Hate him or love him, President Trump had a busy first year. There were times when he was firing on all cylinders and others where it appeared like the White House was in total and complete chaos.
There have been very few presidencies, at least in my lifetime, that have had as many peaks and troughs as President Trump in his first year. President George W. Bush’s first year in office is the closest comparison, simply because of the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001.
Save for a major disaster, let’s grade President Trump’s performance based on his top five campaign promises and how he’s fared in his first year delivering on them.
1) Immigration
When Trump rode down that golden escalator in June 2015, he immediately set himself apart from the 16 other presidential candidates running for the Republican nomination and harped on building a big, beautiful wall along the southern border, kicking all the illegal immigrants out, and, in his own words, call “for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”
So, how has the president been doing in his first year on immigration?
Well, for starters, the wall hasn’t been built. He still hasn’t secured funding despite getting approval for it by the House Homeland Security Committee. Getting the wall built will likely cost Trump to concede to Democrats and result in him granting amnesty to 800,000 minors who came to this country illegally but remained via the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy.
As far as the “Muslim ban” is concerned, Trump’s initial travel ban was a disaster. The ban was on its third rendition after the Supreme Court lifted its blockade on it in early December, but as of last week, the Ninth Circuit court ruled to block it again.
The ban, as it currently exists, suspends travel into the U.S. for applicants from six Muslim-majority countries (i.e. Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen) in addition to Chad, North Korea, and Venezuela. President Trump’s critics argue that the ban doesn’t, in fact, stop terrorists from attempting to attack the U.S. Two terrorist attacks in New York in late 2017 were committed by suspects who traveled from Uzbekistan and Bangladesh long before Trump took office.
Given the fact that Trump really owned his stance on immigration, he’s closer on the spectrum to “all talk, no action” rather than the opposite and actually pushing his immigration policies forward. He’s literally becoming the thing he hates.
Grade: D+
2) ISIS
While it goes without saying, both Republicans and Democrats have been seeking to end the war on terrorism by defeating groups like the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. After being locked in conflict with terrorists and insurgents in Afghanistan since 2001 and having an on-again, off-again military intervention in Iraq since 2003, the United States has only become more entrenched in the fight against Islamist militants.
One of Trump’s go-to lines with respect to ISIS during the 2016 presidential campaign was that he pledged to “bomb the shit out of ’em.”
While Trump has not bombed the shit out of ISIS, U.S. and Iraqi forces have made significant gains against the terror group, and their defeat is only a matter of time. As pointed out by Jamie McIntyre, Trump’s strategy in defeating ISIS isn’t so much a new strategy as it is a major refining of the old strategy used by the Obama administration.
But still, without that refinement, we wouldn’t see ISIS on its heels and in prime position for the knockout punch. Former President Obama deserves credit for laying out the strategy, but Trump should get plenty of recognition for pushing them to their breaking point, especially after U.S. officials are saying that ISIS has lost 98 percent of its territory, mostly under Trump. If he can finish them off, he’ll have enough material for the campaign trail should he run for reelection in 2020.
Grade: A-
3) Taxes
Even though it wasn’t a big platform for him, then-candidate Trump promised to cut taxes for the middle class and raising taxes on the wealthy while on the campaign trail.
Democrats will tell you that the GOP tax bill isn’t a middle-class tax cut or that all the tax cuts go to the rich. That’s simply not the case.
As I’ve articulated here, the GOP tax bill lowers taxes for 80 percent of all taxpayers. Only 5 percent of taxpayers will see a tax increase of $10 or more. In many ways, it’s not a middle-class tax cut, but an every-class tax cut. And when it comes to saying that all tax cuts are going to the top 1 percent, that’s also inaccurate. The tax burden is actually shifting from the middle class onto the top 1 percent. The bottom 80 percent pays for a third of all federal taxes, and will get 35 percent of the tax cuts. Meanwhile, for the top 1 percent, they’ll get over a fifth (21 percent) of the tax cuts, and pay for 27 percent of all federal taxes.
Sure, it’s not a perfect bill. The GOP tax bill will add $1.5 trillion to the deficit, and President Trump couldn’t close the carried-interest loophole that, if anything, is a gift to Wall Street. However, lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent is huge for small businesses and startups that are trying to make ends meet and now no longer have to shell out more cash to the government. It also creates an incentive to bring companies that moved overseas back to the U.S. to re-open offices and factories, thus creating more jobs, upward economic mobility, and reducing the unemployment rate.
Getting that done in his first year is big, and it comes at a time when Trump needs Congress more than they need him.
Grade: A
4) Obamacare
President Trump would’ve earned a failing mark for this particular issue had the House-Senate Conference Committee not included a repeal of the individual mandate in the final version of the tax bill that was voted and signed this past week.
During the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly called for repealing and replacing Obamacare as soon as he got into office. That obviously hasn’t happened yet since he’s been president. The House failed to vote on a repeal and replace plan once before finally passing the American Health Care Act, where it failed in the Senate.
When he was campaigning, Trump faced criticism from other Republicans for not having an actual plan that he would replace Obamacare with. In March 2016, Trump released his plan and called for Medicaid to be transformed into a state block grant program, so that individual states could have more power to spend federal subsidies the way they want. He’s also called for extending tax exemption status from employer-based health insurance plans to individuals who purchase private health insurance coverage on their own.
Repealing the individual mandate via the GOP tax bill obviously doesn’t address any of these. However, what it does address is taking away the penalty on civilians who don’t buy health insurance, not because they can’t afford to, but because they simply don’t want to. Even though Trump tried to end cost-sharing reductions (i.e. the Obamacare subsidies that go towards health insurance premiums) through executive order, he’s faced stiff resistance from both the legislative and judicial branches. So, as a result, these subsidies currently remain in place, so low-income individuals and families can still purchase health insurance coverage and receive government assistance for it.
Grade: C-
5) Trade
One of the biggest issues that united both Trump supporters and Bernie Sanders supporters was where the two candidates stood on the issue of trade.
Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and opened up to renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement instead of completely withdrawing. He also got companies to move back to the U.S., like Foxconn (which was offered $3 billion in tax credits), Toyota and Mazda (to possibly avoid higher tariffs), and Broadcom Limited (to complete its merger with Brocade and avoid a rising corporate tax in Singapore that would take effect in 2021).
However, there’s an elephant in the room that has yet to be addressed: China.
In 2016, Trump continually railed against China for taking advantage of the U.S. through trade and manipulating their currency to make their products more competitive on the international market.
“We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that’s what they’re doing,” Trump said at a rally in May 2016.
Well, since he’s been president, Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his November trip to Asia. And he came away with nothing.
Not even close allies like Japan, South Korea, or Vietnam want to establish a bilateral free-trade agreement with the U.S., let alone talks that could lead to one.
The Trump administration is preparing to get tough on China to kick off 2018, which include slapping tariffs on Chinese exports and possibly capping Chinese investment in the U.S. We’ll revisit this issue at the end of 2018 and see if Trump moved the needle on China. However, right now, they’ve gone unchecked by this administration.
Grade: C
Overall grade for 2017: C+/B-
