By TN Ashok
NEW YORK: Donald Trump returned to the White House in January with promises to restore American prosperity and global pre-eminence. Nine months into his second term, neither objective appears within reach. His approval rating has sagged to 40%, tying the lowest level of his presidency, while disapproval has climbed steadily from 52% in May to 57% today, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.
The numbers reflect growing disenchantment with an administration whose ambitious agenda has collided with economic reality at home and diplomatic intransigence abroad.
The president’s predicament stems from a peculiar contradiction: Mr. Trump campaigned on fixing the cost-of-living crisis that hobbled his predecessor, Joe Biden. Yet inflation has accelerated since his inauguration, even as the labour market weakens—a toxic combination that prompted the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. Americans now disapprove of his handling of living costs by a two-to-one margin, undermining the very foundation of his electoral mandate.
This economic squeeze comes as Mr. Trump pursues what can only be described as the most aggressive immigration enforcement campaign since the Second World War. The Justice Department has elevated “denaturalization”—the revocation of citizenship from naturalized Americans—to a top-five enforcement priority. Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate has directed the agency to “prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence”, a directive reminiscent of the McCarthy era’s ideological purges.
The scope of the crackdown extends far beyond traditional targets like war criminals. The Justice Department’s memorandum indicates that naturalized citizens could face denaturalization if they “pose a danger to national security”—a justification the Trump administration has deployed to target pro-Palestinian speech. The president has even threatened specific political opponents, including Democratic politicians and billionaire Elon Musk, with citizenship revocation.
Critics warn that the memo is so broad that it could enable retroactive searches for procedural missteps in naturalization applications of perceived political opponents.
Public sentiment has not followed the administration’s hardline turn. Seventy percent of voters, including a majority of Independents and half of Republicans, say the president should not have the authority to revoke citizenship of naturalized citizens. Even more troubling for the White House, voters oppose deporting naturalized American citizens by a 20-point margin and native-born citizens by 57 points.
The administration’s assault on citizenship extends to the foundational principle of birthright citizenship itself. On his first day in office, Mr. Trump signed Executive Order 14160, denying citizenship to persons born from a mother who was unlawfully present in the United States and whose father was not a citizen or lawful permanent resident, as well as children of mothers with temporary legal status such as student or tourist visas. Multiple federal judges have blocked the order as plainly unconstitutional, though litigation continues.
The symbolism is stark: detention facilities dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades, hundreds of migrants held at Guantánamo Bay, and deportations to war zones. Once-fringe tactics are now proudly embraced at the highest levels of government, marking an extraordinary shift from Trump’s first term when nationwide backlash forced abandonment of family separation policies.
What has changed is not the president’s instincts but the political ecosystem’s tolerance for cruelty.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s foreign policy—predicated on personal relationships with autocrats—has produced little beyond photo opportunities. His approach to ending the war in Ukraine illustrates the limitations of transactional diplomacy untethered from strategic coherence.
In October, the president imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, in what was billed as a decisive blow to Moscow’s war machine. The immediate impact sent ripples through offices in India and China, where some oil companies started cancelling orders to beat the November 21 deadline. Yet the sanctions reveal Mr. Trump’s fundamental dilemma: they are likely designed to force Russia to sell oil at steeper discounts rather than immediately targeting export volumes, reducing petroleum revenue while avoiding price spikes that would pinch American pocketbooks.
The problem is that Vladimir Putin shows no inclination to capitulate. “Every time I speak to Vladimir, I have good conversations and then they don’t go anywhere,” Mr. Trump lamented. The Russian president, having survived sanctions for three years, appears willing to absorb economic pain indefinitely. More troubling still, India and China—which together import over 3.6 million barrels of Russian crude daily—have demonstrated sophisticated workarounds involving middlemen and “shadow fleets” that obscure cargo origins.
Here the contradictions multiply. Mr. Trump has threatened secondary sanctions—penalties on countries that buy Russian oil—while simultaneously pressuring those same nations on trade. He imposed 50% tariffs on India in August, ostensibly for purchasing Russian crude, even as China and Turkey bought comparable volumes without comparable punishment. The result has been a diplomatic disaster.
