Trump 2.0: retreat, expansion, and controversy
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The 45th President of the United States has made a historic return as the 47th.

In his inaugural address, Donald Trump outlined a vision for America unlike any we've seen before, a vision that charts a path of both retreat and expansion. A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and we will restore the name of a great president.

On one hand, the world's leading economy is stepping back, withdrawing from international agreements and organizations, and shutting its doors to business and immigrants. On the other hand, the United States extending its reach, asserting influence over the Panama Canal, the Gulf of Mexico, the entire North American continent, and to the Mars.

In this episode, CGTN White House correspondent Nathan King delves into Donald Trump's bold blueprint for America and examines how it could reshape the global order as we know it. It's Thursday, January 23rd.

Are you changing your reporting style now that's Trump back into the Oval Office? Yeah, you know the thing is that everyone goes back and goes "Oh we won't do the same as we did with Trump first time where everything he says we go crazy" and of course everyone's going crazy. It's very difficult to resist. He's very clever at owning the media space, you know? Yeah, that's what we were expecting anyway.

So, Trump is already making history as he signed a record number of executive orders on his first day back into the Oval Office. And were there any expected and unexpected orders that Trump signed so far? I think it's both. We did expect a flurry of executive orders and actions of which there were over a hundred and counting. They're still coming.

And the first thing that Trump really did was rescind over 70 executive orders that the Biden administration had done. Right. So that gets them back to sort of zero, if you like, very quickly. And then issued lots of executive orders when it came to his priorities and

He said about this, declaring a national emergency on the southern border. There were also other orders which are very powerful pertaining to his pardon power and

But there are also lots of little things like ordering federal workers back to work five days a week, which they haven't necessarily been doing since COVID. So there's a whole slew of these actions. It's going to take days and weeks to sift through them in very confrontational style.

Trump is moving quickly, but not all his actions will necessarily move as quickly. From the first day, there's already just way too many headlines for President Trump. Yeah.

Welcome back. And on day one, of course, we're going to get into some of the specific policies later. But on day one, he had rescinded 78 executive actions from his predecessor. So I'm just wondering, has this ever happened before during your time of covering the White House? And is he setting a bad example for the future administrations? This happens all the time.

and it's happened especially in the last three, four, five presidencies. I'll tell you why. Congress is essentially a lawmaking body, but it's been very divided and hasn't been able to pass laws, and so presidents have always been frustrated about getting stuff through. So increasingly they've used the executive powers or what they think is the executive powers and test them in the courts.

or use it as a way to try and push Congress into action. But what we have seen is an escalation of the number of executive orders. And then, of course, because they're only executive orders when that president is in power, they're very easy to rescind. And that's what we're seeing.

And now to some of the specific policies. While President Trump has not been as aggressive on tariffs as most people anticipated, he still threatened 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada in early February. So the question is, why Mexico and Canada as America's top three trade partners?

Well, I mean, February 1st is not far away. So, you know, even though we've got immediate action on day one, we're just a couple of weeks from,

And we're talking 25 percent he threw out at his impromptu press conference in the Oval Office while signing all these executive orders. And the reasons are manifold. But essentially, the message from the Trump administration is both northern and southern neighbors have not done enough to curb illegal immigration.

And also allowed the flow of precursor chemicals or chemicals for fentanyl, which, of course, has been extremely destructive in terms of drug use and death in the United States, although it is coming down. But really, it's about other things, too.

You've seen with the Trump team as they come in a real focus on pulling back from the rest of the world, potentially, but really beefing up their strength on the American continent. And I think it's too early to say, but we're seeing indications here of a sort of sphere of influence that the Trump administration want to take.

strengthened to the north, Canada, slightly to the northwest, Greenland, to the south, Mexico, and even as far as the Panama Canal. And this is sort of what they call a sort of Neo-McKinsey or Theodore Roosevelt, a sphere of influence where the United States would control the continent or be the hegemon in the continent.

And so that's what we're seeing. He joked with outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at Mar-a-Lago about he could be the governor of the 51st state of America, which obviously did not go down well.

in Canada, also with Mexico, the new President Scheinbaum, who said, well, if he's going to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, then maybe we should call a lot of ways of former Mexican territory in the United States, America, Mexicana. So, you know, there is this sort of

throwback to the 19th century, if you like, where even though the US was expanding westward to California and everything, it did have its eye on Canada. There were wars and skirmishes fought over it. And of course, the massive absorption of Mexican territory largely left over from the Spanish Empire.

