We asked a political expert what a Trump presidency would be like

A year ago, Donald Trump announced his bid for the presidency of the United States. He gave an hour long speech that no American of my generation, or any generation above me, will ever forget. To many pundits, this seemed to be a carnival ride that was destined to collapse before it even started running. But, as seems so be the case with all predictions this year, they were wrong, and we now have Mr Trump standing as the Republican nominee for president.

Those who didn’t take what he was saying seriously before are now forced to. This could be the man who is the face of the U.S for the next four years. The man who is negotiating with foreign leaders, delivering the State of the Union Address, and making very serious decisions regarding military and special forces.

So, in light of reality, let’s take his proposals and rhetoric seriously, and dig deeper into what he plans to do.

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties. He worked as special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and editor of the political magazine Inquiry. He writes regularly for leading publications such as Fortune magazine, National Interest, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Times.

We asked him to comment on some of Trump’s main ideas so far and to describe what his presidency would look like in practice.

In the area of foreign policy, and more specifically, the Middle East, how do you think the policy of the United States would change towards the area under Trump?

Well anything we say about a Trump presidency is a guess, of course. This is a man who has said a lot of things, has no governing experience, and does not appear to have ever had public policy interests. He has opinions, but translating those into policy… good luck. So I throw that out, anything we say is speculation.

He certainly appears to be more skeptical of nation building, of intervention, than either Obama or Bush, and certainly less so than Hillary Clinton. That would be the rhetoric. He’s been critical of Iraq, critical of Libya. Now in practice it’s not clear at the time he was as much against these as he’s made himself out to be. But I suspect he recognizes these are a mess. So I think there would be less of it. On the other hand he’s played the macho card and talked about bombing and this, that, and the other, so he might want to be tough where we’re already involved like ISIS, but try not to do anything new like a campaign in Afghanistan or somewhere else.

Do you see that type of policy as beneficial and a step forward for the US?

I think anyone coming in and recognizing we should be less interventionist and we should be more skeptical of promises of Nirvana and cake walks, is a good thing. We’ve had, ever since 9/11, we’ve been at war, and the consequences haven’t been good. Blowing up Iraq, blowing up Libya, trying to nation build in Afghanistan, at this stage we’re talking about almost 15 years, these have not been good experiences. So any hesitation, any kind of re-thinking, strikes me as being quite useful. So I hope that that would be one benefit we would see.

Do you think people get misled by his rhetoric into thinking they’d be more safe domestically?

Well, the question is, to some degree, it’s not that he’s misled them, it’s that people have an illusion of what will make them safe. To my mind, the problem of saying “I don’t want to let any Muslims in” in a sense he’s not misleading them, but the problem is that’s not a policy that, in my view, makes any sense in keeping America more safe. So what I would say is that I don’t believe that, in fact, the policies he articulating would make us more safe. So if people are responding to him that way, I think they’re very much mistaken.

Do you see the Muslim ban proposal as something legitimate, national security wise, and worthy of discussion?

No, there are a lot of good arguments to be made about if you want to be extra careful when you’re bringing in people from Syria but the Constitution is not a suicide pact, so I don’t think one has to say “oh there’s nothing to be done.” But you don’t want to demonize an entire people, an entire religion, because there are some very nasty people there. So I think the challenge is how do you remain true to your values? This is a country that has always accepted the oppressed. I visited Zarqawi refugee camp in Jordan and something like 80,000 Syrians are there. These are people desperate to escape horrid violence just over the border. So the question is how do you respond to that in a compassionate fashion, while also taking security into account. That’s not an easy debate. We’re going to have disagreements. But we need to have that debate and it’s not a debate where you say “no Muslim’s come.” That just strikes me as not an answer, and is not going to make us safer.

Pivoting to Asia, what do you make of Trump’s comments about China in general? Going off his rhetoric so far, which is pretty much all we have to go off of, how do you see his policies towards China affecting the US-Chinese relationship?

Well, I think there are two parts to it and they’re different. In trade, it certainly sounds like the economic relationship will become more contentious. I mean Trump really does seem ready to start a trade war and violate all sorts of trade treaties. He’s talked about 45 percent tariff or something, which would violate the World Trade Organization rules. We legally can’t do that sort of thing. He certainly is talking in ways that would suggest trade war.

On the other hand, on the security side, he seems to be more cautious. I think we see that also with Russia. In contrast I think particularly among neoconservatives and sort of hawkish republicans, he’s not interested in having military confrontations with these important countries. So, it’s an odd mix. You can really stir things up if you start a trade war and the Chinese are not just going to give in. I worry I hear rhetoric like his which seems to assume all we have to do is make demands, and the rest of the world will fall into line. And that’s not the rest of the world I find when I travel. On the other hand, I’d be happy to have somebody who looks at great powers who have nuclear weapons and says “Lets try not to have contentious relationship on military issues” because, we are a stronger power, but these are not people you want to get into any serious military issues with.

What do you make of the idea of deporting millions of illegal immigrants out of the country? Do you think it’s feasible?

Well, I can’t imagine any American who really believes you’re going to drag, the estimate is around 12 million people here illegally, out of the country, it’s inconceivable. These are people who are kind of embedded in the US. Trying to do that, people would very quickly say “oh my goodness, what are we doing.” The problem here is that this issue raises such passions, and I think people are responding as much to his rhetoric as to his promises, in a sense he’ll do something, and I’m not sure they really believe he’ll do what he promises to do. Will he build a wall? Will he deport them all? I think there’s an element of far more sense that we want someone to do something and listen to us. And these people aren’t racists and bigots because they care about this stuff. You have to find a way to address them and find a way we can come to a compromise and working relationship where we can come together.

Would you be optimistic if Trump won the presidency?

I have no clue, if you vested this man with the power of the presidency, what he would do. I do think there’s a reason to be nervous. Someone who rises on the populist arguments, who seems to be the authoritarian side of him, all of this might be play-acting. But there’s enough of it where I’d be very serious saying everyone who cares about liberty would have to be vigilante. There are a lot of institutions that can hold a president in check, which means Congress will actually have to act and be careful and watch and weary. That means the courts and press matter. So I would say if he took the oath of office is, let us hope for the best. And eventually we’ll look back and see what he represented.