‘Big changes in 100 days’
Republican Donald Trump, who defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the election yesterday to become what he said would be the president of all Americans, pledged to bring sweeping changes to the United States within 100 days, while his victory was only cautiously welcomed by world leaders and US allies.
The 70-year-old Manhattan real-estate mogul, who has never held elected office, has long promised that “change will begin my first day in office”.
“We’re going to get to work immediately for the American people, and we’re going to be doing a job that, hopefully, you will be so proud of,” he said in his victory speech in the early hours of yesterday.
The president-elect spelled out his plan to “Make America Great Again” during his first 100 days in office in a document titled “Contract with the American Voter”.
The laundry list of ideas was unveiled on October 22 in Trump’s own “Gettysburg Address”, delivered at the site where Abraham Lincoln made his famous speech of the same name intended to unite a divided nation during the US Civil War in 1863.
Trump promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in his first few days in office.
Post-election messages mounted from across Asia as leaders considered the new American political reality.
China’s President Xi Jinping sent congratulations to Trump, saying he looked forward to working with him, state broadcaster CCTV reported yesterday.
“I highly value China-US relations, and look forward to working together with you, and holding fast to mutual respect and non-conflict, non-confrontation,” the channel quoted Xi as saying in its nightly national broadcast.
As the world’s two largest economies, China and the US have an important responsibility to safeguard world peace and stability, and promote global prosperity, it quoted him as saying.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reacted to Trump’s victory by insisting that his country and the US were “unshakeable allies”.
From Asean, the Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha congratulated Trump and hoped their respective bilateral relations with the US would not change.
President Joko Widodo said he remained optimistic about relations with the US under a Trump presidency, but people in the world’s biggest Muslim country Indonesia said they were afraid of more war due to his anti-Muslim attitude.
Meanwhile, another traditional US rival, Russia’s autocratic leader Vladimir Putin, offered warm congratulations and seized on the opportunity to urge Trump to help him get “US-Russia relations out of their critical condition”.
Marking a different tone, EU leaders Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker invited the president-elect to an EU-US summit at his “earliest convenience” to seek reassurances about trans-Atlantic ties.
Meanwhile, Nato head Jens Stoltenberg warned Trump, who spoke during the campaign of forcing US allies take a bigger share of the Western security burden, that “US leadership is more important than ever”.
Trump openly courted Putin during the race, called US support for Nato allies in Europe into question, and suggested that South Korea and Japan should develop their own nuclear weapons.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated Trump on winning the presidency yesterday and called him a true friend of the state of Israel. “President-elect Trump is a true friend of the state of Israel, and I look forward to working with him to advance security, stability and peace in our region,” the right-wing premier said. “The iron-clad bond between the United States and Israel is rooted in shared values, buttressed by shared interests and driven by a shared destiny,” he added.
Some of the most enthusiastic support for Trump came from far-right and nationalist politicians in Europe such as French opposition figure Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini of Italy’s Northern League and British Euro-sceptic Nigel Farage.
The billionaire has promised to “begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back”.
He would also “suspend immigration from terror-prone regions” and carry out “extreme vetting” of those seeking to enter the US.
