Wu Guangqiang

    jw368@163.com

    THE wayward U.S. President Donald Trump is rocking his country and the rest of the world with his series controversial executive orders.

    To prove himself to be a man of action, Trump has signed over 20 presidential orders since he moved into the Oval Office, thus fulfilling many of his campaign promises.

    The major ones include orders on such issues as: border security and immigration enforcement including the authorization of a U.S.-Mexico border wall, reviving the Keystone XL pipeline and Dakota Access pipelines, abandoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal (TPP), and repealing ObamaCare, which, as Trump claimed, imposes a “fiscal burden on states and individuals.”

    Then came the most controversial order that bans refugees and citizens from seven Muslim nations.

    In the eyes of many pro-establishment people, Trump is moving in reverse — the abandoning of TPP is tantamount to giving up America’s leadership in world trade and retreating to protectionism; the building of the wall means adopting the beggar-thy-neighbor policy; the repealing of ObamaCare means depriving millions of their medical insurance coverage.

    As for the so-called Muslim ban, Trump seemed to have infuriated much of the world, as such an indiscriminate ban could have come out of a fascist regime. Under the immigrant ban, any citizen from these seven nations will be banned from entry into the U.S. including those holding U.S. green cards.

    As the U.K. newspaper The Guardian put it, Trump’s order was “cruel, stupid, and un-American.” The order has sparked protests at home and overseas. On Feb. 3, federal Judge James Robart halted the enforcement of Trump’s order, effective nationwide.

    Whatever subsequent developments come, Trump’s crazy moves will cause devastating impacts on America’s interests.

    It seems that Trump is running out of popularity, even among his supporters, much sooner than any of his predecessors.

    Why, then, is that so?

    My answer is: the wrong prescription for the right diagnosis.

    Trump was right about identifying America’s maladies but worked out mistaken medication. The American political system sensed its own dysfunction yet failed to respond to it correctly.

    Who can say it is untrue when Trump angrily slashed Washington’s decades of elite neglect, and even betrayal, of the interests of middle and working-class Americans. Isn’t it true that Wall Street’s tycoons and multinational companies’ billionaires are busy helping themselves to grabbing countless wealth while ignoring the suffering of grass-roots masses. Who can deny that the U.S. has been wasting enormous amounts of money staging wars around the world, meddling with the internal affairs of other countries, peddling its such unwelcome stuff as “democracy” and toppling other countries’ governments while leaving its own infrastructure in disrepair.

    That’s why Trump won the presidency in spite of his lack of political experience and the existence of a strong opponent camp.

    Yet Trump has been trying to fix the problems with utterly wrong approaches. Instead of figuring out the true causes of all the problems, he is desperately looking for scapegoats around the world, attempting to depict his nation as a victim of unfair treatment by the entire world.

    In deliberate ignorance of the fact that the U.S. hollowed its own manufacturing in a bid to gain maximal benefits from its self-devised “vertical international division of labor,” Trump kept groaning that nations like China and Mexico had stolen jobs from the U.S. He’s barking up the wrong tree.

    He is attempting to keep jobs in the U.S. and draw them back home by unveiled threat. He is “protecting” his nation from terrorism by sowing hatred among people of different religions and actually producing more terrorists. He is flirting with serious international issues to challenge China’s core national interests, which he views as negotiable bargaining chips.

    Many may wonder why a great democratic nation like the U.S. should have elected such a precarious and temperamental man as the leader. That question really hit home.

    The best answer is that the nation is sick. Like most declining powers throughout history, the U.S. is sinking into mire and abyss as a result of long-time political complacency and financial overdraft.

    It’s still too early to predict Trump’s success or failure. Should he adhere to his foolish way, he will fail.

    (The author is an English tutor and freelance writer.)