Trump Won- What’s Next?

After nearly two years of campaigning for both parties, the 2024 presidential election is finally over. Although votes are still being counted days later, the election was called for Donald Trump earlier than possibly anyone expected. Nearly every poll and aggregator claimed the election was extremely close — Nate Silver, statistician and founder of poll-aggregation site 538, claimed to have run 80,000 simulations on his forecasting model and found the results to be “literally closer than a coin flip” with Harris having a 50.015% chance to win. Journalists and citizens alike bemoaned a possible repeat of the 2000 election, with drawn-out discourse over the true winner and possible recounts.

Nevertheless, the results were clear—and they were as surprising as they were devastating to Democrats.

Not only did Trump win the electoral college, including all of the “tipping point” swing states (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia), but he beat the odds and took the popular vote as well.

Furthermore, nearly every state had a noticeable shift towards the Republican Party in its voter results, with California and New York holding the strongest shift at 12%.

No bones about it — it was a blowout, the belated “red wave” that conservatives had promised in 2022.

Both candidates made unique speeches Wednesday touching on their top issues.

Kamala Harris’ speech focused on the future of American democracy, which was the top polled voting issue for Democrats this election. Harris was sure to point out that “A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results.” This is no doubt referring to the attack on the Capitol in 2021 spurred on by Trump’s insistence that the 2020 election had been stolen. Though she conceded that America may well be “entering a dark time”, Harris reassured voters that “the light of America’s promise” would endure.

Trump’s speech started out a bit differently. “We have a country that needs help, and it needs help very badly,” Trump said at a rally in Florida Wednesday morning. “We’re going to fix our borders, we’re going to fix everything about our country.” The language leaned towards an image of an America that had been thoroughly broken, and had even been taken over by foreign, un-American entities: “This will forever be remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country.” Although Trump claimed “It’s time to put the divisions of the past four years behind us,” he may not have been referring to anyone on the left at all–in the same speech, he praised Vice President elect JD Vance for voyaging “into the enemy camp” for Vance’s interviews on CNN and MSNBC.

It’s hard to reconcile a supposed message of unity with this and Trump’s vague, often ominous promise to purge “the enemy from within”. So, what’s next for America in 2025? The most talked-about potential policy change this week is Trump’s proposed tariffs on all foreign goods. The current plan is to place tariffs up to 60% on goods imported from China, and a universal tariff of 10% or more on all other imports. Though tariffs are meant to encourage consumers to buy products made in their home country, America has offloaded so much of its manufacturing that consumers may just have to deal with the increased prices.

Many American manufacturers also use parts and materials imported from other countries, so even domestic products will likely see a price increase. Even those who voted for Trump are reportedly feeling uneasy about what this means for their personal finances. While the economy was the issue that likely pushed Trump over the top in this election, many liberals are more concerned with “Project 2025” a game plan written by some of those closest to Trump’s administra-tion that could prove devastating to social and economic progr-essivism in the United States. Among the proposed policies are a move towards a national ban on abortion, legislation aimed at restricting birth control options, cutting environmental regulations drastically, removing legal protections for all LGBT+ people, dis-mantling federal programs like Medi-care and Medicaid, and even getting rid of the Department of Ed-ucation altogether. The plan could cripple the working class by destroying America’s social safety net, and make the country an extremely dangerous place for women and minorities. And jud-ging from Google search result trends, with “what is Project 2025” spiking after Trump’s election, many voters were not informed that this plan even existed. Ultimately, as with every new administration, we’ll have to wait and see which campaign promises are fulfilled, and which were made to be broken.