Donald Trump Make America Great Again Essay
Donald Trump is the Republican Party nominee for the 2016 US Presidential Election, and claims that he will ‘Make America Great Again’ if he is elected as President. Although this slogan has featured heavily in Trump’s campaign and merchandise, it was first used by Ronald Reagan in 1980 (Margolin, 2016). In this essay, I plan to examine whether Donald Trump will actually ‘Make America Great Again’, or make it worse. I will do this by examining Trump’s political positions. Since Trump’s slogan implies that America is no longer ‘Great’, due to the word ‘Again’ being used, I will also explore when America stopped being great. First of all, however, I will start with some background information. Donald Trump was born in 1946; he was the fourth child of the real-estate developer Frederick Trump and Mary Macleod Trump. In 1971, he was given control of his father’s company and renamed it the Trump Organisation. His company owns several golf courses, hotels, and casinos. In 2004, Trump starred in the
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NBC series The Apprentice, which has resulted in many spin-offs. Trump has previously tried running for President, but in 2016, he became the Republican Presidential Nominee, after defeating the other candidates, which included Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio (Biography.com Editors, 2016).
Trump’s slogan, ‘Make America Great Again’, implies that America is no longer great, but used to be in the past. This is not unlike several of the other presidential candidates, who also share the view of America being in decline (Gilmore, 2016). Donald Trump himself has not mentioned when the United States stopped being great (Buncombe, 2016), and compared to before, the US is much better: before 1865, there was slavery – after they were freed, they were still legally discriminated against until the second half of the twentieth century, when African-Americans were given equal rights, as were women (Wikipedia contributors, 2016); there were also several unpopular wars that America instigated against its enemies, such as the Vietnam War (in which the US army used chemical defoliants to remove forest cover for the Vietcong, which caused serious health issues, such as birth defects, tumours, and cancer among the families of US soldiers and the local population (History.com Staff, 2011)), and the Iraq War ; and in 2008 there was the financial crisis. Arguably, the USA has not been better: President Obama, the first African-American President, who is also the first president to openly support gay rights, ended two wars, made a deal with Iran, and transformed US policy on a wide range of issues (Wikipedia contributors, 2016).
However, comparing America now and what it used to be is not the only way to determine how great it is. Although the USA is the strongest military power, many Americans do not see it that way, due to recent wars in the Middle East, in which their army has fought for years against terrorists without being too effective. In other aspects, America is the leading economic superpower; however, its lead is waning because of Chinese growth (Gilmore, 2016). American society is still great (ranked 8th on the HDI index (Wikipedia contributors, 2016)), but nowadays, fewer Americans trust the government than before. Overall, there is no single point in time that America became no longer great, however, the slogan can be interpreted in any way a person wants to. In the eyes of many Trump voters Obama has made America worse. In their view, he has weakened the military, oppressed Christians, and filled the country with Muslims, refugees and illegal immigrants (Simonoff, 2016).
But let us presume America is no longer great, so that we can determine whether Trump’s policies will change America for the better, or the worse. One of his most controversial policies is that a wall should be constructed along the US-Mexico border, which Mexico should pay for. He said, when announcing his candidacy: "I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively, I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall," (TIME Staff, 2015). Trump claims that the wall would be least 10m high and could cost between $8 billion to $12 billion. However, media estimates have placed the cost of the wall at up to $25 billion. Currently, there is already border fence, which stretches for 650 miles of the nearly 2000 mile long border (Valverde, 2016). According to analysts, the suggested wall could cost up to $750 million per year to maintain it, not including manning the wall (Drew, 2015). This is a major waste of money, which could be spent elsewhere. The construction of the wall will also anger some of the American citizens in Texas. Because private owners own the land along the US - Mexican border, so the land has to be acquired, costing the country that pays for it even more money. The current border fence in Texas divides private land in half. The Mayor of Brownsville, a town on the US-Mexican border, has said: ‘Whoever pays for it, a newer, bigger wall would waste more money and be just as futile in preventing illegal crossings’. He has also said: ‘It doesn’t prevent people from coming in or drugs from coming in. It’s not a deterrent and it’s not effective.’ (Jervis, 2016).
