After Donald Trump’s US election victory, here’s what will happen next:
US president, Joe Biden, spoke to Trump on Wednesday and invited him to the White House. Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said Trump “looks forward to the meeting, which will take place shortly, and very much appreciated the call”. It would be the first time they had met since Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump in June that forced him out of the race.
Biden will make an address to the nation on Thursday, vowing a peaceful transfer of power to Trump after his crushing election win over Kamala Harris. In what promises to be an agonising moment for Biden, he will speak in the Rose Garden of the White House at 11am (4pm GMT) to “discuss the election results and the transition” to Trump’s second term.
Despite Trump’s election success being apparent pretty early on election night, the full US election results are still not in. Out of 51 states (including DC), results for 49 have been called so far. Donald Trump currently has 295 electoral votes and Harris has 226. For context, Joe Biden was declared the winner offcially four days after the election in 2020.
Harris will preside over a joint session of Congress in January to certify the results of the election. Harris delivered a speech conceding defeat in the presidential election to Trump on Wednesday afternoon.
Trump will be sworn in as the 47th US president on 20 January 2025.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, who previously said that Donald Trump had promised him control over a broad range of public health agencies if he returned to the White House, said on Wednesday that there are “entire departments” within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that “have to go”, reports The Hill.
The website, citing an MSNBC interview, reports that Kennedy said:
In some categories … there are entire departments, like the nutrition department at the FDA … that have to go, that are not doing their job, they’re not protecting our kids.”
When asked if he would eliminate any health agencies, Kennedy told MSNBC, “to eliminate the agencies, as long as it requires congressional approval, I wouldn’t be doing that.”
“I can get the corruption out of the agencies,” he added.
Trump on Sunday told NBC that Kennedy, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and former independent candidate who dropped out and endorsed Trump, would have a “big role in the administration” if he won Tuesday’s presidential election.
After Donald Trump’s US election victory, here’s what will happen next:
US president, Joe Biden, spoke to Trump on Wednesday and invited him to the White House. Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said Trump “looks forward to the meeting, which will take place shortly, and very much appreciated the call”. It would be the first time they had met since Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump in June that forced him out of the race.
Biden will make an address to the nation on Thursday, vowing a peaceful transfer of power to Trump after his crushing election win over Kamala Harris. In what promises to be an agonising moment for Biden, he will speak in the Rose Garden of the White House at 11am (4pm GMT) to “discuss the election results and the transition” to Trump’s second term.
Despite Trump’s election success being apparent pretty early on election night, the full US election results are still not in. Out of 51 states (including DC), results for 49 have been called so far. Donald Trump currently has 295 electoral votes and Harris has 226. For context, Joe Biden was declared the winner offcially four days after the election in 2020.
Harris will preside over a joint session of Congress in January to certify the results of the election. Harris delivered a speech conceding defeat in the presidential election to Trump on Wednesday afternoon.
Trump will be sworn in as the 47th US president on 20 January 2025.
The Philippines expects US policy in the Indo-Pacific and support for its treaty ally amid South China Sea tensions to remain steady under Donald Trump, driven by bipartisan resolve in Washington, its ambassador to the US said on Thursday, reports Reuters.
Both Democrats and Republicans prioritise countering China’s influence, including in the South China Sea, Jose Manuel Romualdez said, suggesting that military cooperation, economic ties and security commitments with the Philippines will continue.
“It is in their interest that the Indo-Pacific region remains free, peaceful and stable, especially given the economic part of it, with trillions of dollars passing through the South China Sea,” Romualdez told Reuters in an interview.
US-Philippine security engagements have deepened under president Joe Biden and Philippine counterpart Ferdinand Marcos Jr, with both leaders keen to counter what they see as China’s aggressive actions in the South China Sea and near Taiwan.
Marcos said in a congratulatory message after Trump’s victory:
I am hopeful that this unshakeable alliance, tested in war and peace, will be a force of good that will blaze a path of prosperity and amity, in the region, and in both sides of the Pacific.”
Under Marcos, the Philippines has increased the number of its bases accessible to US forces to nine from five, some facing the South China Sea, where China has built artificial islands equipped with runways and missile systems. The US has proposed $128m for infrastructure improvements at those bases, in addition to a $500m pledge for the Philippine military and coastguard.
According to Reuters, Romualdez expressed confidence that these commitments, including joint US-Philippine maritime exercises that began last year, would continue under Trump.
“We have very strong bipartisan support in the US Congress where the money comes from. Every single one of our friends in the Republican side has signified their concern and strong support for whatever we’re doing right now in relation to the challenges we face with China today,” Romualdez told Reuters. He suggested potential changes under Trump would be “minimal” and could even be favourable.
Analysts say it is hard to separate the president-elect’s bluster from his actual plans but it’s clear his priority is to bin many of Joe Biden’s policies, writes Andrew Roth in this analysis piece:
The US foreign policy establishment is set for one of the biggest shake-ups in years as Donald Trump has vowed to both revamp US policy abroad and to root out the so-called “deep state” by firing thousands of government workers – including those among the ranks of America’s diplomatic corps.
