President-elect Trump announced a set of executive actions he plans to issue on “day one” to roll back President Obama’s agenda and begin to implement his own.
“Whether it’s producing steel, building cars, or curing disease, I want the next generation of production and innovation to happen right here, in our great homeland: America – creating wealth and jobs for American workers,” Trump said at the outset of a “video message” released Monday evening.
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“As part of this plan, I’ve asked my transition team to develop a list of executive actions we can take on day one to restore our laws and bring back our jobs. It’s about time,” he added.
Trump’s executive actions centered on six policy areas that were central to his campaign against Hillary Clinton: trade, energy reform, deregulation, national security, immigration and ethics reform.
The president-elect vowed to “issue our notification of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potential disaster for our country” upon taking office. Although Obama has continued to defend the agreement, Trump campaigned vigorously on his promise to renegotiate on a bilateral basis deals he considers unfair to American workers.
“I will cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy – including shale energy and clean coal – creating many millions of high-paying jobs,” Trump said. “That’s what we want, that’s what we’ve been waiting for.”
Former manufacturing hubs and coal-rich areas of Pennsylvania and Ohio, among other key states, helped deliver Trump the presidency after environmental regulations choked factories and mines out of business. Trump drummed up an intense following among communities that had been ravished by Obama’s EPA.
In a nod to his campaign pledge to scale back regulations in all sectors, Trump proposed an executive action that would require his administration to scrap two regulations for each new one it created.
“On national security, I will ask the Department of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop a comprehensive plan to protect America’s vital infrastructure from cyber attacks, and all other form of attacks,” Trump said in the video.
The president-elect has promised a massive infrastructure revitalization package that would create jobs all over the country. While that program has most often been described as an effort to rebuild crumbling roads and bridges, it could also include a cybersecurity component that focuses on girding the electric grid and other vulnerable elements of the country’s infrastructure against possible cyber attacks.
Trump also promised to crack down abuses in visa programs “that undercut the American worker.” His message of enforcing immigration laws has resonated among groups that blame unchecked immigration and guest worker programs for the loss of their jobs.
Critics say some of those visa programs, such as the H-1B program, encourages multinational corporations to supplant American workers with cheaper foreign employees.
Trump also said his promise to “drain the swamp” would begin with a five-year domestic lobbying ban and lifetime foreign lobbying ban for employees of his administration. Although some have questioned how the Trump administration would enforce such a prohibition, the president-elect’s team has said it is a way for them to prevent aides from cashing in on their government experience.
The video message was Trump’s first direct address to the nation since his victory speech on the night of the election.
Since his upset victory over Clinton, Trump has remained buried in the transition process, which he has conducted almost exclusively from his residence in Manhattan’s Trump Tower.
