Monday, Jan. 20, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. After Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election and leading up to his inauguration, College of William and Mary students and Williamsburg community members expressed mixed opinions regarding his upcoming term.
Students at the College raised concerns about Trump’s immigration policy. Young Democrats Treasurer Adrian Ryan ’27 pointed out the negative effect on the workforce that mass deportation would trigger.
“There could be a lot of negative, practical implications with deporting millions of immigrants,” Ryan said. “We could see large problems with construction workers and agricultural workers. We could lose a lot of our workforce, especially in places like California’s Central Valley, where there’s a lot of farm workers who come from Mexico and are probably undocumented.”
Hunter Steele White ’27, issues director of the Young Independents, agrees with implementing stricter immigration measures, but thinks there are more effective ways to address the problem.
“I do understand the merits of having some stronger activity and partnerships with Mexico against cartel organizations and against organized crime,” White said. “I’m all for that, but I think that [Trump] is focusing so much on innocent people who are just trying to make their livelihoods here. I think that’s unfair and not really in the spirit of the United States. He’s not focused on why there are so many people coming here. It’s because there’s no job opportunities, or it’s unsafe, or it’s corrupt, or there’s other kinds of persecution. I think that he really needs to settle into the idea of much more U.S. aid to Central America.”
Friday, Jan. 17, founder and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics Dr. Larry Sabato delivered a community talk at the Williamsburg Lodge in partnership with the Greater Williamsburg Chamber of Commerce. He agreed with students that a central pillar of Trump’s presidential campaign and electoral success last November was his stance on immigration.
“Nothing turned out the Trump base like immigration,” Sabato said. “Whether you agree or disagree with the points he was making, [immigration] motivated Republicans more than anybody else in the magnet base. It worked.”
However, Sabato argued that Trump’s plan to detain and deport millions of immigrants is flawed and unattainable with existing infrastructure.
“It’s just impossible because you have to build those detention centers unless you’re going to use the ones in Texas that are not anywhere close to [holding] the number of illegal immigrants he’s talking about,” Sabato said. “You can’t get rid of 11 million people.”
Sabato explained that, like most elections, the result was largely determined by voters’ concerns about the economy and the rising costs of living.
“Voters don’t sit there, study unemployment statistics or GDP growth,” Sabato said. “They see what the price of gas is. And you can call it shortsighted and unfair and this and that, whatever you want to, but that’s the basis of people voting in a year when they’re unhappy about the economy.”
Ryan reflected on Trump’s past economic policies with respect to China and how they have grown to include other countries as well.
“We saw his trade war with China, which was the culmination of a bunch of back-and-forth tariffs being implemented,” Ryan said. “In my opinion, that was problematic because it only raised the cost of goods for both consumers in America and producers in China or consumers in China as well. It really wasn’t beneficial to anybody. He has also threatened tariffs on other random countries. He might put tariffs on Denmark, which is just a strong-armed approach, and it’s not smart and could really damage a lot of our alliances with other countries.”
Steele has mixed thoughts on Trump’s economic policy. He believes that stock market growth could be beneficial for Americans, but that high tariffs would have a boomerang effect on the cost of goods, and that climate concerns would be deprioritized.
“I’m sure that in the stock market, he’ll be beneficial for a lot of people, but I worry about housing with him,” Steele said. “I think energy prices will go down, but it will be at the cost of probably some pretty serious climate change. He wanted a pretty high tariff on a lot of European goods. I don’t think that’s a good idea, in part because it doesn’t improve our goodwill with people who I think are allies, and also because it’s going to increase the cost of goods for a lot of people who want high-quality goods, who might not be able to get them from another market. That being said, I’m okay with targeted tariffs on a lot of Chinese goods, especially when they’re taking advantage of a lot of American industry.”
While the policies Trump will enact in his second term remain uncertain, students have begun discussing his cabinet administration picks.
Ryan emphasized that the biggest difference between Trump’s first and second term is the makeup of his administration.
“In the first administration, there were more traditional Republicans that provided some guide rails for Trump,” Ryan said. “But in the second administration, he has purged a lot of those traditional Republicans and replaced them with loyalists. So in that sense, he might be able to do more of exactly what he wants without facing any pushback, which I believe could be dangerous.”
Steele shared his thoughts on Trump’s cabinet picks, asserting that some of his choices are well-informed and beneficial, while others favor highly under-qualified candidates that may ultimately do more harm than good for the country.
“It’s a mixed bag,” Steele said. “I am very on board with a couple of people in his National Security sphere. Those being Secretary of State Marco Rubio — I think he will do a very good job. His National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz, I think, is another guy who’s very similar to Rubio. He’s going to be very much on the ball in terms of maintaining a power balance between us and the CCP. But I am worried about people like Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. They’re just distractions at best, and at worst, they’re willfully unqualified and malevolent individuals.”