Rather than bending to American pressure, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has drawn closer to Washington’s principal adversaries. In September, he travelled to China for the first time in seven years to attend a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit hosted by President Xi Jinping. Modi and Putin entered the summit hand-in-hand and immediately formed a tight circle with Xi—warm smiles and an hourlong chat in Putin’s limousine that sent an unmistakable message.
The symbolism of three of America’s most problematic partners literally holding hands represented a spectacular reversal for Washington.
Successive American presidents have aggressively courted India as a counterweight to China, but Trump’s punitive secondary tariffs risk undermining decades of strategic partnership building—effectively pushing India closer towards China. The president’s personal bond with Modi, once celebrated at massive rallies in Texas and Gujarat, has cooled dramatically. When Mr. Trump phoned to seek compromise on tariffs, Modi reportedly refused to answer—four times.
China has seized the opportunity with both hands. Beijing and New Delhi, long estranged by border disputes that killed 20 Indian soldiers in 2020, are now exploring rapprochement. At their meeting, Modi and Xi pledged to resolve border differences and bolster cooperation, with Xi suggesting that “the dragon and the elephant can dance together”.
For a country that Washington has spent a quarter-century trying to pull into its orbit, India’s flirtation with the Sino-Russian axis represents a strategic setback of the first order.
Mr. Trump’s defenders might argue that his sanctions demonstrate resolve, that his immigration enforcement shows strength, and that his willingness to confront both allies and adversaries proves American power. The data suggest otherwise.
Oil prices barely responded to his Russian sanctions threats, with traders betting he would ultimately blink. Indian refineries continue examining workarounds. Chinese state-owned firms briefly suspended purchases before resuming through intermediaries.
The fundamental issue is credibility. When a president simultaneously demands that India stop buying Russian oil while imposing tariffs that harm Indian exporters, when he threatens 100% secondary sanctions then settles for 25%, when he claims to have brokered India-Pakistan peace deals that New Delhi denies, allies and adversaries alike conclude that American threats are negotiating tactics rather than policy.
The administration’s worldview assumes that America’s economic heft grants it unilateral leverage over friends and foes—that China “needs us,” as Mr. Trump insists, and will eventually capitulate. Yet Beijing has demonstrated remarkable tolerance for economic pain when strategic interests are at stake.
Russia has survived three years of sanctions. India, a democracy with a deeply proud post-colonial identity, bristles at being lectured by foreign powers.
The second-longest government shutdown in American history has done little to focus minds. Some 29% of respondents told pollsters they either didn’t care or welcomed the furloughing of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, while only 20% reported anger. The muted reaction suggests either desensitization to governmental dysfunction or genuine ambivalence about the administrative state—neither particularly healthy for democratic governance.
What should alarm the White House is the Republican base’s wavering support. Half of Republicans now believe the president should lack authority to denaturalize citizens. The president’s approval has plateaued in the low 40s for months despite full control of Congress. And on the issue that propelled him to victory—the cost of living—twice as many Americans disapprove as approve of his performance.
Mr. Trump entered office claiming that personal relationships with Xi, Putin, and Modi would unlock diplomatic breakthroughs that had eluded predecessors. Instead, Xi is courting American allies, Putin is escalating attacks on Ukrainian civilians, and Modi is literally holding hands with both while Trump fumes on social media about “losing India to deepest, darkest China.”
The president faces a choice that has eluded him thus far: whether American foreign policy should advance strategic interests through patient alliance-building, or whether it should serve as an extension of personal pique and transactional deal-making. The former requires consistency, credibility, and occasionally subordinating short-term political considerations to long-term national interests. The latter produces viral photos of adversarial leaders embracing while American influence wanes.
For now, voters appear to be reaching their own conclusions. When inflation accelerates, government workers sit idle, naturalized citizens fear arbitrary deportation, and America’s closest partners hedge their bets with Beijing and Moscow, the case for Mr. Trump’s “America First” doctrine becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. The president promised to make America respected again. Instead, he has made it predictably unpredictable—and in geopolitics, that may be the most dangerous reputation of all. (IPA Service)
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