Self-strengthening sole antidote to Trump 2.0.

President-elect Donald Trump completes his Cabinet nominations, still subject to legislative approval after January 2025, the policy intentions of his second term have become relatively clear.

- ANDREW SHENG

The nominees are almost all white male, right-wing loyalists, with media experience, and inclined towards tariffs and an isolationist bent.

The influence of the tech moguls, such as Elon Musk, is on the ascendant. Commerce Secretary-nominee Howard Lutnick, billionaire former Chairman/CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, will enforce all the tariffs to protect American jobs. Three front-runners for the Secretary of the Treasury post have emerged—veteran former Fed Board member Kevin Warsh, Key Square Capital founder Scott Bessent, and Apollo Global Management billionaire investor Marc Rowan. On top of his deserved reputation as a Washington finance insider, Warsh has the support of his billionaire father-in-law, Ronald Lauder of Estee Lauder family fame, also Chairman of the World Jewish Congress.

Trump will come into office with an unprecedented strong hand, having Republican control of the House, Senate, and a Supreme Court majority. He will be tough on rivals and allies alike, preferring bilateral negotiations rather than working through multilateral channels, which he finds constricting his transactional style. His policy roadmap was detailed by the 887-page right-wing Heritage Foundation Project 2025, the blueprint for a conservative President to "dismantle the administrative state and return power to the states and the American people".

Musk will take charge of a "Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)" that would operationalize the dismantling of government bureaucracies, agency by agency. The tools of tariffs, sanctions, and executive orders will be used to possibly make either the biggest overhaul of American bureaucracy in recent history, or a damaging disruption of internal administration and external order. The report's anti-China stance is evident in almost every chapter, including the banning of TikTok.