In normal circumstances, a presidential inauguration in Washington is simply a customary transfer of power. Donald Trump’s return to the White House feels different: “The Golden Age begins now,” he said in his inauguration speech. He also emphasised that he had “the mandate to reverse the many betrayals” of America by previous administrations.

Though Trump received a victorious mandate, its exact dimensions are noteworthy. He won 77.30 million votes (49.9 per cent of the total) against 75.02 million (48.4 per cent) for Kamala Harris. Thus, he was ahead by only 1.5 per cent in the popular vote. In 2020, Joe Biden received 81.29 million votes (51.3 per cent ) against Trump’s 74.22 million (46.8 per cent). Biden’s victory was significantly bigger.

But three things have made Trump’s victory politically decisive. First, it is only the second time since 1988 that a Republican presidential candidate has won the popular vote; George W Bush’s 2004 victory was the last. Second, Republicans have also won a majority in both houses of the legislature. Legislative resistance to Trump’s policies will be low, unless the 2026 mid-term elections reverse the Republican Congressional control. Third, even in deeply Democratic states such as Massachusetts, California, Illinois and New York, Trump’s vote went up compared to 2020, even if he lost these states while winning nationally overall.

Thus, the second Trump presidency starts with great political capital, something he lacked in 2016. What should we expect in terms of politics and policy?

The first feature of Trump’s politics can be described as politics over law. Politics, in this formulation, represents the popular will. The relationship between law and popular will is not straightforward. One side of the argument is that popular will is transient. Elections, after all, take place periodically. In contrast, law is more enduring. Democratic politics must be conducted within a legal framework. But the other side of the argument is that popular will is the foundation of laws. Laws can’t be viewed as something bigger than popular will, reflected in electoral verdicts in democracies. A transformed popular will can legitimately lead to a change in laws.

The second argument has already started winning. Of the three federal criminal cases against Trump, two have been dropped. The legal argument is that a sitting President can’t be criminally convicted. One such case concerned Trump’s attempt to alter the results of the 2020 elections, which led to a violent attack on the Capitol. A second case was about Trump’s illegal possession of secret government documents at his private home, even after his departure from the White House.

A third criminal case is even more illustrative. It concerns Trump’s illegal payments to silence a porn star with whom he had a sexual tryst. A jury had found him guilty before the November elections. After Trump’s victory, while the judge did not nullify the jury’s verdict, he decided against a prison sentence — a sitting President couldn’t be jailed. We thus have an unprecedented spectacle of a convicted felon not in jail, but occupying America’s highest elected office, and a judicial affirmation that popular will must be given primacy over laws.

More examples can be cited. The biggest are Trump’s pardons for those involved in the January 6 insurrection, including those already convicted after trials.

What are Trump’s likely policies? On the domestic side, the most important is the crackdown on illegal immigration and the likelihood of mass deportations across the southern Mexican border. The opposition to “diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)”, a form of affirmative action, is also manifestly clear.

On foreign economic policy, tariffs are the most talked about subject. The economic arguments for tariffs are well known. In the 1950s and 1960s, development economics was dominated by “infant industry” arguments, which essentially meant tariff-based protection of newly set-up industries. How could an infant steel plant compete with US Steel or Nippon Steel, if their products were imported freely in developing countries? Another argument, emerging later, was against “dumping”. If some countries had excess production in a sector, they should not be allowed to cheaply dump their goods on foreign markets without a tariff to protect domestic industries.

Trump’s tariff argument is not simply economic, but also political. He has repeatedly argued that if foreign countries did not agree with his policies, he would not hesitate to use tariffs to alter their behaviour. Thus, if Denmark did not agree to sell Greenland to the US, its exports to the American market would be heavily taxed. If Canada did not agree to become the 51st state of the US, “economic force” could be deployed to cripple the Canadian economy. For the sake of “America First”, says Trump, both allies and adversaries could be subjected to tariffs. Whether or not such policies are finally implemented, Trump’s statements demonstrate his belief in tariffs as a political tool.

What should India be most concerned about? Two policy arenas spring immediately to mind. The first is trade. India exports a huge amount of information technology software to the US. Tariffs can make these exports expensive, reducing their share of the large US market. In his earlier administration, Trump had complained about India having high tariff walls. However, given that Trump’s tariff argument is primarily aimed at China, the world’s largest exporter and the biggest US competitor, India has the possibility of cutting a bilateral trade deal. To protect its access to US markets, India might have to lower its tariffs, especially for American goods.

But the other part of the economic relationship may not be easy to fix. India is the largest beneficiary of H-1B visas. The links between Indian professionals and Silicon Valley are well known. Two of Trump’s constituencies — the tech entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley and his MAGA base — are currently locked in a conflict, the former seeking continued access to H1-B foreign professionals and the latter asking for “America first”. Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, scholars of American politics, have coined the term “plutocratic populism” to describe Trump’s politics. The very rich and the average White Americans co-exist under Trump in an uneasy equilibrium. Which way this domestic battle goes is hard to predict.

Be that as it may, a very different America is upon us. Unless countervailing power emerges, Trump’s disruptions may well turn out to be very substantial.

The writer is Sol Goldman professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences at Brown University, where he also directs the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at the Watson Institute. Views are personal