Trump’s electoral victory is also likely to push the Biden administration to speed up efforts to support Ukraine before Trump can cut off military aid, hamper the already-modest efforts to restrain Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza and Lebanon and lead to a fresh effort to slash and burn through major parts of US bureaucracy including the state department.
Trump backers have said he will be more organised during his second term, often dubbed “Trump 2.0”, and on the day after election day US media reported that Trump had already chosen Brian Hook, a hawkish state department official during the first Trump administration, to lead the transition for America’s diplomats.
And yet analysts, serving and former US diplomats and foreign officials said that it remained difficult to separate Trump’s bluster from his actual plans when he takes power in January. What is clear is that his priority is to bin many of the policies put in place by his predecessor.
“I’m skeptical that the transition process will be super-impactful since the natural instinct of the new team will be to toss all of Biden’s foreign policy in the dumpster,” one former senior diplomat said.
“If you go back to 2016, Mexico didn’t pay for the wall. And, you know, it doesn’t look like there was a secret plan to defeat Isis,” said Richard Fontaine, the CEO of the Center for a New American Security thinktank. “Some of these things didn’t turn out the way that they were talked about on that campaign trail and we go into this without really knowing what the president’s proposal will be for all of this – and what he will do.”
South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, spoke with Donald Trump on Thursday and congratulated him on winning the US presidency on the “Make America Great Again” slogan as officials in Seoul worked to prepare for “significant” economic changes, reports Reuters.
Yoon and Trump held a 12-minute phone call and discussed the close security and economic ties of their two countries across all areas, a senior South Korean official said on Thursday.
South Korea’s ambassador to the US also visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida to meet with members of the president-elect’s camp, the foreign ministry said.
Trump’s election has renewed attention in South Korea on his “America First” foreign policy plans and how his unpredictable style will play out in his second term, reports Reuters.
Officials worked past midnight on Wednesday to prepare for changes expected from US policies, with the Bank of Korea and thinktanks seeing a potential hit to exports if the US raises tariffs.
Meetings at the trade ministry that began in the hours after Trump’s victory led to back-to-back discussions early on Thursday as South Korea’s economic leaders weighed the impact on exports of potential tariffs.
“Should policy stance that has been stressed by president-elect Trump become realised, the impact on our economy is expected to be significant,” finance minister Choi Sang-mok said at a 7.30am (10.30pm GMT on Wednesday) meeting with trade and foreign ministers.
South Korea would probably suffer less than China, Mexico and the EU, but Asia’s fourth-largest economy could be forced into another renegotiation of its bilateral free trade agreement with Washington, according to Kim Young-gui, an economist at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP).
Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said on Thursday that Poland would work on strenghtening its relations with the US after Donald Trump won the presidential election.
Yesterday, Tusk joined other European leaders in congratulating Trump.
The Australian prime minister who vowed before the last election to herald a “kinder, gentler parliament” has now hailed Australia’s rowdy, robust and combative style of political debate as proof of a functioning democracy, warning “only dictatorships pretend to be perfect”.
In remarks to a global democracy conference in Sydney a day after the United States returned Donald Trump to the presidency eschewing warnings about his autocratic style, Anthony Albanese suggested the adversarial tendencies of the Westminster political system were “a virtue, not a flaw”.
“A fierce contest can be a good thing, as long as it’s a contest about substance, about things that matter to people and issues that affect the country,” Albanese told the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, in a speech distributed in advance.
For today’s First Edition newsletter, my colleague Nimo Omer spoke with Guardian US live news editor Chris Michael about what a Donald Trump presidency might look like. Here’s a snippet:
“Autocrats are rejoicing,” Chris says about Trump’s victory. “That probably tells you all you need to know”. Trump has on many occasions praised Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un. His admiration for other strongman leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, China’s Xi Jinping and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is well documented and long held.
Trump has said that he would end Russia’s war in Ukraine “in one day”, though he has not provided specific details on how. Expectations are that Ukraine will see a significant reduction in military aid from the US – the Trump team have made clear they have no intention of indefinitely maintaining commitment to Kyiv as the war continues to drag on.
Over on the Guardian’s business live blog, my colleague Graeme Wearden writes that the a looming new trade war triggered by Donald Trump could push the eurozone economy from sluggish growth into “a full-blown recession”.
That’s according to the investment bank ING, who fear the recession could begin even before Trump – who has said he wants to impose a 10% tariff on all non-US goods – is sworn in next January.
China warned on Thursday there would be “no winners in a trade war” after the re-election in the US of former president Donald Trump, who has pledged huge new tariffs on Chinese imports.
“As a matter of principle, I would like to reiterate that there will be no winners in a trade war, which is also not conducive to the world,” foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
