The first 100 days of Donald Trump’s US presidency
DONALD Trump, who defied predictions to claim the White House in a political earthquake, has vowed to bring sweeping changes to the country and begin to “drain the swamp” of Washington politics during his first 100 days in office.
The 70-year-old Manhattan real estate mogul, who has never held elected office, has long promised that “change will begin my first day in office”.
“We’re going to get to work immediately for the American people, and we’re going to be doing a job that, hopefully, you will be so proud of,” he said in his victory speech in the early hours of Wednesday.
The Republican presidentelect has spelled out his plan to “Make America Great Again” during his first 100 days in office in a document titled “Contract with the American Voter.”
The laundry list of ideas was unveiled on October 22 in Trump’s own “Gettysburg Address”, delivered at the site where Abraham Lincoln tried to unite a divided nation during the US Civil War in 1863.
In his first days Trump promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and withdraw the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
He vowed to lift restrictions on producing fossil fuels, relaunch the Keystone XL oil pipeline project put on hold by President Barack Obama, and cancel billions of dollars in payments to UN climate change programs.
‘Drain the swamp’
The billionaire promised to “begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back.” He would also “suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur” and carry out unspecified “extreme vetting” of those seeking to enter the country.
In what became a mantra for his supporters,Trump has vowed to “drain the swamp” of what he sees as systemic corruption in Washington. He said he’d impose term limits on members of Congress, freeze federal hiring and ban lawmakers andWhite House staff from becoming lobbyists for five years.
He also has promised to“cancel every unconstitutional executive action” undertaken by Obama.
“Our failed political establishment has delivered nothing but poverty, nothing but problems, nothing but losses,” he said.
Despite tense ties with his own Republican Party, which maintained its control over both the House of Republicans and the Senate, Trump says he will work with lawmakers to introduce measures to cut taxes and simplify the tax code, which he claims will result in a 4 percent annual growth for the economy and create 25 million jobs in a decade.
Trump intends to quickly make good on his signature campaign pledge to build a wall along the US border with Mexico, and impose a minimum twoyear federal prison sentence on any deported migrant who tries to return. He also plans to overturn Obamacare.
He hopes to spark $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over the next 10 years via public-private partnerships and private sources, spurred by tax breaks.
Beyond trade and the Mexico wall, Trump has few foreign policy proposals for his first 100 days, other than declaring China a “currency manipulator” for keeping what he believes is an artificially strong currency.