In addition to building a wall, Donald Trump wants to make Mexico pay for it. He plans to do this by proposing to prevent illegal immigrants from sending money abroad. Trump believes that Mexico will oppose this and so the US government will make a deal so that the proposed rule does not go into effect, on the condition that Mexico makes a one off payment of $5 billion to $10 billion (Valverde, 2016). However, the President of Mexico has publicly tweeted: ‘At the start of the conversation with Donald Trump, I made it clear Mexico will not pay for the wall,’ (Schreckinger, 2016). In my opinion, making Mexico pay for a border wall in this way will make the world’s perception of America much worse, because it can be argued that what Trump is suggesting to do is extortion. It may possibly lead to an increase in hate crime against Mexicans (similar to the increase in hate crime in the UK after the Brexit vote (Butler, 2016)), which will make American society worse.
Donald Trump also wants immigration reform in other aspects. He wants to end birth-right Citizenship, which he claims that it is the ‘biggest magnet for illegal immigration.’ This will be hard to implement, because it would require a change to the 14th Amendment of the US constitution. (Kaplan, 2015). Trump also wanted to bar foreign Muslims temporarily from entering the USA (The Associated Press, 2016). This would have made America worse in the eyes of the rest of the world, because a blanket ban on Muslims is discriminatory, even if it is temporary. Half a year after making that statement, he contradicted what he had said originally by telling reporters, and posting on twitter: ‘We must suspend immigration from regions linked with terrorism until a proven vetting method is in place.’ This is greatly different to the blanket ban on Muslims entering the USA that he proposed earlier (The Associated Press, 2016). This shift on the ban is proof that Trump will backtrack with his ideas, or that he could even just be lying to get votes.
Trump claims that some countries (i.e. China) are taking advantage of the USA by devaluing their own currencies, and putting high taxes on American products. His solution is to increase taxes on goods that come from a country that treats America unfairly (Rosenfeld, 2016). Trump claims that the USA is losing its manufacturing jobs to China, and would bring them back if elected President. (Jacobs, 2016). However, 90% of the decline in US manufacturing jobs was due to replacement with robots to automate manufacturing. (Lincicome, 2016). A tariff like this would likely prompt a trade war between the US and China. It will make poor Americans worse off, because they would have to pay more for the many of the products that they frequently use. This policy would also hurt manufacturing businesses in the US, because materials like steel would cost more if when bought from China, and companies depending on global supply-chains would see an increase in costs (Rosenfeld, 2016). However, this is not likely to be implemented because it needs approval from Congress, and if it did have approval the tariff would be violate its obligations under the World Trade Organisation agreements (i.e. a WTO member must treat imports from all other members equally) (Lincicome, 2016). According to Lincicome, China would go to the WTO and win rights to impose tariffs on the US, with ease. He goes on to say that China would be authorised to set $225 billion in retaliation tariffs, 45% (Trump’s proposed tariff level) of the $500 billion of goods that China imports each year (Lincicome, 2016). Therefore, Trump’s proposed tariff would be devastating to many US businesses, as their third largest export destination would be effectively closed from them. IN addition, the US law says that the importers will have to pay the original tariff, and not the Chinese exporters. (Lincicome, 2016). For every American, especially poor and middle-class Americans, this policy makes America worse by increasing prices of goods, instead of providing more jobs.
Finally, when asked about some of the newer members of NATO (such as the Baltic States), Donald Trump has said that the US will not defend other nations unless the other countries had ‘fulfilled their obligations’ to the US (Sanger & Harberman, 2016). This suggests that the US would only protect other countries if there was some sort of economic benefit. This will also anger many of the NATO members. He has also suggested that South Korea and Japan arm themselves with nuclear weapons to defend against North Korea, but later changed his mind on this (LoBianco, 2016). Overall, Trump wants the US to take a less prominent role in global peacekeeping; in my opinion this makes America seem less great in the eyes of other nations.
In conclusion, ‘Make America Great Again’ can be interpreted in any way someone wants to, therefore, in a way, he will do so.
