Two days into his term, Donald Trump has begun reshaping the U.S.

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In only two days, President Donald Trump has reshaped the principal elements of American domestic and foreign policy, transformed the profile of the country at home and abroad, and redefined fundamental American values, some of which were decades if not centuries in the making.

Not since Ronald Reagan used his entry to the presidency in 1981 to proclaim that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem” has an American leader challenged the prevailing consensus of politics with such drama, force and passion.

With Panama and Canada reeling from Trump threats, immigrants worrying about aggressive deportation offences, and about 1,500 people charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol receiving some form of clemency, Mr. Trump in essence has repealed the initiatives of the Joe Biden administration, hauled up some of the seemingly permanent anchors of American civic life, and worked to change the historical verdict on the Capitol insurgency.

“To succeed, presidents must have a port to seek and must convince Congress and the electorate of the rightness of their course,” the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in a 1997 essay. “Politics in a democracy is ultimately an educational process, an adventure in persuasion and consent.” Mr. Trump has the consent of the Republican Party, which he has remade in his image and tone. But he has the smallest House of Representatives majority in modern American history and still faces skepticism – if not outright opposition – from nearly half the country.

In a halftime video appearance during Monday’s college football championship game, the President said he was about to “bring America back.” But his critics worry that, in a matter of mere hours, he has set America back – by withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization; by expressing hostility to trans people; by wiping away the sentences of rioters who threatened to overturn the peaceful transfer of power at the Capitol four years ago; and by challenging the value and tenure of government employees, many of whom have decades of experience and institutional knowledge.

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A Wall Street Journal survey of Americans conducted last week found that 53 per cent of respondents wanted Mr. Trump to make significant changes in how government operates. But more than 60 per cent said they oppose his plans to replace vast numbers of career government workers with Trump loyalists.

For the first hours of his second presidency, Mr. Trump has the initiative, the momentum, the sense of purpose and ultimately the power to reorient the U.S., modify the country’s relations with friends and rivals alike, and shake away long-established political customs. One image alone captured the extent of the upheaval: the look of astonishment, bewilderment and bafflement on the faces of Bill and Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush as Mr. Trump set out his principles and priorities during his Monday inaugural address.

Psychologists and philosophers often have recognized the influence inherent in the act of naming. This is why the President’s determination to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and his push to return the name Mount McKinley to North America’s highest mountain (which has been known for the past half-century by the Indigenous name Denali), are symbols of his willingness to flex his power – and to assail what he considers political correctness.

In all, what the first two days of this presidency displayed is Mr. Trump’s disrespect for convention, his contempt for tradition, his defiance of the customary limits of power and his eagerness to adjust the contours of politics.

His proposed 25-per-cent tariff on goods from Canada shatters decades of warm cross-border relations. Even Lyndon Johnson, who once manhandled Lester Pearson at Camp David over his opposition to LBJ’s Vietnam policy, said that “no nation in the world has had greater fortune than mine in sharing a continent with the people and the nation of Canada.”

The President’s view of tariffs also is a dramatic departure from American norms. The early United States regarded tariffs as the principal tool for raising revenue (aside from a temporary levy during the Civil War, there was no income tax until 1913) and as a means of protecting domestic economic interests (prompting some of the great regional disputes of the 19th century). Mr. Trump’s view encompasses both those goals but adds to them the power of tariffs as a cudgel to change the policies of other nations – in the case of Canada, its border security and the level of its defence spending.

Mr. Trump’s antagonism toward immigrants threatens not only those who have entered the country illegally or committed crimes while in the United States, but also the country’s once-beloved heritage as a place of refuge and welcome.

In his first hours in office, he has shown that he is determined to reshape the presidency as the locus of power in American politics. For decades, for example, immigration and trade have been congressional prerogatives, which is why lawmakers manoeuvre to be on the House ways and means committee. Mr. Trump has seized the steering wheel and is off in a different direction.

But he also is determined to recast the character of the country, which since the Second World War has been a global leader, not always comporting itself gently but almost always cloaking its efforts in the rhetoric of co-operation – a clenched fist, perhaps, but clothed in a velvet glove. That is over. In the new administration, to recast a line from The Tempest, the past no longer is prologue.