Donald Trump has confirmed his new cabinet which includes Tesla and X owner Elon Musk.
Hosuk Lee Makiyama, the Director for the European Centre of International Political Economy, has answered some key questions about the appointments.
#trump
Hosuk Lee Makiyama, the Director for the European Centre of International Political Economy, has answered some key questions about the appointments.
#trump
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00:00I think this is a choice where policy has already been set and which focus very much on
00:07selling the policy. So you would have personalities that are able to connect with the voters
00:14and yeah and the congress perhaps rather than actually devising policy. We don't see much
00:22policy experience behind any of these names we've seen so far. Commentators, journalists
00:28understandably like to draw a line between one administration and the next. The reality
00:35is rather different isn't it? It's rather blurred. Indeed there is a tradition for at least the last
00:4430 years about having a smooth transition and continuation of government and I think this is
00:49something that has been going on for quite a bit and also we need to remember that on the
00:55technical level below the level of assistant secretaries they are actually not swapped,
00:59they stay on their posts. So there is a continuation and also we should remember
01:04that there in many areas there is a huge overlap especially in areas like how you relate to China
01:11and Europe between the Biden administration and the Trump administration. The Biden administration
01:16didn't barely change any of the trade policies or the economic policy, didn't actually
01:21revert on for example on the tax reforms that Trump administration put through in 2017.
01:28Well let's talk about that, that's the past, let's talk about the future. How might this
01:32cabinet's approach to foreign policy in particular, China in particular, differ from previous
01:39administrations? Well this administration comes in with a huge political capital and also policy
01:48space in terms of having the congress and having the senate and in addition it has been very clear
01:56about what it wants to do. It wants to have a full-on trade war with not just with China but
02:02also with Europe and its allies. It's going to go back on many of the decisions that have been
02:07taken around for example military support to Ukraine. That basically means what we can see now
02:13is that as for as long as Trump administration is going to hold on, the republicans and the
02:20Trump administration are going to hold on to the support of the house republicans, it's going to
02:25be very front-loaded on areas where Trump is going to need the support of the house which basically
02:34means taxes, budgets and anything related to that and also trade.