Trump’s promises: Yes on tax cuts, but where’s the wall?
PTaxes Trade
WASHINGTON resident Donald Trump often brags that he’s done more in his first year in office than any other president. That’s a spectacular stretch.
But while he’s fallen short on many measures and has a strikingly thin legislative record, Trump has followed through on dozens of his campaign promises, overhauling the country’s tax system, changing the U.S. posture abroad and upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of immigrants.
A year in, Trump is no closer to making Mexico pay for a border wall than when he made supporters swoon with that promise at those rollicking campaign rallies of 2016.
He’s run into legislative roadblocks — from fellow Republicans, no less — at big moments, which is why the Obama-era health law survives, wounded but still insuring millions. His own administration’s sloppy start explains why none of the laws he pledged to sign in his first 100 days came to reality then and why most are still aspirational.
Nevertheless, Trump has nailed the tax overhaul, his only historic legislative accomplishment to date, won confirmation of a conservative Supreme Court justice and other federal judges, and used his executive powers with vigor to slice regulations and pull the U.S. away from international accords he assailed as a candidate.
A look at some of his campaign promises and what’s happened with them:
Trump and congressional Republicans delivered on an overhaul that substantially lowers corporate taxes and cuts personal income taxes, as promised. It’s sizable but not everything Trump said it would be, and it is more tilted to the wealthy than he promised or will admit. He promised a 15 percent tax rate for corporations and settled for 21 percent, still a major drop from 35 percent. He promised three tax brackets; there are still seven. He did not eliminate the estate tax or the alternative minimum tax as he said he would. Fewer people will be subject to those taxes, however, at least temporarily.
“Everybody is getting a tax cut, especially the middle class,” he said in the campaign. Most will; some will pay more.
Trump made good on his promise to withdraw the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and to reopen the North American Free Trade Agreement in search of a better deal.
He’s let China off the hook, though, on his oft-repeated threat during the campaign to brand Beijing a currency manipulator, a step toward potentially hefty penalties on Chinese imports and a likely spark for a trade war.
“We’re like the piggy bank that’s being robbed,” he said of the trade relationship, which has tipped even more in China’s favor since. Trump now threatens trade punishment if China does not sufficiently cooperate in reining in North Korea.
Trump promised to impose a 35 percent tariff on goods from U.S. companies that ship production abroad. He’s not delivered on that. Instead, his tax plan aims to encourage companies to stay in the U.S. with the lower tax rate and to entice those operating abroad to come home by letting them repatriate their profits in the U.S. at a temporarily discounted rate. His approach so far is all carrot, no stick.
Immigration
Candidate Trump rocked the political landscape when he proposed a temporary ban on all non-U.S. Muslims entering the country. While he’s long backed away from such talk, Trump has worked since his first days in office to impose new restrictions on tourists and immigrants, signing executive orders that would have made good on his anti-immigration promises had those orders not been blocked by courts.
He’s now succeeded in banning the entry of citizens from several Muslim-majority countries and in severely curbing refugee admissions. He’s tried to deny certain federal money for cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
Trump is now deep in negotiations over an immigration deal that could deliver on other promises, including money for the border wall with Mexico and overhauling the legal immigration system to make it harder for immigrants to sponsor their families. That’s in exchange for extending protections for hundreds of thousands of young people brought to the country illegally as children.
Mexico still isn’t ponying up money for the wall.
Energy and the environment
Trump promised aggressive action on the energy front and has pursued that.
He announced his intention to take the U.S. out of the Paris climate-change accord. He gave swift approval to the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines stalled by President Barack Obama, moved to shrink protected national monument lands in Utah and Arizona, and acted to lift restrictions on mining coal and coastal drilling for oil and natural gas.
A provision in the new tax law opens the long-protected Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
Trump is making fossil fuels the centerpiece of his drive toward energy independence — a benchmark that Obama closed in on during an era of surging natural gas development.
Health care
Probably nothing exemplifies frustrated ambition more than the Obama health law Republicans have been trying to dismantle ever since it was enacted in 2010. Trump has declared it dead many times — he just never got around to killing it.
He made this overpromise in the campaign: “My first day in office, I’m going to ask Congress to put a bill on my desk getting rid of this disastrous law and replacing it with reforms that expand choice, freedom, affordability. You’re going to have such great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost. It’s going to be so easy.” That hasn’t happened. The December tax law, though, is knocking out a pillar. As of 2019, the requirement to carry health insurance or pay a fine will be gone.
Trump has come out with a proposed regulation to promote the sale of health plans across state lines. The goal is to make it easier for associations to sponsor plans that are cheaper than Affordable Care Act policies but don’t have to meet all consumer protection and benefit requirements of that law.
He also promised to authorize Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices. It hasn’t been done.
‘America First’ abroad
Trump promised swift victory over the Islamic State group. Over the past year, U.S. and coalition-backed local forces in Iraq and Syria did deal a crushing blow to ISIS, ousting the militants from most of the territory they once held. The success built on the strategy of the Obama administration to work with and through local forces. Trump did relax restrictions on the number of U.S. troops who could be deployed both to Iraq and Syria, and that aided the final push.
U.S. commanders, however, stop short of saying ISIS is defeated, pointing to remaining militants and fighting in Syria. They also note the group has spawned affiliates in other countries, such as Afghanistan and Yemen, where they routinely attack U.S. forces and allies. While reeling as a territorial force, the IS group has inspired terrorist attacks in the West.
The Pentagon has yet to see the massive increase in military spending that Trump has promised. That still might come, but the protracted struggle to pass a Pentagon budget of whatever size has hurt U.S. military readiness, defense officials say.