IS TRUMP WRECKING THE AMERICAN DREAM?

HEADLINES ABOUT HIS 60 DAYS IN WHITE HOUSE HAVE MOSTLY BEEN ABOUT WHAT HE’S DOING TO FOREIGN GOVTS. BUT MAYBE THE BIGGER STORY IS HOW TRUMPISM IS HURTING THE COUNTRY OF IT ORGIN. THINGS THAT REALLY MAKE AMERICA GREAT ARE UNDER THREAT. HERE’S HOW:

IMMIGRATION:

Native Americans make up just 2% of US population; the rest have an immigration story. Trump himself has German roots on his father’s side. Melania is Slovenian. Vance has Scots-Irish ancestry, his wife is of Indian origin. And being a ‘melting pot’ has served America well. Its resources draw bright men and women, and its founding principles reward talent and hard work. An Austrian bodybuilder became a leading actor; and California governor: Could it happen in any other country? That’s the American dream.

WHAT’S CHANGED?

• Americans in the Trump camp want to slam the door on immigrants — both legal and illegal.
• They blame immigration for job losses, low wages, and crime, although studies show this isn’t true.
• Trump made immigration a poll issue, and his administration has waged war on immigrants.
• Deportation flights started a week after his inauguration. A couple of them landed in Amritsar.
• Some undocumented immigrants have been placed at the notorious military base in Guantanamo Bay.
• The future of Green Card holders and those on H-1B visas is uncertain. Even tourists are getting hassled.
• Trump’s assault on birth citizenship — anyone born in US is a citizen — has reached US Supreme Court.

WHY IT MATTERS:

• US will be a less attractive destination for highly qualified workers.
• In areas like software and AI, US firms will be forced to offshore more work. So, fewer jobs.
• Absence of immigrants will cause a labor shortage and raise wages and prices. It will also reduce reduce demands for goods — recipe for a recession.

CONSUMERISM:

Low prices and high profits go hand in hand only when govt curbs its appetite for taxes. America’s average import tariff in 2022 was just 1.5%, Australia, EU, and Canada had even lower rates, but US is the biggest economy. Its closest competitor, China, charged over 3% — India’s average was 11.5%. That’s why US is the capital of consumerism.

WHAT’S CHANGED?:

• Trump has been announcing tariffs on a whim.
• Higher tariffs would raise US prices of imported goods. Those of domestic substitutes will rise opportunistically.
• So far, tariff announcements are limited to sectors like cars and steel — 10% here, 25% there — but experts predict price rise.
• Car prices, for example, could increase by at least $4,000.
• Prices may rise across the board when “reciprocal tariffs” – the seller nation’s import duties applied to its exports — come into force on April 2.

WHY IT MATTERS:

• Global trade runs like a well-oiled machine. Surprised tariffs are like a crowbar thrust between the gears.
• That’s why tariff announcements have roiled stock markets.
• Trump hopes tariff barriers will force more manufacturers to set up shop in US, but that could take years.
• Competing with China on cost would take even longer.
• US consumers will be the biggest losers in the short-to-mid-term
• A demand slump caused by higher prices is also a recession risk.

SCIENCE:

America’s always championed scientific innovation, tech progress and education for prosperity, social mobility, and a better future. All of this, especially the spirit of scientific research, is under assault.

WHAT’S CHANGED?:

• Trump’s executive order that halted all federal funding to “review” DEI impacted hiring the best for scientific research.
• Two independent scientific review boards were disbanded.
• EPA plans to eliminate its scientific research office.
• It’ll fire more than 1,000 scientists and other employees who help provide scientific information.
• All visa programs are under evaluation — this directly impacts STEM recruits.
• Science-focused federal research and academic programs are hit by funding cuts.
• Trump’s admin remains unbothered about the 220 cases of measles reported across 12 states, which claimed lives as well.
• Nasa’s science budget is expected to be halved in fiscal 2026; it has received an extension to submit its layoff plans. Nasa has closed its chief scientist office, removed 23 employees.

