Trump’s victory and message for Africa

Donald Trump has chalked victory in the United States of America (USA) presidential election.

He was officially confirmed as the election winner, defeating Democratic nominee Kamala Harris following what had been predicted to be a neck-and-neck race. He swept several key battleground states and won a commanding lead in the national popular vote. With this victory, he has completed his cherished dream of a political comeback.

Trump then set a record of becoming the first former US president to return to the White House in more than 130 years. The victory also makes him the first presidential candidate to win the keys to the White House as a convicted felon.

The American people have a number of issues confronting them, and these were deemed 2024 election issues. Despite the fact that individual states have their own peculiar issues, there are however some common ones that deeply, had a bearing on the elections

On top of these are the Cost of living, Israel’s war on Gaza, and Fracking which has been a key factor in the United States becoming the world’s top producer of natural gas and crude oil. Healthcare also featured prominently, as well as unemployment and abortion rights.

Political analysts suggest that the determining factor in the elections was the issue of immigration. Since 1952, the state of Arizona, for instance, has voted Republican in all but the 1996 election before Joe Biden flipped the immigration issue in 2020 and won for the Democrats.

Immigration has been one of the major campaign messages, and he promised the electorate as his priority policy. He blames immigrants for rising housing, education and healthcare costs for the government of the US.

His plan, therefore, includes deporting millions of undocumented migrants by force, sealing the border to stop what he terms a “migrant invasion” by using the military on the US-Mexico border and constructing detention facilities. He has told his supporters, that he will reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which requires asylum seekers to stay in Mexico until their immigration cases have been resolved. Trump also wants to end birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented parents.

He has also pledged to end inflation and significantly increase the Child Tax Credit while cutting government spending and bringing down the corporate tax rate to 15 percent

With all these, the 78-year-old President of the US intimated that “this will truly be the golden age of America”.

Donald Trump has promised the largest deportation of immigrants in American history, sweeping new tariffs on imports, a freeze on climate-related regulations, a remaking of federal health agencies and ideological changes in the education system.

He is reported to have said, “I will fight for you and your family and your future, every single day I will be fighting for you with every breath in my body. Trump insiders say they believe he’ll be able to move faster than he did in his first term to accomplish those goals.

These resonated well with the electorate and they voted for him, but what does it mean to a large number of migrants, especially illegal migrants in the US? It is on record that there are more illegal migrants among Mexican, Venezuelan, Guatemalan, Chinese and African communities in the US

The president-elect has vowed to build huge detention camps, implement mass deportations at a scale never before seen, hire thousands more border agents, funnel military spending toward border security and invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to expel suspected members of drug cartels and criminal gangs without a court hearing.

In his first term, Trump made major policy changes but often complained of bureaucracy getting in the way of his most ambitious aims. Armed with that experience, he expects officials in his second administration will better understand how to navigate complex agencies and policy processes, making a faster — and more ambitious — agenda possible, according to Trump’s advisers.

It is believed that Trump’s policy goals don’t just look to undo the work of the Biden administration. He looks to remake policies — and the federal agencies that create them — at their core.

Trump has also said he would end “catch-and-release” — the release of migrants into a U.S. community while they await their immigration court hearings — and restore Remain in Mexico, a policy from his first term that required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases were processed.

And he has sidestepped questions about whether or not he would try to bring back his controversial zero-tolerance, family separation policy that placed roughly 5,000 children in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and sent them to shelters and foster homes across the country while their parents were criminally prosecuted for crossing the border illegally.

The president-elect hasn’t answered questions about exactly how he would round up undocumented immigrants or how he would fund his plans. Trump could also face challenges in hiring extra border agents, given that the Border Patrol has long struggled with recruitment.

President-elect Donald Trump’s approach to Africa, by way of policy, differed in some notable ways from prior U.S. administrations, especially on immigration, there is also an emphasis on a pragmatic stance focused on trade and security.

Trump’s immigration policies also impacted U.S.-Africa relations. His administration imposed travel restrictions (often referred to as a “travel ban”) that affected nationals from several African countries, including Nigeria, Sudan, Eritrea, and Tanzania.

The focus during his first presidency on Africa was said to be on economic partnerships and what he described as “Prosper Africa” The focus on Counterterrorism and Security, Reduced Aid and Re-evaluation of Foreign Assistance, and Stance on International Organizations and Health. Could these continue during this term alongside his stringent stance on immigrants? Time will tell.

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