Donald Trump must be taken seriously, but not at face value

The diplomat and expert international analyst Gustavo de Aristegui analysed Donald Trump's first measures on the programme ‘De cara al mundo’ on Onda Madrid. 

He also considered Trump's assertion that there are only two genders, male and female

Mr de Aristegui, Donald Trump has been all over the place in his first days in the White House, he had already done so even before he arrived. What does Donald Trump mean as president of the United States?

According to a great friend of Trump's, who does not appear at big events because he is a discreet man, Chris Stewart, a former Republican congressman and Air Force colonel who also holds the world record for circumnavigating the globe by air in less than 11 hours, told a group of friends, in a very open way, a phrase that defines Donald Trump: ‘Donald Trump must be taken seriously, but you can't take him literally’. 

And that is what we must do. Everyone, and even above all his political adversaries in the United States, and his allies and enemies, do exactly the opposite. They do not take him seriously, but they take him literally. When Trump is taking certain measures, they are measures demanded by his political base. And his political base is much broader than the classic conservative Republicans. Let's not forget that this base has expanded. This political base currently includes a not inconsiderable part of the black vote, especially the male vote, but not only the male vote, an important part of the Hispanic vote that has been making a transition from the left to the centre and from the centre to the right for 30 years and which is quite inexorable, as well as unstoppable. 

 Then there is the suburban female vote, which is necessarily more conservative than the urban female vote, and which has also given Trump an important part of his victory. And finally, Trump has also won the youth vote from the Democrats by 36 points. And this is precisely because, as he has children younger than would be normal for a man of his age, these young children, including Barron, Melania's son, convinced him to get fully involved in social media. And they hired a brilliant young consultant who goes by the nickname TikTok Jack, and he was the one who got him into social media, but only on TikTok, and that has been one of the keys to Trump's victory.   

Second important issue. Trump, from an economic point of view, has American-centrist ideas, if I can coin the term. He wants to reindustrialise the country, he wants to reduce the deficit and, above all, he wants to improve the balance of payments, which is in deficit in the United States with respect to all the major commercial players on the planet, China and the European Union, above all. And that is why he wants it to be produced in the United States or for American products to be bought, one or the other. 

A federal judge has temporarily halted one of the measures that was to end birthright citizenship in the United States. There are times when Trump, in order to provoke, to test the water or to send a message and see the reaction, announces very provocative measures that clash with the interests of other countries or other people who are in opposition, but that really, as I heard him say the other day to Carlos Herrera on COPE, effectively, you have to take him seriously, but not at face value.  

Regarding the issue of nationality by birth, the ‘ius soli’, as it is called in Public International Law, the ‘ius soli’ is constitutionalised in the United States. Therefore, to prohibit the exercise of it or that any child born in US territory is American, regardless of the nationality of the parents, to modify that or qualify it requires an amendment to the Constitution. 

What Trump is proposing is not to change from ‘jus soli’ to ‘jus sanguinis’, that is, that to be a national of the United States one of the parents must necessarily be American. What he is proposing is that those immigrants who do not have their papers in order or who are not legal immigrants cannot allow their children to be American, even if they are born in the United States. It is a controversial issue, but it is a legal issue and it will go to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, however conservative it may be, will have to determine that it is a constitutional issue, and as it is a constitutional issue, it can only be settled through an amendment that requires the unanimity of Congress, that is to say, of the House of Representatives and the Senate with qualified majorities, as we know. 

As for the rest, with regard to everything that surprised us just before taking office, the issue of Greenland, the issue of Panama, the issue of Mexico, the issue of Canada... Well, Mexico and Canada are issues that were more the effervescence of the moment and not without coincidence with the outgoing ambassador of the Biden Administration in Mexico, who is the first to accuse Mexico of being a drug-producing country and not just a drug transit country. That was her statement when she left the country, in other words, it is a pretty big issue and what she was referring to was that the fentanyl precursors that arrive from Asia, especially from China, are transformed into illegal fentanyl in Mexico and are sent illegally through the drug cartels to the United States.

The other two issues arise from something we must consider. From the moment Donald Trump is proclaimed president-elect of the United States he has access to all the information that the president of the United States has, all of it, without restriction, that is to say, he has the CIA briefing, the NSA briefing, the FBI briefing, the briefing from everyone. And when Trump was referring to the Panama Canal or Greenland it was because he had reliable information that there was growing Chinese interference in the Panama Canal and an obvious interest on the part of China and Russia in the future control of Greenland, because of course, with the melting of the Arctic, the Arctic route becomes one of the essential elements of world geostrategy. And on top of that, the only port, the only fleet of all the Russian fleets, the only one that has an expeditious exit to international waters, but only six months a year, are the two bases that are in the vicinity of the city of Murmansk, in the Arctic north of Russia: the submarine base and the surface fleet base in Severomorsk. 

