL
Far-reaching international policy shifts and directives from ending wars to slapping massive trade tariffs on just about the rest of the world are hallmarks of what’s to come, including seeking to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and pulling the United States out of the World Health Organisation.
Drastic changes to previous climate change commitments, energy, and electric vehicles are expected to have repercussions far beyond the shores of the US.
Where President Biden has overturned a previous Trump decision to pull the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement, Mr Trump has now in turn once more hauled the US out of the global agreement.
He has also declared a national energy emergency in the US to underline another major policy change. In reversing a Biden ban on drilling in parts of the Arctic, Mr Trump said he was repositioning America as a major energy exporter to bolster the economy.
“We will be a rich nation again,” he declared, “and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.”
Also, all US foreign assistance programmes have been suspended pending review for policy alignment with American values.
DOMESTIC
Domestic policy upheavals include controversial measures to clamp down on immigration and pardoning around 1500 convicted rioters from the January 6th 2021 insurrection to overturn that election outcome which Mr Trump still maintains he won despite numerous court rulings against him.
Changing the constitutional birthright mandate, a new federal hiring freeze, and changes to the US government’s diversity hiring policy, are among the flood of new executive orders rushed through.
How free speech is interpreted fell under the Trump executive pen, including overturning a last-minute Biden ban on the TikTok platform - which has been under consideration for some time over concerns of Chinese control.
ByteDance Ltd, the parent company of TikTok is incorporated in the Cayman Islands.
Mr Trump also has the support of several of the US (and the world’s) top tech entrepreneurs including the heads of Amazon, Meta and Tesla/Space X. Elon Musk who heads the latter will also run a new US government advisory body called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) tasked with cutting down the size of the federal government.
And, in what has been seen in some circles as a particularly chilling decision, President Trump directed that “all necessary and lawful action” be taken to ensure that there are enough lethal injection drugs to carry out the death penalty.
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