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Donald Trump, having met the delegate threshold to become his party’s presumptive nominee, is likely to face Kamala Harris in November’s presidential election after Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
Mr Biden, 81, and his White House team initially attempted to frame the next presidential race as a choice between democracy and decency, and what they claim is Mr Trump’s threat to America’s championing of “democracy and freedom”, both at home and abroad.
But the narrative flipped after the attempted assassination of Mr Trump on Saturday 13 July. Mr Trump has since cast himself as a unifying figure, while Democrats faced criticism for inflammatory rhetoric over the “existential threat” he posed to America.
In strict policy terms, Trump, 78, wants to make the contest a referendum on the Biden-Harris administration, focusing on the issues voters say concern them most: the economy, immigration, and law and order.
As part of his pitch, Mr Trump has invited Americans to compare his record to Mr Biden’s, asking: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
However, Mr Trump promises not just a return to the policies of his norm-shattering first term, but a highly detailed and ambitious platform for a second White House stint.
Mass deportations of illegal immigrants, a rethink of US foreign policy and an escalation of his trade wars are all on the agenda.
Mr Trump has been less definitive on some major policy positions – for instance how he would fulfil his claim to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours.
‘Draining the swamp’
First and foremost Mr Trump plans to test the power of the presidency beyond any of his predecessors.
Much of Mr Trump’s sweeping plans start with a root-and-branch gutting of the US government, in particular using an executive order to replace thousands of career civil servants with political appointees.
New hires would have to pass a thorough vetting of their political ideology, as well as a civil service test of Mr Trump’s own creation.
Large swathes of the Department of Justice, the FBI, would be done away with, while the Department of Education would be totally abolished.
‘Drill baby, drill’
Mr Trump is fond of neatly summarising his own energy policy with the chant: “Drill, baby, drill”.
He has pledged to reverse Mr Biden’s shift towards green energy production by ending subsidies and restrictions on fossil fuel production by reopening land to extraction.
Mr Trump has also voiced scepticism about electric vehicles, a key area of focus for Mr Biden, whose stated goal is to have “half of all new cars and trucks sold in 2030” be zero-emission.
Mass deportations
Mr Trump’s hardline immigration stance is a central plank of his campaign. As well as resuming construction of his flagship wall on the US-Mexico border, Mr Trump has vowed to deploy US troops to wage “war” on Mexican cartels and launch the biggest deportation and border arrest programme in American history.
Mr Trump intends to revive his travel ban from several Muslim-majority countries and implement “ideological screenings” for immigrants from other countries.
While some of these efforts were blocked in court during his first term, he would face a considerably more conservative Supreme Court in his second. This could be critical to his effort to end “birthright” citizenship – automatically granted to children born in the US under the Constitution.
Trade wars
Mr Trump has floated the idea of implementing a 10 per cent tariff on all goods imported into the US. Nations that impose tariffs on US imports would face higher retaliatory tariffs.
Meanwhile, trade links with Beijing would be dramatically curtailed by phasing out Chinese electric, steel and pharmaceutical goods.
Chinese companies would also face “aggressive new restrictions” on their access to critical US infrastructure.
Crime
Mr Trump has promised a tough-on-crime approach that includes going to war with progressive prosecutors in liberal areas.
The hardline stance would see an expansion of the use of the death penalty, including for human traffickers and drug dealers.
America First foreign policy
Mr Trump’s “America First” approach would pull back on US defence pledges to its allies, particularly Nato, with the Republican suggesting that he would let Russia do “whatever the hell they want” to members that don’t meet the alliance’s spending commitments.
Mr Trump has opposed large funding packages to Ukraine, throwing into doubt Washington’s continued defence and diplomatic support for Kyiv, suggesting instead that he could forge a deal with Vladimir Putin to end the fighting.
Reproductive rights
While he has taken credit for the overturning of Americans’ constitutional right to an abortion by shaping the Supreme Court which repealed Roe v Wade, Mr Trump has been more moderate on abortion than many of his Republican colleagues.
After months of mixed messages, he outlined his position in a video announcement in April in which he declined to endorse a national abortion ban and said the restrictions on terminations should be left to each state to determine.
It would mean leaving in place near-total bans in some red states, while allowing California, New York and other liberal strongholds to leave in place strong protections for the procedure.
Mr Trump has been circumspect about his own person view on what point in a pregnancy he believes that the line should be drawn for allowing abortions, but has backed exceptions to bans for rape, incest and severe medical emergencies.
The former president’s position has been criticised by his party’s conservatives, but Mr Trump said his GOP critics should “proudly get on with helping Republicans to WIN ELECTIONS, rather than making it impossible for them to do so”.
Healthcare
In office, Mr Trump routinely vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the signature healthcare law passed by his predecessor, which has come to be known as “Obamacare”.
Mr Trump repeatedly promised to replace it with a new system that he claimed would give Americans a better deal, but the details of the plan never materialised and a bid to repeal Obamacare faltered in a Republican-held senate during his first term.
Mr Trump is once again promising to repeal and replace on the campaign trail, but it’s a tall order: Obamacare is more widely used now than it was in 2017.
Mr Trump has also vowed to do more to strike better deals with pharmaceutical companies for medicines.
