Trumping the Melting Pot
What a Second Trump Term Spells for the Philippines
by Carlos Manuel Eusoya and Luisa Gabriela Jarabe
A déjà vu haunts the United States of America, the same nostalgic storm that grappled the Philippines two years ago — elections overtaken by a controversial populist figure with a promise of a “return to greatness,” while the embers of progress are left to cool in the shadows.
Last November 5, the world held its breath as the United States electorate cast their votes for a high-stakes election dictating the global superpower’s next moves in key national and global geopolitical issues. For the first time in history books, America has chosen a convicted felon for its 47th president, welcoming back a candidate whose campaign swelled with the chilling edges of anti-women, anti-minority, white supremacist, and fascist propaganda.
Donald Trump reclaimed his throne back in the White House through both the popular vote and the US electoral college system. After clinching Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the electoral tides turned in his favor ultimately pushing him to the 270 mark with 300 electoral votes. As of writing, Arizona is still being counted but is also poised to fall under the Republican party’s hands, a sweeping victory that resounds Trump’s war cry of “America First.”
As the conservative wave crests and reaches alarming new heights, its undertow pulls the Philippines deeper. With two wars in Ukraine and Palestine, brewing tensions with China, and precarious relationships with the Global South, Trump’s erratic diplomacy will reshape the US-maintained status quo in the rest of the world. With the national government still struggling to forge a genuine independent foreign policy, and Bongbong Marcos parroting Trump’s lack of international platforms, the Philippines finds itself in the crosshairs of confrontations in the West Philippine Sea and greater pressures from Western imperialist tendencies.
Imperialist Stakes of America’s Ballot
Every vote casted in the recent elections has a stake in the imperialist game that the US is playing in its global chessboard. And when it comes to inconsistent moves, Trump takes it to the extremes. He has promised to end the Russia-Ukraine war in less than 24 hours, broker peace in the Gaza Strip, and make Taiwan pay its dues for US military protection. Yet, these populist words are half-baked and empty promises — the hollow words of a salesman who sells storms as rainbows.
Contrary to his campaign persona, Trump is a loyal patron and staunch supporter of the military-industrial complex. He echoes the same sentiments he made in his first term: the US must flex its might, militarily and economically, or risk China stealing its crown of global hegemony.
His foreign policy has been described as transactional, meaning allies are only worth as much as the money they lay on the dining table.
True to his nature as a former celebrity businessman, he condemned the aid given to Ukraine, saying that Europe and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) should bear the brunt of Kyiv’s economic burden. Under a Trump presidency, Palestine and Lebanon will be left alone in Israel’s merciless grip as the US will continue to tolerate their war crimes, while Taiwan’s dreams for independence will be tethered to their willingness to pay for US support. Devoid of any interest towards peace, Trump only has his eyes set on transactionalism. Already embodying the imperialist characteristic of a US president, the world’s most vulnerable states are a deck of cards to reshuffle, draw from, to play in his profit-incentivized hand.
“Notwithstanding leadership change, the United States’ imperial interests in Asia Pacific and elsewhere in the world remain. Its military — industrial complex compels it to intervene and occupy more territories to amass wealth and control capital,” Carl Marc Ramota, UP Faculty Regent and Assistant Professor specializing in Global Politics, emphasized.
Beyond the smoke of guns, bullets, and grenades, Trump has another conflict on his agenda: an economic war against his greatest rival, China. Just like any trade war, this will leave a stinging pain in the pockets of the middle class, including those residing in the Philippines and its neighbors within the regional economic sphere of the Pacific.
Cloaked in a banner of “self-sufficiency,” Trump plans to steepen tariffs on Chinese imports by up to 60 percent and all other non-Chinese nations by twenty. Economists and experts have warned against this policy’s disastrous effects as inflation looms within sight. This will also heighten the burden on domestic consumers in the US as they brace for higher prices needed to offset import costs. Anticipating these ripple effects, the Philippines’ National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) pushed for market diversification and the establishment of more free trade agreements. But the bitter truth is still laid bare — the deep-rooted neocolonialist dependency on the US market will seal the Philippines in its economic coffin.
Even the Earth herself is caught in a more horrifying grip. As it is responsible for 12 percent of the global emissions, the United States has the power to steer climate action by cutting down greenhouse gases.
“The United States’ anticipated retreat from international commitments on climate change, among others, spell a major drawback in much-needed intergovernmental initiatives to realize sustainable development goals,” Ramota added.
Against a bleak industrial backdrop, renewables such as solar and wind have already taken a green foothold in the US soil. But with Trump’s return, the winds find their way back to fossil fuels, with the president-elect’s affection towards oil and natural gas companies rising like stygian factory smoke.
Trump is the same president who threatened to withdraw from the Paris Agreement in 2017, the most important United Nations commitment to tackle climate change by limiting global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius. While he was unable to make his disappointing exit due to a legal restraint, his second term makes the withdrawal within reach. The biggest victims of this fallout are the smaller countries in the Global South including the Philippines, whose emissions are but whispers to the roaring industrial outputs of the giants. For it is these nations that suffer the first-hand effects of climate inactions — their crops wilting, coastal waters rising, and typhoons intensifying as the planet is plunged deeper into turmoil.
Wading the Treacherous Waters of WPS
Perhaps the most urgent question that will haunt the Philippine government post-US elections is the fragile peace it is attempting to maintain in the troubled waters of the West Philippine Sea (WPS). Fundamentally, Trump’s stance against Chinese encroachment in WPS is not so different from incumbent president Joe Biden, albeit with a difference in aggressiveness. So even in the hypothetical scenario of the opposition winning with Vice President Kamala Harris at the helm, the Philippines will still be left as a neocolony of the US’ savior complex, allured with the illusion that America is our Messiah.
