U.S. President Donald Trump signs pardons for Jan. 6 defendants in the Oval Office on Inauguration Day in Washington, U.S., on Jan. 20.Carlos Barria/Reuters
Donald Trump declared a new “golden age” for the United States and warned of imminent economic pain for American trading partners, as he staged a raucous return to the presidency in which he moved quickly to sign executive orders intended to settle scores at home and project power abroad.
“For American citizens, Jan. 20, 2025, is Liberation Day,” Mr. Trump said in an inauguration speech delivered from inside the sandstone walls of the rotunda at the U.S. Capitol, where he had just taken his oath of office indoors to avoid the bitter cold of a frigid winter’s day.
Beneath a frescoed ceiling that depicts George Washington ascending heavenward, Mr. Trump described himself as an architect of conservative restoration, breaking apart the fetters of liberal-minded governance that he faulted for fomenting American decline.
Guests watch from Emancipation Hall as President Donald Trump speaks during the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Jan. 20.Angelina Katsanis/The Associated Press
He promised to build a U.S. that will “once again consider itself a growing nation” – one that expands its territory and pursues what he called its “manifest destiny” to new frontiers, including the planet Mars.
“My recent election has a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal, and all of these many betrayals that have taken place, and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and indeed, their freedom,” he said.
That, he said later in the day, includes imposing 25-per-cent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, which he has been vowing to do for weeks – a move that would upend continental free trade and potentially scramble supply chains. He added that he expects to put these measures in place soon. “I think we’ll do it Feb. 1,” he told reporters Monday evening, as he signed a raft of executive orders in the Oval Office.
At a stroke of a pen, those orders freed his supporters from prison, ended most forms of birthright citizenship, brought major changes to refugee admissions, began the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization and launched an evaluation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that will lead to “recommendations regarding the United States’ participation in the agreement.”
Mr. Trump is only the second president to be elected to a second non-consecutive term, and he is the first to enter the White House as a convicted felon. He returns triumphant over the prosecutors who sought his sentencing, and over would-be assassins.
“My life was saved for a reason,” he said. “I was saved by God to make America great again.”
Mr. Trump did not reprise some of the most cutting language he employed eight years ago, when he invoked the “American carnage” of “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.”
But neither did he offer many of the niceties or flights of rhetoric that have often marked inaugural addresses.
Instead, flanked by billionaire technology titans who have newly pledged fealty to his agenda – and cash for the inauguration – Mr. Trump kept with the bombastic style that has powered his ascent through American politics. He pledged to disrupt the political status quo as never before, in ways that will reverberate loudly outside the country’s borders, including in Canada.
His new administration, he said, would deliver on promises to boost the prospects of American workers at the cost of foreign partners, with an “overhaul of our trade system.”
But the new president’s immediate acts were directed toward domestic institutions, ideologies and even geographic designations that he intends to combat with the powers once again at his disposal.
He commuted the sentences of key insurrectionists who took part in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, and pardoned all others convicted for their participation. The Gulf of Mexico will be christened the Gulf of America. William McKinley’s name will be restored to the Alaska peak now known as Denali, to honour a former president who “made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.”
Mr. Trump signs an executive order as he attends an indoor Presidential Inauguration parade event at Capital One Arena.Evan Vucci/The Associated Press
He ordered official federal recognition of only two genders – male and female – and said he would do away with “the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life. We will forge a society that is colour-blind and merit based.”
Among his first executive orders, signed in front of a throng of cheering supporters at Washington’s Capital One Arena, was one upholding the rights to free speech already enshrined in the First Amendment.
In two others, he declared a pair of national emergencies, one on energy to encourage more fossil-fuel development and another on the southern border.
He pledged other actions would also come with some speed.
“All illegal entry will immediately be halted and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” he said.
President Donald Trump announced in his inauguration that 'millions and millions of criminal aliens' will be sent back to their home countries, the military will be sent to the Mexico border and foreign gangs and criminal networks will be 'eliminated.'
