President Trump addresses censorship and trade among flood of day-one executive ordersPresident Trump addresses censorship and trade among flood of day-one executive orders

Surely we can all agree that legislative bodies such as the UK House of Commons and the US House of Representatives are an anachronistic and needless burden on the process of law-making. Why complicate the matter when we routinely elect such flawless and omniscient leaders?

This line of thinking is especially prevalent in the country that likes to call itself the world’s greatest democracy, as illustrated by Trump (pictured) issuing no less than 48 executive orders on his first day back in the job and rescinding almost a hundred of those issued by his predecessor.

While none explicitly addressed the telecoms sector, there were several that could affect it and/or addressed adjacent areas. As expected, the ill-conceived law demanding that social media platform TikTok be sold to the US, or be banned, has been curtailed by an EO delaying the execution of that ban by 75 days, to give the Trump administration a chance to get its head around the matter.

The ban, if enforced, would effectively censor the speech of the millions of Americans who use TikTok to publicly express themselves. Warming to the theme, Trump signed another EO titled ‘Restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship’. This is effectively a reassertion of the First Amendment, which the previous administration did so much to erode, and its extension to the entire federal government.

Of perhaps the greatest significance to global business is the EO titled ‘America First Trade Policy’. It forewarns that Trump intends to renegotiate a bunch of treaties, pacts, and trade deals if he doesn’t think they’re sufficiently advantageous to the US. It also implies an unsurprisingly forceful, unilateral approach to geopolitics that is in keeping with America’s broader direction of travel. There is a whole section devoted to China that contains nothing overtly confrontational, instead mandating a general review of the relationship between the two countries.

In keeping with that theme, Trump wants to distance the US from a number of other scenarios that he apparently thinks don’t serve America’s interests. He wants to leave the WHO, which he blames for mishandling the Covid pandemic, and to rid the government of discriminatory employment practices, claiming “the Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI), into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government.”

Lastly, we would be remiss in overlooking some of the more frivolous directives. One EO renames the US Gulf coast the Gulf of America, which the rest of the world will, of course, ignore. Meanwhile an EO titled ‘Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture’ mandates the tarting up of federal buildings. Our favourite is one called ‘Putting People over Fish’, which refers to the claimed state mishandling of the recent LA wildfires.

But there were few major surprises on day-one of the second Trump presidency. He is staying true to the populist protectionist philosophy he has long espoused and will attempt to use the greater control over all facets of government he expects to have, compared to his first innings, to throw America’s weight around globally even more than it already does. As is so often the case with Trump, it’s very difficult to calculate how this will play out and what effect it will have on the world in general but it's bound to be eventful.