Since the Trump Presidency began back in January, we have endeavored to maintain a comprehensive listing of all the administrations misdeeds in the Everything Awful The Trump Administration Has Done Omnibus (full list here), and have attempted to categorize and score them accordingly. Today is April 20th, which means that as of noon today we are now moving into month 16 of the Trump administration. To mark the occasion, we are releasing the Everything Terrible Trump Has Done 2018 1st Qtr. Brief.
We already provided a thorough explanation of our methodology elsewhere, so we’ll just skip straight to the results. For anyone interested, an in-depth discussion on how we classified and scored actions can be found here.
Overall Results
The 1st quarter of Trump second year saw a slight slowdown from the previous quarter, which was notably high due to the Republican tax bill. However overall the administration continued to propose and enact harmful policies at a fairly steady pace. As is typical of the administration the large majority of these policies were implemented through executive powers, such as rule making and executive orders. Many major policy initiatives were proposed for legislation, including a budget for FY 2019 and a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure bill, but as is usually the case these made very little headway towards being passed.
Policy Area
From a high level perspective the administration’s focus and impact was largely unchanged previous quarters. The administration’s impact was still primarily felt in economic terms through reductions in social services and regulations. That was followed by moves that degraded civil liberties and institutions. Foreign policy represented a relatively small part of the overall picture, though it is up significantly over previous quarters.
A majority of the most significant actions of the first quarter of Trump’s second year were continuations of previously initiatives.
The administration continued with its draconian immigration policy, with some of the more notable developments of the last quarter including increased efforts to punish sanctuary cities, getting the supreme court to determine that immigrants can be held indefinitely, and of course letting DACA expire (shutting down the government multiple times in the process).
Numerous scandals surrounding the administration also continued to unfold. Many outrageous instances of Trump’s cabinet members wasting tax payer money and engaging in shady activities were uncovered, such as Ben Carson’s $31,000 dining set. The probe surrounding Russian tampering and possibly collusion with the Trump campaign continued, with highlights including the firing of Andrew McCabe and the revelations around Cambridge Analytica’s procurement of millions of voter’s personal information off Facebook. In some instances, these two sets of scandals overlapped, such as when Michael Cohen was arrested for, among other things, money laundering.
The administration’s penchant for crony capitalism also continued in its economic policies. The administration’s proposed infrastructure plan was, for the most part, a package of tax cuts, privatizations, and “public private partnerships” aimed at giving well connected businesses a windfall at the public expense.
On the other hand, there were some relevant shifts within policy areas. Whereas the last two quarters of Trump’s first year saw a particular focus on healthcare and taxes, the first quarter of his second year has shifted towards other areas of social spending and trade. While not enacted, Trump’s FY 2019 budget was a horrifying glimpse into the Hellraiser-esque sadomasochist austerity dimension that many Republicans live in. It was filled with drastic cuts to social services, including a proposed $236bn cut to Medicare and a 21% to the Department of Health and Human Services Budget.
Notable Developments
While the The first three months of Trump’s second year was primarily a continuation of things started in his first year, there were many developments which, while minor in the overall scope of the administration, suggest major shifts in its direction.
First, in terms of economic policy, the administration made a strong turn towards protectionist trade policies, even to the point setting off a trade war with China. This is a sharp contrast to the Trump administration’s first year, when Trump had largely put off implementing the protectionist measures he had campaigned on in favor of a slate more typical Republican economic policies focused on slashing taxes and social programs.
Second, the administration was relatively more active in the realm of foreign policy. Up to this point, the administration’s modus operandi in the foreign policy sphere has been to badly mismanage the diplomatic corps and pursuing an incoherent diplomatic strategy jumping back and forth between intervention, isolationism, and blustering at allies and enemies alike. To be sure, the first 3 months of Trump’s 2nd year have still involved a good deal of this. Trump seemed to suggest withdrawing from Syria entirely before immediately turning around and order and ordering airstrikes. He also continued to play favorites with his advisers, as John Kelly and Jared Kushner seemed to fall out of favor and Rex Tillerson was forced out entirely.
But in many ways, the administration seemed to be trending in a more traditionally Neoconservative direction. There was, of course, the strike in Syria and numerous major arms sales to Saudi Arabia which are enabling their brutal campaign in Yemen. He hired arch warmonger John Bolton to serve as Nation Security Adviser and picking Gina Haspel for CIA director. All this would hold with a commonly noted historical pattern of Presidents becoming more foreign policy and intervention minded as their term in office goes on, though only time will tell if this trend continues for Trump.
What do these developments mean overall? It’s hard to say. In terms of alignment with the Republican party, recent shifts in the administration have been largely a wash. The administration is diverging from congressional Republicans on economic policy, but it’s trending closer to them on foreign policy. This is interesting, but it doesn’t suggest that they’re going to conflict or cooperate any more than they have in the past. This is especially the case given that the Russian investigation has not exploded into Watergate style prominence, and both Republicans and betting markets seem to be coming to the conclusion that he’ll probably weather the controversy. Betting markets have historically been awful predictors of politics, but they are probably reflecting conventional wisdom here.
But on the other hand, it’s not hard to imagine that all this may be flirting with disaster long term. The economy is already starting to look shaky, with many economists now predicting a recession next year. Escalating a trade war with China is not likely to help matters, and when combined with the administration’s previous moves to cut social assistance, undo regulatory safeguard and undermine any potentially expansionary fiscal policy by preemptively driving up the deficit, there will be plenty of blame to go around when a recession does hit. On the other hand, while embracing neoconservative orthodoxy may make him political allies in the short run, it may in the long run mean leading the country into messy foreign entanglements.