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If Trump Wins [1]

['Charlie Savage', 'Jonathan Swan', 'Maggie Haberman']

Date: 2024-06-16

Donald Trump and his closest allies are planning a radical reshaping of American government. Here are some of the policy stakes if he regains power in 2025.

Donald Trump and his closest allies are preparing a radical reshaping of American government if he regains the White House. Here are some of his plans for cracking down on immigration, directing the Justice Department to prosecute his adversaries, increasing presidential power, upending America’s economic policies, retreating militarily from Europe and unilaterally deploying troops to Democratic-run cities.

His administration would declare that children born to undocumented parents were not entitled to citizenship and would cease issuing documents like Social Security cards and passports to them.

He plans to suspend the nation’s refugee program and once again bar visitors from mostly Muslim countries, reinstating a version of the travel ban that President Biden revoked in 2021.

He plans to revive “safe third country” agreements with Central American countries and expand them to Africa and elsewhere. The aim is to send people seeking asylum to other countries.

The Trump team plans to use military funds to build “vast holding facilities” to detain immigrants while their deportation cases progress.

He plans to reassign federal agents and the National Guard to immigration control. He would also enable the use of federal troops to apprehend migrants.

Mr. Trump’s top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, said that a second Trump administration would seek a tenfold increase in the volume of deportations — to more than a million per year.

Mr. Trump is planning a massive expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025. Among other things, he would:

Kash Patel, a Trump confidant, has threatened to target journalists for prosecution if Mr. Trump returns to power. The campaign later distanced Mr. Trump from the remarks.

He has cited the precedent of his own indictments to declare that if he became president again and someone challenged him politically, he could say, “Go down and indict them.”

As president, Mr. Trump pressed the Justice Department to investigate his foes. If re-elected, he has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor “to go after” Mr. Biden and his family.

Mr. Trump has declared that he would use the powers of the presidency to seek vengeance on his perceived foes. His allies have developed a legal rationale to erase the Justice Department’s independence from the president. Mr. Trump has suggested that he would:

Politically appointed lawyers in the first Trump administration sometimes raised objections to White House proposals. Several of his closest advisers are now vetting lawyers seen as more likely to embrace aggressive legal theories about the scope of his power.

Mr. Trump has disparaged the career work force at agencies involved in national security and foreign policy as an evil “deep state” he intends to destroy.

During Mr. Trump’s presidency, he issued an executive order making it easier to fire career officials and replace them with loyalists. Mr. Biden rescinded it, but Mr. Trump has said that he would reissue it in a second term.

He has vowed to return to a system under which the president has the power to refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated for programs the president doesn’t like.

Congress has set up various regulatory agencies to operate independently from the White House. Mr. Trump has vowed to bring them under presidential control, setting up a potential court fight.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broad goal to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that currently operates independently of the White House. Mr. Trump has said that he will:

Upend trade and other economic policies

At the risk of disrupting the economy in hopes of transforming it, Mr. Trump plans to impose new tariffs on most goods manufactured abroad. Economists say his broader agenda – including on trade, deportations and taxes – could cause prices to rise. He has said that he will:

1. Impose a “universal baseline tariff,” a new tax on most imported goods Mr. Trump has said that he plans to impose a tariff on most goods made overseas, floating a figure of 10 percent for a new import tax. On top of raising prices for consumers, such a policy would risk a global trade war that hurts American exporters.

2. Implement steep new trade restrictions on China He has said that he will “phase out all Chinese imports” of electronics and other essential goods, and impose new rules to stop U.S. companies from making investments in China. The two countries are the largest economies in the world and exchange hundreds of billions of dollars of goods each year.

3. Slash rules imposed on business interests He has vowed to revive his deregulatory agenda and go further in curbing the so-called administrative state – agencies that issue rules for corporations such as limits aimed at keeping the air and water clean and ensuring that food, drugs, cars and consumer products safe, but that can cut into business profits.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/16/us/politics/trump-policy-list-2025.html

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