Well, President Trump has expressed his interest in extending America's reach to the North and to the South on many different occasions. But at the same time, in his inaugural speech, he also expressed a desire to stop all wars. I mean, don't these two concepts contradict each other?

You would think that. And then when you look back at, say, the 19th century, where he is looking back to, in a way, in terms of dominance of the northern American continent, we go back to a sort of spheres of influence thing, don't we? For example, if the Ukraine-Russian conflict is settled, does that mean that Russia has a sphere of influence over eastern and southern Europe? If, for example...

He goes forward on his skepticism about alliance structures in Asia. Does Asia then have a sphere of influence for, say, China or India in certain areas? There has been lots of foreign policy people in the last couple of weeks thinking this is where his sort of instincts are, his mind meld is.

The U.S. should dominate where it is geographically, north and south. And the other great powers, and let's face it, he is an admirer of leaders in Asia and Russia and elsewhere, should also have their sphere of influences. And you get back to sort of the end of World War II sort of thing, Yalta Conference, that sort of thing, where great powers get together and sort of decide the direction of their regions.

It's going to be very interesting to see how that plays out, considering the post-World War II architecture of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, you know, all these multilateral organizations of which Trump really doesn't believe in. You know, we talked about executive orders. He's withdrawn again from the Paris Climate Accord. He's withdrawn from the World Health Organization. He is not a multilateralist. And you can see...

actually a train of thought here, a Trump agenda where it's about great powers, really, not about the international rules-based order as the Biden administration used to call it. The last time we spoke, you said one of the less talked about sides of Trump is that

he is more open to a multipolar world than most traditional American politicians. And he also has a stronger focus on fixing domestic issues. And the economy is one of the top concerns for American voters. And many people are feeling the inflation and the cost of living crisis. But with Trump raising the trade tariffs, starting from Mexico and Canada,

I mean, won't these trade disputes worsen the cost of living crisis that's already very severe? Most economists agree, yes. This is really a sort of fortress America idea.

for Trump, largely based on energy. As you know, the US has abundant energy with natural gas and oil. It has a lot, but it also wants to export more. There have been changes in the rules. And as you know, with the geopolitical dynamic in Europe, with Russia, the US see a huge potential for natural gas supplies to Europe. And they're already ahead of that.

And very much Canada is part of that. As you know, there have been environmental concerns about pipelines and the shale fields, not just in northern US, in the Dakotas, but also in Canada. This will be swept aside on the Trump administration. Drill, baby, drill, as Sarah Payton once said.

is now a very Trumpian agenda. And, you know, there's another thing behind this, which is they believe energy security makes the U.S. extremely strong.

both internally and externally, which means they don't have to worry too much about the Middle East except just making sure energy flows continue so that the international market remains stable, which means less troops, less bases, but it also means more

more money for the US if they concentrate on their energy at home. And it's also an ideological thing. You know, the Biden administration made historic investments in the transition to green energy, solar to EVs, tax breaks, that sort of thing. That's going away. Essentially, the Trump administration is saying the US is not ready for this, it's detrimental.

to our economy. They may be right, they may be wrong, they're probably wrong, give them a sweep of history, but that's where they're going. And that's where the policy will be. Yeah, but how many jobs could the expansion of the oil and gas industry potentially create for America?

Well, I mean, you know, I've been in America 25 years and I've seen the huge amount of energy expansion here. I've been spent a frozen February. I remember in the Dakotas seeing the Williston and Bakken ranges of natural gas. And there were people there who, you know, had traveled all from America to go and work there.

They were getting paid $20,000, $30,000 a year in their home states and then were making $120,000 a year in these boom industries. So it really is a massive driver of economic growth and provides the sort of jobs that appeal to Trump supporters in terms of hands-on manufacturing, extraction, and pay very well.

And there's all sorts of industries that feed off it. The problem is it's not great for the environment. It's not great for a transition to, you know, everything in business from Paris, climate change onwards. It's not very good for cooperation with countries like China, which is going largely in the opposite direction and the European Union, too. So it's going to be very interesting how this works out.

