What Ruto presidency might be like during Trump's second term

Around 1820, an Austrian diplomat and statesman Klemens von Metternich, said, “When Paris sneezes, the rest of Europe catches a cold”. Later in the 20th century and now in the 21st century, this phrase has changed to “When America sneezes, the whole world catches a cold”.

On Monday, January 20, 2025, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the US.

His inauguration ushers in Trump’s phase two presidency and another term for Republicans in the White House.

Trump’s inauguration also relaxes tensions between the United States and countries whose political doctrines are conservative-aligned. So, amidst this shift, what will the Kenya-US relationship be like?

President William Ruto visited President Joe Biden in the US in May 2024 in what was described as a deepening of ties between Kenya and America.

Dr Ruto’s visit to the US then elicited a mix of reactions given that he is politically a conservative, not Democrat. His alignment with church-driven politics places him squarely as a conservative. This way, it is correct to conclude that Ruto is more of a political relative to Trump and Republicans than Biden and the Democrats.  

That’s why, now that a Republican has been sworn in as US president, I think Ruto will find it relaxing to relate with the United States than before.

However, methinks there are more adjustments that Kenya must consider to align fully with Washington, DC.

Ruto might be forced to get an outright conservative Chief Justice (CJ), like the former CJ Justice David Maraga. I am unsure if the current CJ is more liberal than she is conservative. What we can derive from her career as a human rights activist and gender advocate aligns more with liberal theories of justice.

Therefore, for Kenya to align with the ideological leanings of the United States Supreme Court, we might be forced to have a CJ that will be openly and visibly conservative.

Unless one peeps carefully at the parallelism between the US government and the three CJs we have had since the promulgation of the current Constitution, this deduction seems illogical.

For those who can read between the lines, you will draw the relationship between, for instance, Barack Obama’s (liberal) term and Willy Mutunga’s (liberal) tenure, Trump’s (conservative) term and David Maraga’s (conservative) and Joe Bidens (liberal) term and Martha Koome’s (quasi liberal) term.

Are these coincidences? I don’t think so.

Another thing to watch in Ruto’s government  going forward is the tension likely to stem from the fact that he incorporated the opposition, primarily democrats, in his government.

How the opposition in government is going to moderate their politics to align with conservative ideals will be interesting to watch. Note that the opposition is at the helm of the Treasury.

The United States has a lot of interest in the treasury of any country, given that we bank with the IMF and World Bank.

Further, Ruto is likely to loosen any remaining grip on China. There is a reason why, on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, Tiktok was to be banned in the United States.

Either Trump was moderating China’s dominant social media platform, which is taking X (formerly Twitter) by the neck, or he wanted a big announcement to remind the United States citizens that ‘I care’.

Either way, he managed to warn China that the US still moderates technology.

Above all, it is important for countries outside America to understand that Donald Trump’s Make American Agai is more inward-looking than outward-looking.

It implies that the US puts its interests first. It is this ‘self-loving first’ doctrine that should inspire any nation willing to work with America, and Kenya is not an exception.

-Dr Ndonye is a senior lecturer at Kabarak University’s Department of Mass Communication