It’s pretty hard to get a clear picture of our politics these days in the midst of per-election hype, charges and counter-charges, but here is my recent attempt. Ignore Trump’s daily off-the-wall tweets. Ignore the media’s attempt to cast anything Trump does or says in the worst possible light. Ignore all the per-election hype and promises calculated to appeal to this or that segment of the Republican or Democratic base. What has actually happened of significance during Trump’s administration up until now?
The Economy
Well, first of all, until the COVID pandemic hit, the economy was showing more consistent growth than under the Obama administration that preceded it. Here is a chart that shows GDP change under the two administrations:
Then, until the COVID pandemic hit, unemployment had fallen to a historic low, but in fact this was simply the continuation of a trend already started under the Obama administration, as the chart below shows:
One of Trump’s campaign promises was to reduce the number of federal regulations issued by federal agencies. At the end of Obama’s administration, the Federal Register, which details all federal regulation, totaled 97,110 pages containing 3,410 federal regulations, and there were 2,391 new regulations in the pipeline but not yet approved. No wonder businesses need ranks of lawyers. The chart below shows the result. It comes from the Heritage Foundation, which is a Trump supporter, but it is nevertheless accurate as near as I can tell.
Fundamentally, Trump has tried to fulfill his campaign promise. Of course various groups are outraged by the cancellation of this or that favorite regulation dear to this or that special interest group – that is to be expected.
I will ignore the stock market. Paul Krugman, the New York Time's Nobel Prize winning ultra-liberal economist confidently predicted that if Trump won the markets would crash and never recover. He was wrong on that as he has been on many subsequent anti-Trump predictions. The market has done very well indeed. But I don't think that has much to do with Trump, except that investors apparently don't expect him to do anything disastrous to their investments.
COVID response
The Biden campaign, abetted by the mainstream press, has made much of Trump’s early dismissal of the COVID threat, conveniently forgetting that they themselves did the same thing. In February, the New York Times published ‘Who says it’s not safe to travel to China?’. In January, BuzzFeed wrote, ‘Don’t worry about the coronavirus. Worry about the flu.’ The Washington Post published, in their health section of all places, ‘Get a grippe, America. The flu is a much bigger threat than coronavirus, for now.’ The Associated Press wrote in February, ‘Is the new virus more deadly than the flu? Not exactly.’ The Daily Beast ran ‘The virus killing US kids isn’t the one dominating the headlines.’ Vox even deleted tweets and amended a story which downplayed the virus. The press, and Biden, were especially critical of Trump’s early decision to ban travelers from China, a move that in hindsight was prudent, as even Biden now admits.
Yes, Trump has been inconsistent in his response to COVID, and from time to time has peddled some weird non-science remedies. And he failed to organize a coordinated federal response to the shortage of medical equipment and protective equipment in the early days, though one might wonder how effective such an effort might have been, given the chaos exhibited in the early days by the federal CDC (Center for Disease Control) and the NIH (National Institute for Health). COVID has certainly not shown Trump in a very good light, but in truth many state leaders and many national leaders around the world have done at least as poorly, or even worse.
And one ought to think about the argument Trump has made for opening up businesses earlier. Those well-off elite (mostly liberal) knowledge workers and politicians who argue for keeping the economy closed down are, for the most part, still getting their paychecks, even if they have to work from home. Would they feel differently if they were now out of work and unable to pay their mortgages, or if they were small business owners whose businesses are now bankrupt and closed for good. That is the plight of millions of Americans who wonder, quite reasonably, if the pandemic threat, as bad as it is, is as bad as the long-term economic threat.
Foreign Affairs
Every president since George H.W. Bush has talked about getting NATO members to live up to their pledge of putting at least 2% of their GDP toward their own defense – talked about it, but in in the end done nothing significant to make it happen. Trump has changed that – he has pressed NATO hard to live up to its commitment, and as a result a number of NATO members have finally begun to increase their defense spending. There are still some major holdouts, especially Germany, but there is at least progress on this issue for the first time in decades. Trump deserves credit for this.
The recent breakthrough in the Middle East, with the United Arab Emirates (and now Bahrain as well) establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel is something the Trump administration ought to get credit for. It is more progress than we have seen in the Middle East in a decade. Of course the opportunity arose because of the Iran threat, but the Trump administration took advantage of the window of opportunity, and may well convince other Middle East governments to join the effort. Trump doesn’t deserve a Nobel Prize for it, as some have suggested, any more than Obama deserved the Nobel prize he got for doing nothing but make speeches. But Trump does deserve some credit for this move.
Not much is made of this in the mainstream press, but the Trump administration has renegotiated our trade agreements with almost all of our major trading partners (England is the only exception, and that will come as soon as they untangle themselves from their Brexit mess). The improvements are for the most part relatively minor, but they are real and they improve the competitive position of American workers and American companies.
With respect to China, Trump has moved pretty strongly to deal with both the economic threat (from China’s abuse of trade agreements) and the military threat. There are those who question whether the tariffs Trump imposed will cause more pain to American companies than to China, but that is fairly naïve. The US depends on China trade for about 1% of its GDP, while China depends on US trade for about 7% of its GDP. Companies that have investments in China are of course upset and making the best case possible for removing the tariffs, but that is short-sighted. In general, I think Trump has been fairly effective in containing China, though of course there is a long way still to go in this story.
Summary
There are lots of other areas one could examine in detail, but this is enough to give a broad summary of progress and failures in the Trump administration. There is lots to dislike and distrust in Trump’s personal behavior, but in terms of what his administration has actually accomplished over his first term, it seems to me he has done a passable, though not great job. He has failed in many things, as every president does (the presidency is not nearly as powerful as the general public thinks it is – Congress, after all, holds the purse strings). Considering that he has been under relentless daily attack since before he won the election by the media, by the Washington establishment in both parties (including, apparently, by some in the CIA and the FBI), and by some very wealthy political donors, I am amazed he got as much done as he did.
Of course in this hyper-partisan era, suggesting that Trump has done ANYTHING right outrages half the country, but in fact I think his record is a mixed bag, just like all his predecessors.
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