But they are convinced that for the next 20 years, the U.S. has a real opportunity to capitalize on these vast resources. And remember also that the U.S. is not a dense country population wise. It's about the same geographical size of China, but has what, a quarter, one third of the population. So there's a lot of room for expansion of these resources.

extractive industries where there's not a lot of people. Yeah, so Trump has never been much a fan of green energies, has he? No. He complains, I mean, it's instinctive with him. I mean, he complains that offshore wind drives the whales crazy. He complained in his golf course in Scotland that it was an eyesore to see these windmills out in the North Sea off the Scottish coast.

He thinks solar panels are bad. It's instinctive. He just hates them. Yeah, but how much does his attitude reflect the broader views of average American public on these environmental issues? I think it depends. Definitely in rural America, most people agree with him. You know, I live in Virginia, and there are signs up saying no wind farms, no solar panels. Hmm.

And that's only an hour and a bit's drive from D.C. The further south you get, too, there's a huge network of oil and gas infrastructure in this country based around Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, pipelines. Gas prices are so low in some of these states. And Americans love driving their big trucks. It really is cultural as well as economic.

But of course, in the past year, I mean, just within the past year, there has been an increasing number of extreme weather events in America. The hurricanes on the East Coast, the wildfires, first in Hawaii and then very recently in California. Absolutely. I mean, haven't these extreme weather events raised any national conversation or awareness about climate issues and its urgency at all?

Yes, it has. And you get discussions in the New York Times and the Washington Post and the LA Times and everyone, you know, even the Weather Channel, you know, talks about the connection and the extreme weather events, hot or cold, you know, just as the climate change scientists have predicted. But they're largely ignored. You know, most Republican lawmakers will not commit to

to climate change being a result of man-made activity, at least not on the record. Irrelevant. Not irrelevant, because behind the scenes, they take all the investment money and stuff that the Biden administration piled into the states. And the Biden administration did a very smart job behind the scenes of making sure that red states got a lot of the investment. But

You know, Republicans know where the supporters are and Trump is the Republican party. Now back to the immigration topic, which is one of the top concerns for America domestically. Immigrants do make a sizable contribution to the American economy. Yes. At the same time, they also bring more, let's face it, competition to the job market, especially the service industry, the low paid jobs.

And there seems to be a lot of support to Trump's stance on immigration. So is people's frustration mostly associated with, I'm quoting, immigrants taking their jobs? Yes and no. The untold story or the less told story is that immigration has been one of the biggest successes of the American economy.

ways of immigration from, you know, southern Italians, Irish, Germans, Norwegians, you know, we all know the history. Obviously, a lot of it has come from the southern border over the last few decades. But these aren't jobs, largely first generation immigrants fill the jobs that Americans don't want to do.

Picking fruit in baking hot temperatures, working in meatpacking industry, which is very hard, cleaning people's houses and bathrooms and offices. So not necessarily competition to the American locals. Most Americans don't do these jobs or would not do these jobs.

And they're very low paid. But what they have done, some economists say, and there is evidence, is depress wages across the board. And also, if you look at the higher tech end, there's a big debate about this in the Republican Party about tech visas. I'm talking about H-1Bs, stuff like that for software engineers. There is a real feeling amongst Trump supporters that

Essentially, big corporations have played the system to bring in cheaper, more talented people that could be filled with Americans if they were trained in these jobs. But there's a suppression on training at universities because they're always filled by those who have been educated abroad.

especially India, Southeast Asia, and obviously Chinese students as well who, you know, tend to go for STEM education here and do very well. And when they stay, they get good jobs. H1Bs. H1Bs, there's H2, there's various classifications. But we are not talking about a small amount. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs a year. And now with the southern border being the state of emergency,

Some of the apps actually already stopped working for people wanting to come to the state from the south. Yeah, CB1, that's where you could get an asylum appointment online. And then essentially, 1201, when Trump assumed the presidency, that app went dark and thousands of people lost their appointments to talk about asylum. So essentially...

you cannot apply for asylum in the United States on the southern border anymore. Right. And also the ending of the 150 year history of the birthright citizenship

and potentially the largest deportation program in American history. So there's an ongoing and developing a big U-turn in the U.S. on immigrants who used to and may still be building this country today. So how is this going to affect the country that was largely built on immigration? Yeah, it's very interesting because...

