If Donald Trump wins the election, this is what will become...

UNITED STATES – A presidency that will leave its mark. It remains this Tuesday, October 27, a week before the US presidential election, seven days before knowing whether Donald Trump will come back for a second term or not. At this point, it is still impossible to predict which of Biden or Trump will win the presidency, with the country completely polarized between pro and anti-Trump.

Despite chaotic management of the health crisis and a rise in racism in the country and even if he is left behind in the polls, Donald Trump still enjoys a solid electoral base, galvanized by the election of conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett in the Supreme Court eight days before the vote. Also, historically, it is very rare for voters to prevent an incumbent president from serving a second term.

A “four more years” which would however not be without consequences and which could in certain aspects be irreversible, explained to the HuffPost in 2019 Jean-Eric Braana, specialist on the United States and Donald Cuccioletta, expert in American politics based in Montreal.

What will not (or almost) be able to change

“It will solidify its positions, go even further in its objectives such as the construction of the wall, the trade war with China which will eventually become a military war, or the solidification of relations with North Korea which will give to the latter a greater importance ”, assured Donald Cuccioletta in June 2019.

Here are three areas that would have lasting consequences if Trump is re-elected:

He has never ceased to denigrate the climate fight and despise the ecological efforts of other nations: with four more years of Trump, the consequences of his climate policy will weigh even more on the climate. And the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement will play a major role. “It’s disastrous, the time that the United States does not spend worrying about the climate and controlling its consumption of CO2 cannot be made up. Time is running out, global warming is already wreaking havoc, and if he is re-elected, this lost time will definitely be, ”lamented Jean-Eric Braana.

Indeed, with a new mandate from Trump, we would have to wait until at least 2025 to see the world’s greatest power take action against its CO2 emissions. According to the Global Carbon Project, an intergovernmental panel on climate change, if “decarbonization” had started on a global scale in 2000, a reduction in emissions of around 2% per year would have been sufficient to stay in place. warming below 2 degrees Celsius. Today it would take around 5% per year and if we wait another decade it will be around 9%.

In addition, according to the GCP, to have a chance of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius – the objective of the Paris Climate Agreement – it would be necessary that by 2030, CO2 emissions drop by ‘about 45% from 2010 levels. Unfortunately, instead of decreasing, they are increasing. It is therefore not won.

Irreversible deterioration of American territory

“It won’t be easy to make up for lost time,” journalist Hannah Murphy notes in Rolling Stone. “Trump has succeeded in blurring the trajectory of US climate policy, creating a tangle of legal fights that will need to be cleared up for US climate policy to progress. And it has left virtually no part of our environmental regulatory structure intact, ”she explains, referring to the green light given to fossil fuel infrastructure such as the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines.

According to the reporter, the Trump administration carried out the largest retreat of federally protected land in U.S. history. She mentions in particular the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, which Donald Trump reduced by 85% in 2017 and which is in the crosshairs of uranium producers. “Trump’s decision has been mired in lawsuits, but a second term could give them time to unravel them and hand the ground over to uranium lobbyists,” she notes.

Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, approved in August 2020, is also taken as an example. If the implementation deadlines are too short compared to the presidential election, the leases will be released quickly if Trump continues with a second term. So the pipelines and oil rigs that will be installed “will cause permanent damage to a vital and fragile ecosystem and it is very difficult to undo that once it is installed”.

• The arms race

″ ‘War solves all problems’. That was the thinking of John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser (who has since turned against the president). And the latter decided to take this sentence at face value by launching an arms race that it will be impossible to stop ”, regretted Donald Cuccioletta.

Indeed, according to him, the chairman’s questioning of alliances with the United States and the unilateral withdrawal of arms control treaties have made the world much more dangerous. “We are in a very insecure and tense period”, according to the specialist. Because, after pulling the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal – thus seriously damaging Washington’s reputation as an ally and negotiating partner – Trump has failed to gain the upper hand in his relationship with North Korea (which is now more or less at a standstill). He thus leaves Kim Jong-Un without control and with a stronger international position because he did not fold in the face of the great power.

“If re-elected, many countries may choose to acquire nuclear weapons, especially those located in regions that have resorted to US security guarantees, such as the Middle East and Northeast Asia ”, Note The Atlantic. A scenario that would sign the death warrant for the non-proliferation regime that the United States and the EU had managed to put in place.

“Brazil is in the process of acquiring nuclear weapons with the help of Trump as well,” confided Donald Cuccioletta in 2019. And once a country is equipped with atomic weapons, it is too late to return backward.

• The balance of the Supreme Court

This was what Democrats feared, and it happened. Donald Trump had already placed two conservative judges (appointed for life) on the Supreme Court: Neil Gorsuch, anti-abortion, pro-arms and pro-death penalty, and the controversial Brett Kavanaugh and he succeeded in appointing a third for replace the late progressive judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. With the arrival of Amy Coney Barrett, confirmed by the Senate eight days before the election, progressive judges drop to three out of nine and find themselves in a weak position for many years.

In his second potential term, that imbalance could worsen: Democratic Judge Stephen Breyer turned 82 this year, even though “he’s still in good shape, so I think he’ll be there for a possible second mandate, ”said Donald Cuccioletta.

However, this imbalance at the Supreme Court will not be without consequences, especially for migration policy and women’s rights. In 2019, several American states adopted ultra-restrictive measures on abortion. Their objective: to force the Supreme Court to review its 1973 case law, contained in the “Roe v. Wade ”, establishing the constitutionality of the right to abortion. A scenario that seems more and more likely with a Supreme Court overwhelmingly conservative.

Trump’s “omnipotence”

Thanks to the three judges he has placed on the Supreme Court, Donald Trump has more freedom to act. However, since 2018, he has not really been able to pass new laws because he lost the House of Representatives in the midterm elections. He therefore uses the decrees to be able to act. However, it is not impossible that he will recover this chamber during the elections which will follow the presidential election.

“But we must not hide our face, according to Donald Cuccioletta, even if he does not recover it, we must not forget that the House of Representatives, with a Democratic majority, also includes within it conservatives who may be inclined to accept certain laws that Trump will propose. He may not be as free as he used to be, but that will not prevent him from passing conservative laws ”.

The expert was thinking in particular of the fierce fight against abortion, or the restrictions targeting the LGBTQ community, in particular trans people.

“We must also say that if he is re-elected, Donald Trump will be all-powerful. He will have proven on the one hand that his election in 2016 was not a mistake and on the other hand, that the Americans want the policy he is proposing. Then, his victory will challenge the Democratic Party from within. The party will implode in the face of internal dissension, each blaming themselves. It will be a very difficult period for American politics ”, concluded for his part Jean-Eric Braana.