Trump reveals policies to make America ill again

Out of Donald Trump’s radical and provocative rhetoric comes a vague sense of a foreign policy platform.

Earlier this summer, Trump proposed his plan for our nation’s trade interactions. Specifically citing a skewed sense of nationalism, he promised to eliminate international trade deals and begin attacks on China’s economic practices.

In Pennsylvania, Trump addressed critics of his non-existent foreign policy by laying out what seems like a plan to bring the nation back to the Dark Ages. He promised to remove the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that helped quadruple trade between the U.S., Canada and Mexico from $297 billion to $1.14 trillion between 1993–2015.

Alongside this disastrous promise came Trump’s plan to impose excessive tariffs on goods imported from China. Ignoring the irony between Trump’s rhetoric and his China-based businesses, his policy would place a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods and could potentially start trade wars.

In his usual mudslinging campaign, Trump challenged Hillary Clinton on her support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, warning that “she will betray you again.” This rhetoric was further exacerbated by his description of the Partnership as the “rape of our country.”

Trump took a stand against against globalization by saying that it benefits the financial elite while imposing “nothing but poverty and heartache” on the workers. In stark contrast to the economic policies of the Republican Party, Trump’s policy focuses on limiting trade whenever possible.

As a true newcomer to the political scene, Trump’s policies show both a lack of experience and the naivety that make him unfit to be the leader of the free world.

These policies spurred criticism from both established Republican leaning interests and the Clinton campaign. “Even under the best case scenario, Trump’s tariffs would strip of us at least 3.5 million jobs,” the usually conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce said.

With that statement there is much doubt about Trump’s loyalty to the GOP. His foreign policy plan includes a wall at the Mexican border, military intervention in Syria and seemingly questionable support for Russian President Vladimir Putin have driven away some important Republicans.

Brent Scowcroft, former NSA adviser, and 121 other national GOP security leaders announced their opposition to the Republican nominee. “We commit ourselves to working energetically to prevent the election of someone so utterly unfitted to the office,” they said in an open letter.

Trump’s foreign policy relies heavily on simplistic and blunt language. Likening the Islamic State to Nazism during the Holocaust, Trump proposed extreme and somewhat radical means to ensure safety.

His plan to counter radical Islamic terrorists called for extreme vetting of immigrants. It would also limit visas to people from the Middle East, temporarily or permanently. And it promised to keep Guantanamo Bay open.

“Trump obviously views millions of ordinary American Muslims not as fellow citizens who contribute to this great nation, but as foreign intruders who must be treated with suspicion and whose constitutional rights may be curtailed,” said Robert McCaw, the government affairs director of the Council on American Islamic Relations.

Trump is ultimately a danger to both the minority groups whose rights he vows to infringe and the millions (if not billions) of lives that would suffer from the mogul’s violent rhetoric and calls for war.

In this life-changing election, it is imperative that we as a nation look to the interests of our country and not our party.

If any of Trump’s policies are enacted, we will surely fail to continue to be the most powerful nation in the world.

Columnist Praneeth Kambhampati is a biomedical sciences freshman and can be reached at [email protected].

Tags: election, Foreign Policy, politics, Trump