His less controversial positions, which I haven’t mentioned here (such as Tax Reform and replacing Obamacare with an alternative system (Frum, 2016)) may improve America slightly, but if Trump’s main policies that I have written about are passed through Congress, America will be placed in a worse social, political and economic position compared to right now. For a presidential nominee that has made comments inciting violence against Hillary Clinton (Luhby & Sciutto, 2016), Donald Trump does not seem like that he will ‘Make America Great’. If Trump does become the next President of the United States of America, many of his own policies are not likely to be passed through Congress (especially the trade tariff for Chinese exports). Overall, America is already quite great, and Trump and his controversial policies stand in the way of America becoming
better.
NBC series The Apprentice, which has resulted in many spin-offs. Trump has previously tried running for President, but in 2016, he became the Republican Presidential Nominee, after defeating the other candidates, which included Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio (Biography.com Editors, 2016).
Trump’s slogan, ‘Make America Great Again’, implies that America is no longer great, but used to be in the past. This is not unlike several of the other presidential candidates, who also share the view of America being in decline (Gilmore, 2016). Donald Trump himself has not mentioned when the United States stopped being great (Buncombe, 2016), and compared to before, the US is much better: before 1865, there was slavery – after they were freed, they were still legally discriminated against until the second half of the twentieth century, when African-Americans were given equal rights, as were women (Wikipedia contributors, 2016); there were also several unpopular wars that America instigated against its enemies, such as the Vietnam War (in which the US army used chemical defoliants to remove forest cover for the Vietcong, which caused serious health issues, such as birth defects, tumours, and cancer among the families of US soldiers and the local population (History.com Staff, 2011)), and the Iraq War ; and in 2008 there was the financial crisis. Arguably, the USA has not been better: President Obama, the first African-American President, who is also the first president to openly support gay rights, ended two wars, made a deal with Iran, and transformed US policy on a wide range of issues (Wikipedia contributors, 2016).
However, comparing America now and what it used to be is not the only way to determine how great it is. Although the USA is the strongest military power, many Americans do not see it that way, due to recent wars in the Middle East, in which their army has fought for years against terrorists without being too effective. In other aspects, America is the leading economic superpower; however, its lead is waning because of Chinese growth (Gilmore, 2016). American society is still great (ranked 8th on the HDI index (Wikipedia contributors, 2016)), but nowadays, fewer Americans trust the government than before. Overall, there is no single point in time that America became no longer great, however, the slogan can be interpreted in any way a person wants to. In the eyes of many Trump voters Obama has made America worse. In their view, he has weakened the military, oppressed Christians, and filled the country with Muslims, refugees and illegal immigrants (Simonoff, 2016).
But let us presume America is no longer great, so that we can determine whether Trump’s policies will change America for the better, or the worse. One of his most controversial policies is that a wall should be constructed along the US-Mexico border, which Mexico should pay for. He said, when announcing his candidacy: "I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively, I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall," (TIME Staff, 2015). Trump claims that the wall would be least 10m high and could cost between $8 billion to $12 billion. However, media estimates have placed the cost of the wall at up to $25 billion. Currently, there is already border fence, which stretches for 650 miles of the nearly 2000 mile long border (Valverde, 2016). According to analysts, the suggested wall could cost up to $750 million per year to maintain it, not including manning the wall (Drew, 2015). This is a major waste of money, which could be spent elsewhere. The construction of the wall will also anger some of the American citizens in Texas. Because private owners own the land along the US - Mexican border, so the land has to be acquired, costing the country that pays for it even more money. The current border fence in Texas divides private land in half. The Mayor of Brownsville, a town on the US-Mexican border, has said: ‘Whoever pays for it, a newer, bigger wall would waste more money and be just as futile in preventing illegal crossings’. He has also said: ‘It doesn’t prevent people from coming in or drugs from coming in. It’s not a deterrent and it’s not effective.’ (Jervis, 2016).
In addition to building a wall, Donald Trump wants to make Mexico pay for it. He plans to do this by proposing to prevent illegal immigrants from sending money abroad. Trump believes that Mexico will oppose this and so the US government will make a deal so that the proposed rule does not go into effect, on the condition that Mexico makes a one off payment of $5 billion to $10 billion (Valverde, 2016). However, the President of Mexico has publicly tweeted: ‘At the start of the conversation with Donald Trump, I made it clear Mexico will not pay for the wall,’ (Schreckinger, 2016). In my opinion, making Mexico pay for a border wall in this way will make the world’s perception of America much worse, because it can be argued that what Trump is suggesting to do is extortion. It may possibly lead to an increase in hate crime against Mexicans (similar to the increase in hate crime in the UK after the Brexit vote (Butler, 2016)), which will make American society worse.