As he took office, his new administration shut down CBP One, a smartphone app used by migrants to book appointments to seek entry into the country. In Mexico, local media reported migrants breaking into tears as their interview slots vanished, taking with them hopes of entering the U.S. through what had been a legal means.
Many of Mr. Trump’s day-one actions are expected to face lawsuits. Within hours of the CPB One app going dark, the American Civil Liberties Union had filed an initial legal challenge, citing a migrant whose Jan. 25 appointment was summarily cancelled.
Still, it’s clear that “there will be a new era along the southern border,” said Michael DeBruhl, a former senior official with the U.S. Border Patrol, who later spent years overseeing a migrant centre in El Paso, Texas.
For most migrants, including those already in the country, the shape of the next few years has become clouded with uncertainty, he said.
As he entered the White House Monday, Mr. Trump also ordered the overturning of measures instated by his predecessor, Joe Biden; suspended federal programs for refugee resettlement; deployed the military to the southern border; and designated certain cartel groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
The U.S. will also expand its territorial reach in the next four years, Mr. Trump said in his speech, with new commitments to regain ownership of the Panama Canal – “we’re taking it back,” he said – and send astronauts to plant the American flag on Mars.
In addition, the U.S. will move quickly to rescind other key Democratic priorities. Mr. Trump said he would “end the Green New Deal” and repeal subsidies for electric cars. The Trump White House said in a statement that it would employ “all necessary resources to build critical infrastructure.” Among Mr. Trump’s first executive orders was a mandate to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord.
“We will be a rich nation again and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,” he said in his speech.
What that means for Canada is unclear. People close to Mr. Trump have said he intends to revive the Keystone XL pipeline, whose permit Mr. Biden revoked on his first days in office. Mr. Trump himself mentioned the pipeline during a presidential debate in September. That project, cancelled by TC Energy, now lies with a newly formed company, South Bow Canada Services Ltd., which said in a statement that it supports the transport of more Canadian crude oil to the U.S.
But the cancellation of Keystone XL means that any new attempt to build it would, barring specific new legislation, “effectively be starting from scratch,” François Poirier, chief executive of TC Energy, said in an interview.
Mr. Poirier was in Washington over the weekend, where he met with Marco Rubio, the new secretary of state, and Doug Burgum, Mr. Trump’s nominee for secretary of the interior.
Executive orders Mr. Trump signed on Monday include major changes to refugee admissions, beginning the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization and launching an evaluation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.Carlos Barria/Reuters
“I think they would love to see more energy flowing from Canada to the United States,” Mr. Poirier said. But Canadian political and business leaders, he said, must understand the closely woven concerns over energy, trade and security in a new U.S. administration that wants to secure the country’s defence dominance while ensuring an abundance of energy to foster growth of industries like artificial intelligence.
Mr. Poirier has argued that continental energy collaboration helps all three countries. Any U.S. delay in imposing tariffs, he said, provides time to make that case.
Mr. Trump’s desire for tariffs is propelled by a broader shift in American public perceptions in which a majority now think trade is better for other countries than for the U.S.
“There’s a fundamental rethink going on, not just in the administration, but in terms of expectations of American voters,” said Kelly Ann Shaw, who was a lead trade negotiator in Mr. Trump’s first administration. She believes an “era of reglobalization” has begun, in which long-held assumptions are no longer assured.
“The Trump administration is going to have to enact trade policies that serve the interests of U.S. workers, U.S. businesses, U.S. voters,” she said. “But at the same time, nobody’s talking about stopping trade, right?”
Mr. Trump’s second term may force a fundamental rethink of how Canada approaches trade and investment with a partner critical to its economic well-being, said John Weekes, who was Canada’s North American free-trade agreement chief negotiator in the 1990s.
“The ground is sort of shifting under our feet. Things are changing,” Mr. Weekes said. “It potentially sends us down a road where we’ve got to make some very difficult choices.”