I will tell you what I think. I think that this entire act of Trump and his intent to “drain the swamp” is just a slick move to swap out one crew of elites – those Democrat bigwigs – for his own handpicked posse, reshaping the power game rather than blowing it up. And assuming this was his grand plan all along, let us just breeze through this whole affair to assess his scorecard, understand if he is pulling it off well, and what could be the ripple effect of this on global politics, especially for a place like India.
What makes us think that?
First off, could Trump’s whole deal be about kicking out the old guard and installing his own? It is not a crazy thought. Look at his second term moves: his cabinet is now stacked with loyalists like Pete Hegseth for Defence and Stephen Miran running the economic show. These are not just random picks; they’re Trump’s ride-or-die crew. And they have replaced the establishment types he has been railing against forever. Mar-a-Lago has turned into this pavilion where billionaires like Jeff Bezos and pre-drama-Elon Musk cozy up and toss around influence. Axios calls it a new power centre, and Saginaw County Republicans are hyping how Trump has got MAGA loyalists running Congress, sidelining the old-school “RINOs” (Republicans in name only).
Trump is chaotic, no questions there. But this flip-flop with tariffs, spat with Musk, or love-hate with Putin, are they just his signature TACO-brand bedlam? Or do they cover something else, and make us miss the forest for the trees? Trump has axed 260,000 federal workers (that is 12% of the bureaucracy!) through that DOGE thing. Observers across social media think that he is stacking the swamp with his own cronies, not draining it. If that indeed is the case, then DOGE slogan should have been “I clean house, but with my people”.
Is he building a Trump-branded power structure? Maybe it is less a plan and more him rolling with what works? It looks like it is half-intentional, and half just Trump’s vibe of wanting total control.
How is that looking?
If we buy that replacing the democrat-aligned elites was the goal, how is his report card?
On controlling political institutions, he is killing it. MAGA has taken over the GOP, with Congress looking like a Trump fan club. His cabinet, worth $11 billion, is all about loyalty, from Miran’s tariff talk to Bessent at Treasury. But courts and bureaucrats are pushing back hard, and only $175 billion of Musk’s promised $2 trillion in DOGE cuts came through. Let us give him a 70% for bureaucratic overhaul.
The firings shook things up, true. But the chaos, especially in terms of supply chain snags and pissed-off civil servants, well, that screams sloppy execution. On corporate influence, he is quite an ace. But Mar-a-Lago as the new Silicon-Valley-meets-Wall-Street looks slightly dented with the Musk fallout and cronyism vibes. Two bad out of three, so maybe a 40% there is generous.
Policy-wise, it is a quite shaky. Tariffs, straight out of Miran’s playbook, are shaking up global trade. But that deficit bill, and Ukraine aid feel like swampy U-turns. His base? They’re split. A lot of them feel betrayed. A 40% there as well.
What would be its impact?
Out from ranking and rating, let us think about the impact that this swapping of elites and Trump’s apparent trials of building a new swamp on the rest of the globe.
His tariff game is hitting everyone. Like for India, that is a potential $5.76 billion export hit, with a special hammering reserved for textiles and IT (which sends 55% of its tech exports to the US). While there is no definite count to the job loss, but there is going to be a considerable pain there. Countries like Brazil, or the EU, are retaliating, risking a trade war that could affect global markets. The IMF is already waving red flags. They are saying that tariffs could impact US GDP, and that is going to have ripple effects across all places where manufacturing dreams stand on slightly shaky ground.
Should Globalists worry?
Geopolitically, Trump’s new elite is making waves. His “America First” crew doesn’t have long-term focus on alliances like NATO or the Quad. India’s renewed dance with Russia (with China added on the floor) is also a result of the same. But while the US has bigger things to consider, especially in terms of global dominance etc, smaller states like Hungary or Argentina do not. And hence the idea of swapping a set of elites for one’s choice might tempt such states to copy the same and spark a domino effect.
That then becomes a big worry for the globalists. Trump’s elite swap makes the US more insular, maybe even weaker in their eyes. Couple that up with the fact that if his tariffs backfire, inflation hits the market. That would impact the Wall Street, and global trust in the US would take a hit. There is this silent buzz already about de-dollarization, with BRICS countries hoarding gold. The globe has become so interconnected over the decades that Trump’s new elite, in their effort to run the show could well be pushing towards fractured global cooperation (that which has benefitted the US for so long), leaving countries like India, or the EU scrambling to adapt.
Under that light, if Trump’s plan was to swap elites, he has reshaped the power structure, yes. And if that wasn’t the plan, then he has tripped over his own chaos. Whichever way you look, globally this could look like the coming of a mess: protracted trade wars, strained alliances, and a push for populism that could shake up a lot of players, medium or small. Bad news for the globalists; not that bad for the proponents of multipolarity. Looks like they are reorganising quickly to weather the storm.
