• New president signs raft of orders, withdrawing birthright citizenship, ending sanctions against West Bank settlers
• Pardons around 1,500 imprisoned for Capitol Hill attack four years ago; backs out of OECD tax regime

WASHINGTON: On the first day of his new term, President Donald Trump signed orders ranging from climate to immigration, along with sweeping pardons for nearly all of those charged with storming the capital on January 6, 2021.

In the Oval Office, Trump signed an order revoking birthright citizenship. But automatic US citizenship to people born in the country is enshrined in the Constitution, and Trump’s action is certain to face a legal challenge.

He also revoked sanctions against violent Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, accused of abuses against Palestinians, undoing an unprecedented action taken by the Biden administration.

Some of his orders delivered on promises he made during the 2024 campaign — such as a withdrawal from the Paris climate deal. But others, like the withdrawal from the World Health Organisation (WHO), had not been expected.

Trump accused the global health agency of mishandling the Covid-19 pandemic and other international health crises, saying it failed to act independently from the “inappropriate political influence of WHO member states” and required “unfairly onerous payments” from the US that were disproportionate to the sums provided by other, larger countries, such as China.

The move sets a 12-month notice period for the US to leave the United Nations health agency and stop all financial contributions to its work. The US is by far the WHO’s biggest financial backer, contributing around 18pc of its overall funding. WHO’s most recent two-year budget, for 2024-2025, was $6.8 billion.

The US departure is likely to put at risk programmes across the organisation, accor­ding to several experts both inside and outside the WHO, notably those tackling tuberculosis, as well as HIV/AIDS and other health emergencies.

Another order requires federal workers to return to the office full-time, with Trump seeking to undo most of the work-from-home allowances that flourished during the Covid-19 pandemic.

President Trump also, once again, withdrew the US from the Paris climate deal, removing the world’s biggest historic emitter from global efforts to fight climate change for the second time in a decade.

The move reflects Trump’s skepticism about global warming, which he has called a hoax, and fits in with his broader agenda to unfetter US oil and gas drillers from regulation so they can maximise output.

Trump signed the executive order withdrawing from the pact in front of supporters gathered at the Capital One Arena in Washington, saying “I’m immediately withdrawing from the unfair, one-sided Paris climate accord rip-off,” before signing the order.

As he rattled off executive orders, his first round of presidential pardons saw his supporters, who attacked the US Capitol four years ago, begin to leave prison on Tuesday.

The Republican president’s pardon of 1,500 defendants on Monday evening, hours after he took the oath of office, drew outrage from lawmakers who were endangered and from some of the 140 police officers injured in the attack on Jan. 6, 2021.

One of Trump’s fellow Republicans, Senator Thom Tillis, said pardoning rioters who assaulted police sent a wrong message.

Also on Tuesday, Trump’s decision to withdraw from a global minimum tax agreement on his first day in office has unnerved EU officials, who expressed “regret” over the move. He pulled out of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) global tax deal, signed by close to 140 countries, which levied a 15 percent minimum tax on corporate profits.

The executive order also requires officials to “investigate” whether countries had or planned to implement rules “that are extraterritorial or disproportionately affect American companies,” and to draw up recommendations for retaliatory measures within 60 days.

The prospect of retaliatory measures threatens to embroil the United States in a messy fight over taxes with its closest allies at the same time the administration is also weighing imposing additional sanctions.

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2024