US turns to Trump

by New Worker correspondent

DONALD Trump surprised media pundits across the Atlantic by comfortably winning the US presidential race for the Republican Party this week. The property tycoon and reality TV star now becomes the 45th US president after a stunning victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump targeted swing states, winning the key battlegrounds of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania in campaigns that relied on smear campaigns to drum up support. The Clinton camp characterised Trump as a bigoted, sexist and racist old man who had never held public office, while the Trump machine claimed Hillary was an incompetent and grossly corrupt politician, even by American standards.

Trump told his cheering followers that Americans must now unite and “bind the wounds of division”, after a gruelling campaign.

“America will no longer settle for anything less than the best. We must reclaim our country’s destiny and dream big and bold and daring. We have to do that. We’re going to dream of things for our country, and beautiful things and successful things once again. I want to tell the world community that while we will always put America’s interests first, we will deal fairly with everyone, with everyone,” Trump said. “Working together, we will begin the urgent task of rebuilding our nation and renewing the American dream.”

Both candidates are immensely wealthy representatives of the US ruling class and their platforms merely reflected the differences within America’s ruling circles on how to deal with the economic crisis. Trump wants to scrap the very modest national health provision called “Obamacare” to fund more tax-breaks for the rich. Clinton stood on her past record and promised “fairness” in the future.

reached out

Trump reached out to red-neck and blue-collar victims of the slump saying their troubles would be over by imposing tariffs on imports and booting out illegal immigrants. Clinton, who opposed even the very modest reform platform of Bernie Sanders to win the Democrat candidacy, had nothing to offer American workers apart from the usual platitudes reserved for these occasions.

Internationally Trump struck a realistic note saying he was prepared to talk to Russia and even Democratic Korea, while Clinton defended the aggressive stand of the Obama administration and said she was ready to challenge the Russian air-force in the skies of Syria — an escalation that could easily have taken the world closer to another world war.

In Moscow news of Trump’s victory was greeted with applause in the Duma, the Russian parliament, while Russian leader Vladimir Putin congratulated the US president-elect on his victory. Putin noted that Moscow heard Trump’s calls for rebuilding relations with Russia and said Russia was ready to move in this direction. Putin said: “Building a constructive dialogue between Moscow and Washington, based on principles of equality, mutual respect and each other’s positions, meets the interests of the peoples of our countries and of the entire international community.”

But Russian political scientist Alexander Gusev has warned Russians not get carried away with Trump’s victory. Gusev said Russia should not delude itself: any US president is dependent on the people who sponsored his election campaign and who actually stand behind him. “Financial-industrial, financial-economic and banking groups will pursue a very tough policy towards our country as they understand that they have already lost the economic war to China and are losing the political war to Russia,” he said.

On the Middle East crisis Trump is as pro-Zionist as his Democrat rival. In September Trump told Israeli premier Benyamin Netanyahu that under his administration, the United States would recognise Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel and move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But he may be more responsive to Kremlin appeals for a common stand against sectarian Islamic terror.

On the campaign trail Trump blamed Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration for the “failed policy” in Syria. Trump said he was not a fan of the Russian leader but he acknowledged that Vladimir Putin and Syrian president Bashar al Assad were fighting ISIS, as was Iran.

All of this remains to be seen. But while there’s little doubt that Trump will oversee all the cuts he’s promised his foreign policy will almost certainly be tempered by the dream of the US ruling class as a whole for world domination in one form or another.