Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 US presidential election brought back memories of the traumatic win of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in 2022.
Just as it was unthinkable for another Marcos to step back into Malacañang, it was unthinkable for Trump to step back into the White House, especially given his blustering performance during his first term (2016 to 2020), the January 6, 2021 insurrection he instigated, and his criminal conviction since then.
Democrats are aghast and despairing, just as the Kakampinks were in 2022. For sure, years will be spent trying to untangle what had just happened. But in the meantime, Trump’s win will pose many new challenges not just for the US but also the rest of the world — including the Philippines.
Back in 2016, when Trump won his first term, I wrote about the possible implications for the Philippines. I warned that he might tighten immigration policies at the expense of Filipinos; that his inward-looking economic policies might hurt Philippine exports, investments, and specifically the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry; and that US climate change commitments may be stymied at the expense of countries most at risk to climate change, notably the Philippines.
All of these have panned out to a certain extent. Undocumented Filipino migrants faced huge risks of arrest and deportation. Philippine-based BPO firms looked to other sources of growth amid Trump’s threat to punish firms outsourcing some of their functions. The trade war with China did present a silver lining for developing Asia, but it was Vietnam that benefitted, not us. And the US did pull out of the 2015 Paris Agreement, dealing a significant blow to the global fight against climate change.
Despite all these, one might say that we avoided the worst effects of the first Trump presidency. But I’m not sure we can say the same with the second. Whereas Trump started off as a bumbling nincompoop in his first term, this time he and his ilk are much more systematic and organized.
For all intents and purposes, the US is set to become a lot more authoritarian in the next 4 years. Everyone is expecting Trump to dismantle the last remaining guardrails of US democracy, what with the opportunity to appoint two new conservative Supreme Court justices (making sure Trump gets a free pass on almost everything he does), the Republicans’ control of both the House and the Senate, and Project 2025 which is a blueprint for filling the US bureaucracy with supporters, cronies, and lackeys.
If you need further information about the US descent to authoritarianism, I suggest you read How Democracies Die, The Fifth Risk, Identity, and The Death of Truth. These are just some of the books I’ve been rereading in the run-up to the 2024 US polls.
Economic and foreign policies
As for Trump’s economic policies, he may push through with some of the harrowing policies he floated, such as the 10-20% across-the-board tariff increase for all imports going to the US, as well as a 60% tariff on imports coming from China. This spells not just increased economic hardships on Americans (which is ironic because inflation was a sticking point that led voters to shun Kamala Harris), but also reduced trade opportunities for businesses in other countries.
Latest trade statistics show that in 2023 the US received 15.7% of all Philippine exports and was the origin of 6.7% of all our imports. That makes the US the single biggest destination of our exports as well as the fourth biggest source of our imports. We exported more to the US than we imported from them, and the difference (also called the bilateral trade surplus) was about $3.13 billion. That’s not a terribly huge amount, but if Trump pushes through with his tariffs then we might inevitably feel the pinch.
As for foreign policy, there remains a huge question mark whether or not Trump will maintain US support for the Philippines’ struggles in the West Philippine Sea against China. In November 2022, Vice President Kamala Harris herself visited the Philippines “to reaffirm the US commitment to the defense alliance with the Philippines and strengthen our economic relationship.” She’s touted as the “highest-ranking US official ever to visit Palawan,” which is near Spratlys, where a handful of reefs are being controlled by China.
In March 2024, there was also a Presidential Trade and Investment Mission to the Philippines, where Gina Raimondo, the US Secretary of Commerce, led a 22-person delegation and touted $1 billion worth of “recently-completed or anticipated US investments.” Such investments and pledges were expected to create “educational and career opportunities” for millions of Filipinos.
Will the second Trump administration show a similar level of commitment to the Philippine economic and defense partnership as did the Biden administration? I doubt. But let’s see.
Duterte 2.0?
Finally, I’m worried that Trump’s return to the presidency suggests that the Dutertes might pull off something similar and return to Malacañang by 2028 – God forbid.
Democrats were blindsided and lulled into complacency by the notion that maybe — just maybe — the American people learned their lessons and will never allow Trump to set foot in the White House again. But how wrong they were.
Exit polls showed that Trump voters voted on issues centering on the economy and immigration, and Kamala Harris was too much associated with the Biden administration, so much so that Trump appeared to be the symbol of change — in spite of all the bad things associated with him.
I’m afraid that, here at home, the Dutertes’ support base is still quite strong, and that the Dutertes have a huge chance of rallying that support in the run-up to the 2028 presidential polls. Maybe that’s also the reason the Marcos government, including allies in Congress, are so bent on destroying the name of Duterte, what with all the hearings on the drug war, extrajudicial killings, and Vice President Sara Duterte’s budget mismanagement.
If the Dutertes and their allies are arrested by the International Criminal Court soon, that might even paint them as heroes or martyrs — and the Dutertes might use that to further galvanize support from their base.
Trump’s 2024 win is part and parcel of a global trend toward authoritarianism and populism. And in the Philippines, that might mean we haven’t seen the last of the Dutertes. That’s a scary prospect indeed. We can still avoid this fate, but we need to be taking steps now. – Rappler.com
JC Punongbayan, PhD is an assistant professor at the UP School of Economics and the author of False Nostalgia: The Marcos “Golden Age” Myths and How to Debunk Them. In 2024, he received The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Award for economics. Follow him on Instagram (@jcpunongbayan) and Usapang Econ Podcast.