We did have a mass wave of immigration after COVID restrictions were lifted. That was tampered down by the Biden administration in the second half of this administration. But what we did see was a large influx, especially from troubled Central American countries like Venezuela, for example. And the Republicans played a very cynical but very effective political game where they busted

a lot of these immigrants into Democratic-controlled cities like New York, Chicago. And we suddenly saw mayors of these cities, Democrats, suddenly go, "Oh my God, we can't cope with this influx. Cost them a lot of money." And so we saw a backlash. And you saw it in voting returns in New York, for example, and elsewhere, California.

where Democrats were starting to go, "We can't cope with this." And Republicans on the border were saying, "See, we told you." So what we're getting here now is with this deportation announcement, although they haven't really begun yet, is a silent cooperation between the MAGA, let's get rid of immigrants, with Democratic-controlled cities. You're gonna see cities like Chicago,

and you all, maybe not outwardly, but definitely behind the scenes cooperate with these deportations because it's costing them so much money and it's costing them politically. So Trump wants America to have more influence, northern to Canada, Greenland, and also southern to Mexico, even as south as Panama Canal. And at the same time, he hopes to block people

away from coming in from the South. We spoke about this earlier, that there is this less talked about side of Trump, that he's open to a multipolar world than most American politicians, and he also really wants to fix a lot of domestic issues. It's been three months since we had our last conversation, and you may not have expected some of his very recent statements during this period.

And do you think his recent words and actions have gone in line with that less talked about side of Trump being open to multipolar and also heavy focus on fixing domestic issues?

I think everything we said three months ago is true. I think, you know, there used to be this phrase, you know, you can take Trump literally or not seriously. You know, his supporters take him, don't take him literally, they take him seriously. I think everything Trump said on the campaign trail, everyone should have taken seriously. And now we take him seriously again. Because

Unlike other politicians, he actually says what he wants to do and then tries to do it. And we are going to see that. And anyone who said, I vote for Trump and didn't know what he was going to do, obviously wasn't paying attention. He has signaled everything he's going to do. And I think you're absolutely right in terms of this multipolar world. He is the first American president

of the 21st century to essentially, not say it outwardly, but admit it with his policies, that the US is not the unipolar hegemon that we saw at the end of the Cold War and that the world has changed. And he is bringing back deep historical feelings of isolationism,

and nationalism, coupled with a new world in which US power relatively has been shrinking for, let's say, a decade and a half. To the North American continent. Yes, to the North American continent where US power has not been shrinking. Remember, he renegotiated NAFTA, the USMCA with Canada and Mexico. It wasn't a

Huge success. They had to make compromises, but he's back there again. He knows the power of the U.S. and the North American continent. What he is less sure of and also less willing to deploy is U.S. power everywhere else. He doesn't see why Ukraine is a problem for Washington or Arkansas or Texas or Tennessee. He doesn't see why Taiwan is a problem for San Francisco.

You know, it's a real view of, hang on a minute, why are we here? And he's the first president to break that sort of

Foreign policy consensus, the blob, we call it here in Washington, where it doesn't matter if you're a Republican or Democrat, you still have this sort of view, worldview of American place in the world. But he's much more of a real policy guy who understands power dynamics as they are rather than the rhetorical excuses for them.

Well, only a few days since he's back in office and we already have so much to talk about. Yeah, absolutely. It's a fascinating time. Yeah, let's stay in touch for the next four years. Absolutely, anytime. The word "controversial" has often followed President Donald Trump, and his second term is proving no different. Domestically, 22 states have already filed lawsuits challenging his executive order to block birthright citizenship.

Internationally, leaders are pushing back against his bold and provocative statements on foreign territories. With the clock ticking on the next four years, the impact of the 47th US president is just beginning to unfold. That brings us to the end of this episode of Deep Dive.

If you enjoyed what you just heard, don't forget to follow us on your podcast platforms. Just search for Deep Dive. You can also leave a comment to let us know what you want to learn about China and beyond. This episode is brought to you by me, Li Yunqi, and my colleagues Zhang Zhang and Qi Zhi. Special thanks to CGTN White House correspondent Nathan King. I'll see you in the next one.