Anyone concerned that Candidate Trump might go native on being sworn in as President Trump need be concerned no longer. The 45th president of the United States used his inaugural speech to drive home the campaign message that he considers himself an insurgent on a mission to dismantle the establishment and hand power and wealth back to “you, the people”. Some will say it was as if he had forgotten that he had already won. It is more likely that Donald Trump’s campaigning style will also be his style of government.
Historically, inaugural speeches have promised reconciliation. This one set America’s political class and his depiction of its long-suffering citizenry firmly apart. Normally such speeches link the country’s past to its future. This one drew a livid line between the dysfunctional state that Mr Trump says he is inheriting and a “glorious destiny” starting now. Normally, a new president reaches out from the Capitol steps to reassure the world that America stands for peace and friendship. There was a little of that, but what will resonate was his repeated pledge to put America first.
The phrase was familiar. Mr Trump’s aides have often used it to summarise his approach to foreign policy. It was also the slogan of American isolationists who advocated appeasement over war during the 1940s. Mr Trump must be aware of that echo of history, though the signs are it will not trouble him. He did know that other world leaders were watching but paid only lip service to their interest in an engaged and internationalist America. Rather he used this opportunity to issue a strident appeal to old-fashioned patriotism, and a call to American action.
Millions in the United States and around the world will have been hoping for signs of a conventional presidency after a campaign that broke every rule of politics. They will have been disappointed, but Mr Trump’s supporters will have been delighted. He could have confined himself to bland reassurances and chose not to.
This speech was short but heavy with promises. The most arresting was his pledge to end an “American carnage” of inner-city poverty, gang violence, hollowed-out factory towns and failing schools. The most specific was his vow to unite the civilised world against Islamic terrorism and eradicate it “from the face of the earth”. The most troubling, however, was his promise of prosperity and strength through “protection”.
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This allusion to protectionism was no accident. President Trump stated that on his watch “every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families”. He is nothing if not consistent. As a candidate, in transition and now as president, he has made clear his aim of rebuilding the US manufacturing sector with tariffs if necessary, whether or not such a strategy plays to America’s true 21st-century strengths.
It does not. Those strengths are in high-tech industries in which the US already dominates and for which it needs to train more of its workforce. Protectionism would be a retrograde mistake. A clear economic lesson of the past half-century is that free trade is in America’s interests as well as those of its trading partners. As President Xi of China noted this week, when leaders throw up tariffs, working people suffer.
Mr Trump was elected to shake up Washington, and he intends to do just that. Americans wanted a president willing to break rules, and they got one. So many big promises, however, will mean a big reckoning. This presidency can succeed, but only if Mr Trump matches his public rhetoric with flexibility and a measure of humility. That means listening to those cabinet members who disagree with him, and sometimes changing his mind. He will need their counsel, and America and the world will thank them for it.