Trump declares start of ‘golden age of America’ after he is sworn in as 47th US President

WASHINGTON – Mr Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th United States President amid widespread expectations that he would reshape America with a far-reaching domestic and foreign policy agenda.

Sunny but sub-zero weather forced his Jan 20 swearing-in ceremony indoors to the Capitol Rotunda and the traditional pomp-filled inaugural parade was replaced by an event at a downtown sports arena.

The last time the weather intervened was when president Ronald Reagan was sworn in for a second time in 1985, a happy parallel with a Republican leader celebrated as one of the greats by party orthodoxy.

The “golden age of America begins right now”, he said in his inaugural address.

“From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world,” he said.

At 78, Mr Trump became the oldest president to take office. His journey to the White House was paved with a win in the electoral college as well as the popular vote in the Nov 5 election, after having escaped two assassination attempts. 

Twice impeached in his first term (2017-2021), he is the only US president to enter office with criminal indictments.

At the start of his campaign in 2023, he was arrested, fingerprinted and photographed over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

His “mugshot” picture became an early hit with his Make America Great Again movement, which is widely anticipating that he will live up to his promise to fix America first and eschew wars abroad.

He comes to office with his Republican Party gaining a majority in both houses of Congress and a conservative-dominated Supreme Court to support his populist and nationalistic agenda. Unlike his first term, his second did not begin with widespread activist protests in the capital.

He was expected to get down to business soon after taking the oath, signing off on a flurry of executive orders and directives to jumpstart key priorities. As many as 200 executive orders have been readied for his initials in his first week in office, US media reported.

One decision in particular will ripple across the world.

His promise to impose tariffs on trading partners – partly to pressure them to accept deals on issues such as trade deficits, illegal immigration and drug trafficking – could range from targeted measures on critical sectors and industries to across-the-board taxes on all US imports. 

Mr Trump has declared a national emergency on the southern border. Large-scale deportations of illegal immigrants are being anticipated, with uncertainty over how that will affect labour shortages and inflation.

He is also expected to withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord and

expand oil and gas drilling

. In addition, he is likely to undo Biden-era subsidies for renewable energy and remove consumer tax credits for electric vehicles.

Policies encouraging diversity and inclusion (DEI) in the federal workforce will also be wound down.

Such DEI policies were discontinued at several businesses such as McDonald’s, Ford and Walmart weeks before his arrival.

Mr Trump and his Cabinet believe that the US is in need of massive transformation, and his critics are bracing themselves for upheaval and uncertainties.

“Tomorrow at noon, the curtain closes on four long years of American decline, and we begin a brand new day of American strength and prosperity, dignity and pride,” he said in his pre-inauguration rally.

Aside from his family members and prospective Cabinet officials, America’s tech elite – Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai and OpenAI’s Sam Altman – occupied prime seats at his swearing-in.

TikTok’s Chew Shou Zi

was also among those who found favour for the limited seats at the Capitol Rotunda, which has space for only about 600 people. 

A day before he was inaugurated, Mr Trump

enabled the resumption of TikTok

, which briefly went dark in response to a ban on national security grounds.

He has proposed that the US take a 50 per cent stake in the popular social media platform to satisfy

the law requiring the Chinese-owned app to divest its US operations

.

Former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama came for the inauguration, but were reportedly skipping the traditional lunch with the newly-inaugurated Mr Trump.

His first-time vice-president Mike Pence, with whom Mr Trump has strained relations since he was the target of a pro-Trump mob during the Jan 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riots, also turned up. 

Asia’s richest man, Mr Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of India’s biggest conglomerate Reliance Industries, was also in the audience.

Conspicuously missing was former first lady Michelle Obama, who had levelled trenchant criticism of Mr Trump’s candidacy during his election campaign, and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose antagonism for the President dates back to his first term.

At least 20 congressional representatives also chose not to attend for both political and personal reasons. 

China’s Vice-President Han Zheng

attended on behalf of President Xi Jinping. Tense relations between the two major powers will be the biggest geopolitical challenge that Mr Trump will have to navigate during his term. 

Other world leaders who attended in person included Argentina’s President Javier Milei and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

In

their congratulatory letters

, Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Prime Minister Lawrence Wong noted the robust trade, business and military ties between the two countries while extending hopes that Mr Trump would continue to uphold America’s global leadership.

A formal farewell was to be held for outgoing president Joe Biden.

Mr Trump, who has a crypto-friendly agenda, also found time to promote on

his social media meme coins

bearing his own name and that of his wife Melania. While US stock markets were closed on account of a public holiday, Bitcoin scaled a new high.

His second term is also likely to feature acrimony with the bureaucracy. Scores of senior career diplomats resigned on his first day in office after receiving instructions from the White House. 

It is also likely to reignite culture wars with his pledge to end “wokeness” in higher education and the appointment of three prominent artists as “ambassadors” to reshape Hollywood. 

A new AP poll released to coincide with his inauguration, however, found that fewer than half of Americans support many of his signature policies like new tariffs, expanding oil drilling and pulling out of the Paris accord.