The first 100 days

May 08, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News- It’s that time.  The first 100 days of Donald Trump II are history.  What were they like?  What do they forecast?  Just facts; cold, hard facts.  Then, my take on selected areas of interest.  Immigration.  Tariffs.  DOGE.  Leadership.  Politics (what’s behind it all).  Those rank highest.

A sledgehammer has been taken to immigration.  Trump and his people have been brutal; pure aggression, no emotion.  Get it over with; get away from the borders; get out of sanctuary cities.  Objective One.  Get America to some state of normalcy; what passes for such there.  Hard-hearted and heavy-handed, for sure.

Practically speaking, it’s beyond necessary, what the circumstances require.  Few countries can exist with an army of millions waiting to overrun their borders.  Sentiments and expectations demanded rapid adjustment.  Where Joe Biden and the Democrats pandered and failed, Don Trump and his Republicans rolled out their programs, rolling over whoever stands against them. Regarding Democratic party pandering, that one backfired when 44% of Hispanic males voted for Mr. Trump.  I endorse some of his actions.  When thoughtlessness surfaced, that endorsement fizzled.  Take H-1B visas.

Clamping down on H-1B visas, hounding those recipients, is cutting one’s nose, disfiguring one’s face.  America is losing ground to China in the technology field, on which so much hinges.  Why give a skilled, committed competitor any advantage?  Targeting H-1B visa holders, or limiting that process arbitrarily, undermines US energies, dilutes competitive prowess.  Student visa holders’ backlash is trickier, and though public, much subtler.  I call that backlash from pro-Palestinian protests: too far in too many instances, too uncontrolled.  It is also voter power and lobby power at their most determined.  Those who seethed before under the Democrats now celebrate quietly.  I admit to some anxiety over Guyanese now running, hiding, and living in fear in the land of the free.  I think that visa generosity in Kingston just underwent a reversal.  Now things get ugly, for I trundle in the politics.

During the last election campaign, Americans were promised that much would be done with immigration. If ever there was a flashpoint issue-emotional, visceral, and central-immigration is it.  Though aggressive and dumbfounding in enforcement, there is a vision behind what might seem like madness to the unsuspecting.  MAPA!  Make America Pure Again.  Caribbean nations specified, largely South Indian and Asian H-1B recipients encircled, and Latin American Hispanics rolled back.  A couple of fat drops out of the bucket, but some drops less, anyway.  This raw, wrenching journey will continue, for it has much appeal in Appalachia and States that revel in their redness.  One promise made, one kept.

Then, there came tariffs.  No question here that the field had to be levelled.  But to go at that boiling issue with an excavator, bulldozer, and frontend loader, simultaneously, was a little too rich for me.  It is easy pickings to clobber Guyana with 38%, set to drop soon.  But China called for a more sophisticated approach.  To repeat the obvious, China is not Guyana, nor India. China is not anybody’s football or doormat anymore.  In the early 20^th century, when opium was king, and all the guns and boats were in favour of one side of that lopsided equation.  This is the 21^st century, and even the most tone deaf could have seen and sensed that quick, comprehensive retaliatory response coming.  I don’t know how President Trump could have come to shoot from the hip, and not expect to be shot right back at with withering salvos.  If a tariff war is the game, then there are rare earth minerals, as one example, and an American ally, South Korea, has been given notice.  Don’t send China’s stuff to the US.  The sanctions game can be played by two.  The Chinese are not bluffing, and have signalled that they can do some dealing (and dishing out) of their own.  When one is a fading heavyweight, it is best advised not to go head-to-head with the new hulking Turk on the block.  Pick a middleweight, an undersized one.

Separately, some damage has been done.  Citizen sentiment.  Stock market.  American leadership.  American essence and exceptionalness.  Some punches must be absorbed quietly.  When all the blows have been exchanged, the costly childish pranks over, it is time to sit down.  No matter how much the table of discussion is dissed, disowned, and discarded, it has proven to have feline immortality.

Last, there is this apparition called DOGE.  Want to mess up something, give it to government.  Want to make a bigger mess, make a billionaire the government.  Today, 80 million Americans dread hearing two words.  Social Security.  It is as if the old German SS has returned to town.  Some other South Africans once had similar ideas, so what’s happening is not surprising.  Scrap this, straighten out that, send away those, and there is now one big, unimaginable cluster screwup.  Under the flag of efficiency, fraud is hunted for, demolished.  I think there is some, but zealots create more chaos than positive work ethos.  As in immigration, I cannot help but discern a purge for new colour coding.  Cutting fraud, fat, and farce meets with my approval.  Cutting off genuine lifelines is a full-out rebuff.  The Republicans have always had a problem coexisting with the taxman.  Their present master is not excluded.  For me, the issue is the coin flip of taking care of business or taking care of self.  Both are at work, for one is the other.

So, where to from here?  Dismiss the Democrats.  While America is quarrelling, America is stumbling, crumbling.  While America rages, America cages itself.  Boeing may lose irrecoverable ground should the tariff hardline deepen.  Europe detects that its painful divorce has begun.  Unwittingly, new alliances become necessary, a new order is created.  Making America Great Again, this doesn’t look like it.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)   

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