WHY IT MATTERS:

• Termination of CSRB, appointed by US nodal cybersec infra security agency CISA, will slow or halt investigations, such as the one into Salt Typhoon hack on US telecom systems.
• More and more Americans are reportedly rejecting vaccination programs. Vaccination has reportedly dipped below 90% in some communities.
• Trump’s crackdown on H-1B visas and other foreign-skill work permit comes at a time when his emphasis on local hires for high-skill jobs demands a larger domestic STEM workforce.
• Trump 2.0 actions have targeted, via funding cuts and by disbanding health research, cybersecurity frameworks and environmental R & D.

ENVIRONMENT:

Since climate action gained traction in 1970s, US has played a significant role. It led the world with its Environmental Protection Agency of 1970, legislated the Clean Air Act, led in pivotal climate research, and laid the basic map for international cooperation via UNFCCC, instrumental in negotiating Paris Agreement 2015.

WHAT’S CHANGED?:

• Trump 2.0 newly exited Paris Agreement.
• EPA 2009 conclusion about carbon levels as a danger may be nixed.
• Already, the agency’s nixed almost every pollution regulation.
• It will also revisit pollution standards for cars and trucks.
• Trump’s ‘National Energy Emergency’ will allow drilling on public land.
• DOGE’s sacked entire agencies tasked with environmental protection, disbanded enforcement teams that track violations.
• The impact on Great Lakes risks drinking water quality maintenance to over 40 million people in US and Canada.
• DOGE has sacked EPA lawyers allowing worst polluters (factory runoff) free rein.
• Trump is considering overturning EPA’s 2009 conclusion that CO2 pollution endangers human health and welfare, dismantling the very justification for pollution control.

WHY IT MATTERS:

• At this rate, America is well set to rapidly lose progress it has made to clean its air, rivers, and environment.
• American cities and natural habitats will return to smoggy skies, polluted rivers, toxic waste and factory runoff.
• This will be compounded by a worsening climate crisis.
• It will fuel heatwaves, fires and floods, with devasting impact on American’s health and livelihood, cities, infra, flora and fauna.

UNIVERSITIES:

Access to higher education has been a nation-defining American goal. That’s why the GI Bill sent vets to college after WWII. Working class and first-gen students to this day describe going to college as an achievement in itself. US govts have traditionally seen support for higher ed delivering objects such as research leadership, workforce productivity, and home ownership in America.

WHAT’S CHANGED?:

• Trump, Vance and Musk are upending this traditional American esteem for universities.
• Musk thinks “too people spend four years in college, accumulate a ton of debt, and don’t have useful skills they can apply afterwards.”
• Vance said “universities are the enemy.”
• Universities coping with cancelled federal contracts and funding cuts, including N1H caps, means labs closing, hiring freezes and chills, students getting “unaccepted”.
• As a telling example, University of Pennsylvania is cutting graduate admissions to its medical schools by 35%.

WHY IT MATTERS:

• In the short term, there will be fewer scholarships, and less research.
• Teachers will see class sizes increase.
• Over the long term, if universities lose their lustre –from R & D to entrepreneurship — American global leadership itself will be under threat.
• As will be the upward mobility in which America takes so much pride.
• Access to good colleges has been the primary American antidote to “artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth.”

FREE SPEECH:

The carefully chosen language of the First Amendment guarantees everything from the right to protest peacefully in public areas to the right to have a free press. Trump 2.0 does not, de jure, have a quarrel with this. But in its actions, something different is cooking.

WHAT’S CHANGED?:

• Now all colleges, schools and universities are looking at the threat of losing their federal funding if they are found to have allowed “illegal protests.”
• Even American students will be permanently expelled, or depending on the crime, arrested, Trump has said.
• News organizations are being punished for language and stories that don’t find favor with the administration.
• AP found itself blocked from an Oval Office event and other press meets when it didn’t fall in with Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
• Across govt, there is now heavy policing of the language of “gender ideology.”
• Pentagon is pulling books off school libraries for review, including a picture book about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a book by Julianne Moore about a girl with freckles.
• Ghosts of McCarthyism are in conversation now.

WHY IT MATTERS:

• Without free speech and free speech, America would be China, wouldn’t it?
• Weakening of free speech cuts both individual and collective potentials of America.
• It will also make a sharp, deep dent on Brand America worldwide.