Whether it was a victory for the Republicans or Democrats, the outcome is two sides of the same coin. The US poses itself as a shield but is really just a shackle, insofar as America insists on its role as the global police and the Philippines’ alleged guardian. Of course, this is to conceal its deeper motives of utilizing the country’s strategic position as a military fortress in the Pacific and a bait-and-proxy against Chinese plans for dominance, as seen in the Mutual Defense Treaty and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites throughout the country. The Philippines is nothing but a Pacific pawn in their geopolitical chessboard.
The point of departure for Trump then is his strongman personality, with his tariffs and aggressive strategies delivering a provocation for China, offering them more incentive to fight back. The end goal then must not be to choose allegiances between the US or China, both of which are superpowers circling like predators and parasites that feed their appetites on our dependence.
“The United States’ decades old political and economic grip on the Philippines suggests that the party transition will hardly make a dent in foreign relations and policy. From Marcos Sr. to the current dispensation, local bureaucrats will continue to cling to America’s support for survival,” Ramota underscored. Even if it comes with the tradeoffs of appearing antagonistic towards the States, the country has to choose an enlightened and imaginative sense of aggressive neutrality: firmly insisting that it does not kowtow to neither China nor the US.
Golden Ages?
The tense relationship between the Philippines and America with a second Trump administration seems to spell imminent trouble for Filipino immigrants, legal and undocumented alike, residing in the latter. With the Philippines treating its labor force as export produce, Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) are forced into a precarious coin toss between their life or the lives waiting for them back home. Trump’s sharp fangs in his mass deportation plan now categorizes labor exports as a form of crime — a migrant crime — going as far as mobilizing the military if need be.
“Deportations and racist immigration practices have been implemented whether a Democrat or Republican is in power. Perhaps the only difference under Trump is the volume of deportation cases that it will facilitate,” Ramota explained. Even the Philippine Ambassador to the US, Jose Romualdez, seems to side with Trump’s immigrant witch-hunt. Last November 8, Romualdez advised all illegal Filipino immigrants to flee before Trump finds them first.
Trump’s overwhelming victory against Kamala Harris plays a seemingly similar tune as the Philippine’s 2022 elections between major candidates Bongbong Marcos Jr. and Leni Robredo. Both Trump and Marcos Jr. harped on their strong stances on policies, yet delivered no actual tangible procedures that clarify the credibility of their platforms and advocacies. Mere lip service that panders to the interests of the groups that Trump and Marcos align with isolate underrepresented groups even further, coating their words with honeyed promises that effectively blur the lines between a “better” future for some and no future at all for most. The two presidents’ similarities may make it easier for the US to further subjugate the Philippines under America’s tight leash. Pulling and tugging away from China, the globalization of sinophobia may well be culturally ingrained into the minds of the people; looking up at the US as its ultimate savior, not seeing past the smoke of the warships and the blare of the sirens as the country gets dragged into a war between the two economic hegemons.
“The Global South will always be at the losing end of any US government policy, may it be under Republican control or direction of the Democrats. The only difference perhaps is how plunder and genocide are packaged as benevolence to champion democratic ideals on the one hand, and populist aspirations to make America ‘great again’ on the other,” Ramota highlighted.
But what could really be attributed to both Trump’s and Marcos Jr.’s staggering landslide victory is the emotional work utilized in mobilizing their supporters and forming their convictions. Trump, well-associated with his globally famous, Hollywood-level slogan “Make America Great Again,” has captured the hearts and minds of America’s Republicans and die-hard nationalists alike through the simple promise of bringing back the crown to the Global North’s ringleader. In similar fashion, the mere mention of the Marcos name and brand brings polarized reactions among the Filipino people: one of the consequences of the disinformation of the “great contributions” during Marcos Sr.’s time, and another for the great horrors suffered and endured during the same tyrannical rule — or the “Golden Era of the Philippines,” as they say. Despite the divide between both populations, the role of misinformation and disinformation remains steady in revising the Martial Law’s atrocities and reframing Trump’s past injustices.
Today’s era contends with geopolitical skirmishes, territorial disputes, issues with the military-industrial complex, global carbon emissions, sentiments against immigrants and minorities, and the growing disinformation empowered by populist and fascist leaders. Trump victoriously coming out of the 2024 elections shook the global community to the core — proving once more that the US’’ influence goes beyond geographical borders.
The brewing storm that Trump so-carefully crafted at the tip of his fingers approaches Filipino waters, its imminent clouds indistinguishable from the booming shadows of American warships’ smoke. Perhaps only with the sound of docked ships and the smell of gunpowder will realization settle in, when war is at the country’s shores. A second Trump administration is never truly isolated from the wars of the world: perhaps, even the wind that reignites the flames to burn and consume more than it already has. Will this burning flame keep a bright road alight, or will it scorch those along its path? Realization never has to arrive when the dust settles and the embers of a fight cool down.
US voters lit a fuse in the White House and now the rest of the world is set ablaze — forced to endure the scorching infernos of an imperialist empire. As they burn, its neocolony, the Philippines, burns with them. In times of grave peril, it is up to the Filipino people’s ignition of their imagination to see beyond the tug-of-war between the US and China’s fight for complete global hegemony: to push for a true independent foreign policy, both in writing and in firm practice. Until then, the fire that once kindled the melting pot slowly grows into an all-consuming force ready to burn the world in its path.
