Wasting No Time .... Seriously!

"With the faith in each other and the faith in God, we will get the job done."
"We will prove worthy of this moment in history. And I think it may very well be a great moment in history."
U.S. President Donald J. Trump

Within hours of taking the oath of office, new President Donald Trump signed his first executive order in the Oval Office while the press looked on.   Evan Vucci/AP

"In one of his first acts as president, President Trump made it harder for Americans to afford a mortgage. Working class Americans, struggling Americans — now it's harder for them to get a mortgage." 
"It only took an hour for those populist words delivered on the steps of the Capitol to ring hollow."
Senator Chuck Schumer 

"Visitors to whitehouse.gov Friday afternoon noticed some immediate changes. Pages on climate change, LGBT issues, civil rights, and health care, have been replaced with pages on an "America First Energy Plan," "America First Foreign Policy," "Bringing Back Jobs and Growth," and "Standing Up For Our Law Enforcement Community"."
National Public Radio 

"It's a very disappointing outcome [postponement of a hearing challenging a Texas voter ID law discriminating against Latina and African-American voters]."
"This case has been in the courts for the better part of four years, and the people of Texas deserve an expeditious recovery of their constitutional rights."
Myrna Perez, Director, Voting Rights and Elections Project, Brennan Center for Justice, Texas

Just think: it's early days, and the new administration is already hard at work, warming up to its task of reversing just about everything and anything that the earlier administration of Barack Obama had instituted. This, of course, is not solely peculiar to the United States. That a Republican administration sets about methodically and expeditiously wiping out the decision-making and choices of a Democratic administration.

America's next door, northern neighbour has just recently undergone the very same transformation. When the new Liberal government took office, most of its Conservative predecessors' legislation swiftly came undone. A rather unseemly haste and one born of completely ideological perspectives. Irritating no end to some, and perfectly acceptable to others. That's on the domestic front, of course. And, of course, anything that Canada does hasn't the repercussion-value of what the United States undertakes in its impact on the international scene.

For President Trump, the businessman-cum-politician, that China came away with a trade surplus with the U.S. of $366-billion in 2015 represents an urgent issue to be addressed as soon as possible. Unlike addressing domestic legislation, this one will take a little bit of time, and it is entirely doubtful whether it will be met with any degree of success. But there's a showdown in the near future, one that already has Beijing growling about Taiwan's status with a new American administration that will view it as sovereign.

Americans themselves hardly know how to parse their new president's chummy view of Russia and its redoubtable strongman. Clearly Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin share some personal characteristics. In appraising one another they find much in common and perhaps some manner of accommodation will eventually present itself, melting the frosty atmosphere that has prevailed to date. How President Trump will address President Putin's pugnacity and the Kremlin's Ukraine adventure will be interesting, much less NATO's presence in the Baltic states.

As for President Trump's casual critique of German Chancellor Angela Merkel as a world leader whose ill-advised comforting of millions of Muslim refugees fleeing conflict in Syria, and millions more seeking haven from poverty in Africa, along with his sneering dismissal of the European Union, and his prediction relating to its imminent collapse as other dissatisfied members join Great Britain in its Brexit move, his frank appraisals certainly cannot be much appreciated by their recipients.

Americans themselves cannot quite seem to believe what they have wrought. On Inauguration Friday, according to Dan Stessel of the Regional transportation office in Washington, the Metro logged just over 470,000 trips using the rail system. Disturbingly, hugely so, regional transportation officials on Sunday noted that 1,001,616 trips were logged, on the day of the mass protests in Washington where women and their supporters from across the United States rallied to protest the social reversals their new president is embarking upon.

Washington, DC

Photo by Tamara Warren / The Verge