These fleets will now have access to the Arctic Sea twelve months a year, not six months a year. Let's bear in mind that the Baltic fleet is strangled, because of the nine Baltic coastal states, eight are NATO. The Black Sea fleet, as well as being occupied with the war in Ukraine, in order to be able to go out into international waters, has to cross the Dardanelles Strait, which is the Black Sea, then cross the Bosphorus Strait, reach the Sea of Marmara and from there go out into the Mediterranean, Turkish territorial waters, then Greek, Italian, French, Spanish, etc., therefore controlled by NATO. 

And the eastern fleet, and I can tell you this from where I am, I'm in Tokyo and before that I was in Sapporo, which is exactly on the same line as Vladivostok. Russia's Pacific fleet is based in Vladivostok. The Sea of Japan in that part is a lake. Japan completely closes off the eastern part of the Sea of Japan and, therefore, in order for Russian warships to be able to leave Vladivostok, they are necessarily controlled by the Japanese Navy. Therefore, Greenland becomes the central and basic element for Chinese and Russian interests in the current global geostrategy.   

In his speech at Davos, via video conference, Donald Trump had no qualms about accusing those listening and watching him: ‘You are responsible for a negative agenda’. Only the president of Banco de Santander, Mrs Botín, was spared, but there were important issues there: the fall in the price of oil so that Putin cannot continue to finance the Russian invasion, but also so that interest rates can be lowered and there can be economic recovery, 5% of military spending in NATO, something that Obama already called for a long time ago, and the issue of producing in the United States, or you will have tariffs. I think that in that speech Trump made some very important points very clear. 

I am not Trump's ambassador in Spain or in Europe, nor am I a Trumpian or Trumpist. This Trump in his second term and his third campaign is a much more political man, he is not the one who stood for election to be taken seriously by his billionaire friends because they considered him ‘a bit of a playboy among billionaires who had seen better days’, but he has shown a lot of character and a resilience worthy of mention. Who could have endured all that this man has endured in the last 10 years? Some of the things that Donald Trump says about the deindustrialisation of the West in favour of China affects us Europeans in an extraordinary way and to no small extent the Spanish. 

Europe's technological advantage is in the combustion engine and if we are going to kill diesel, petrol and even hybrid, because hybrid needs a combustion engine. And then there are biofuels, biodiesel, which pollutes much less and apart from the mechanics of the latest generation of diesel engines pollutes exactly the same as a petrol car, but to make matters worse the technology of the future is a hydrogen-based combustion engine. 

It is true that producing hydrogen is very expensive today, but in 10 years' time it will not be. We Europeans cannot resign ourselves to our invention, our industry, our fundamental industrial framework, the industrial framework based on the internal combustion engine, being destroyed for the benefit of an adversary, rival and enemy, whatever we want to call it, which is China, which benefits from everything. 

Moreover, it is not only the engine in electric vehicles, we have also given China solar panels, we have given it car batteries, we have given it industrial-sized batteries for solar and wind farms together, which are called hybrid farms, because as we all know, hybrid farms need industrial-sized batteries to be profitable. To stabilise the electricity grid, a combined cycle power plant is needed in combination with hybrid photovoltaic and wind power farms for when there is a day without wind or a day without sun or when there is a storm or when the panels are dirty. And who produces the industrial-sized batteries based on cadmium, phosphates and not just lithium? The Chinese. And who controls almost all the sources of raw materials of strategic value of rare earths and increasingly fossil fuels? The Chinese. And what does Greenland have besides its strategic location, which is undoubtedly the most important thing? It has gas, oil, rare earths and raw materials of strategic value. 

One last question. We'll have time, Mr de Aristegui, because of course Trump is so broad, he covers so many issues, but I wanted to close today's conversation with the subject of gender. There has been talk that Trump's triumph is a triumph over what is called ‘the woke generation’ in the United States. We'll see what happens with that in Europe, but he has made it clear. When it comes to gender, there is male and female, full stop. This is a clear stance and avoids a transformation of society with principles and values that affect the morality of the population.  

The world in general and the West in particular were being hijacked by a progressiveness, in effect woke, that was imposing a kind of brutal censorship. But that must also be said very clearly. Saying that there are two biological genders does not at all imply being anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-non-binary. It means that you cannot change human biology. You feel however you want and do whatever you want. It's a free country and no sexual orientation is being banned or persecuted here. Point one, and point two. Donald Trump's government has many more women than Joe Biden's government. Many more. And in much more important positions. 

And finally, let's not forget who religiously participated in Donald Trump's inauguration, who is Protestant, a black working-class and working-class Lutheran evangelical pastor, a Catholic priest and a Jewish rabbi. At the inauguration of the champions of freedom, Biden, Obama, etc., there was only one Lutheran pastor. And I would like to remind you that, moreover, to make matters even more complicated, Biden is Catholic, the second Catholic president in the history of the United States, because the only two have been Kennedy and Biden.