Donald Trump also wants immigration reform in other aspects. He wants to end birth-right Citizenship, which he claims that it is the ‘biggest magnet for illegal immigration.’ This will be hard to implement, because it would require a change to the 14th Amendment of the US constitution. (Kaplan, 2015). Trump also wanted to bar foreign Muslims temporarily from entering the USA (The Associated Press, 2016). This would have made America worse in the eyes of the rest of the world, because a blanket ban on Muslims is discriminatory, even if it is temporary. Half a year after making that statement, he contradicted what he had said originally by telling reporters, and posting on twitter: ‘We must suspend immigration from regions linked with terrorism until a proven vetting method is in place.’ This is greatly different to the blanket ban on Muslims entering the USA that he proposed earlier (The Associated Press, 2016). This shift on the ban is proof that Trump will backtrack with his ideas, or that he could even just be lying to get votes.
Trump claims that some countries (i.e. China) are taking advantage of the USA by devaluing their own currencies, and putting high taxes on American products. His solution is to increase taxes on goods that come from a country that treats America unfairly (Rosenfeld, 2016). Trump claims that the USA is losing its manufacturing jobs to China, and would bring them back if elected President. (Jacobs, 2016). However, 90% of the decline in US manufacturing jobs was due to replacement with robots to automate manufacturing. (Lincicome, 2016). A tariff like this would likely prompt a trade war between the US and China. It will make poor Americans worse off, because they would have to pay more for the many of the products that they frequently use. This policy would also hurt manufacturing businesses in the US, because materials like steel would cost more if when bought from China, and companies depending on global supply-chains would see an increase in costs (Rosenfeld, 2016). However, this is not likely to be implemented because it needs approval from Congress, and if it did have approval the tariff would be violate its obligations under the World Trade Organisation agreements (i.e. a WTO member must treat imports from all other members equally) (Lincicome, 2016). According to Lincicome, China would go to the WTO and win rights to impose tariffs on the US, with ease. He goes on to say that China would be authorised to set $225 billion in retaliation tariffs, 45% (Trump’s proposed tariff level) of the $500 billion of goods that China imports each year (Lincicome, 2016). Therefore, Trump’s proposed tariff would be devastating to many US businesses, as their third largest export destination would be effectively closed from them. IN addition, the US law says that the importers will have to pay the original tariff, and not the Chinese exporters. (Lincicome, 2016). For every American, especially poor and middle-class Americans, this policy makes America worse by increasing prices of goods, instead of providing more jobs.
Finally, when asked about some of the newer members of NATO (such as the Baltic States), Donald Trump has said that the US will not defend other nations unless the other countries had ‘fulfilled their obligations’ to the US (Sanger & Harberman, 2016). This suggests that the US would only protect other countries if there was some sort of economic benefit. This will also anger many of the NATO members. He has also suggested that South Korea and Japan arm themselves with nuclear weapons to defend against North Korea, but later changed his mind on this (LoBianco, 2016). Overall, Trump wants the US to take a less prominent role in global peacekeeping; in my opinion this makes America seem less great in the eyes of other nations.
In conclusion, ‘Make America Great Again’ can be interpreted in any way someone wants to, therefore, in a way, he will do so.
His less controversial positions, which I haven’t mentioned here (such as Tax Reform and replacing Obamacare with an alternative system (Frum, 2016)) may improve America slightly, but if Trump’s main policies that I have written about are passed through Congress, America will be placed in a worse social, political and economic position compared to right now. For a presidential nominee that has made comments inciting violence against Hillary Clinton (Luhby & Sciutto, 2016), Donald Trump does not seem like that he will ‘Make America Great’. If Trump does become the next President of the United States of America, many of his own policies are not likely to be passed through Congress (especially the trade tariff for Chinese exports). Overall, America is already quite great, and Trump and his controversial policies stand in the way of America becoming
better.