Monday, January 15, 2018

Trump - One Year In

About a year ago, I posted on Trump looking at what I saw as the reasons to be optimistic and pessimistic. Let's revisit that now that we have a year under our belt.

Overall, I think my predictions were good with some notable variance in a couple areas. Of course, I was vague enough to prevent too much inaccuracy (or accuracy) by design. Here are the areas that standout to me with a look back at my prior comments.

The Good

  • Taxes - this one was somewhat surprisingly good, blemishes and all. [remember with all of these we are grading on a curve] Much like Chance, Trump only gets credit for being there to sign the bill. 
  • Regulation - 1.25 steps forward with 1 step back is still progress. Congress and Trump completely failed to reform much less repeal the ACA (Obamacare). I have low and ebbing faith Dodd-Frank, et al. will be meaningfully changed. Still, there are success stories, and slowing the rate of growth is itself improvement
  • Judicial Appointments - I somehow missed mentioning this previously, and it would have been in the optimism bucket. This one has lived up to realistic (not full libertarian) hope. 
  • Lost Respect for the Sanctity of the Office - yes this is a feature--let the scales fall from your eyes, the emperors have never been well dressed. But . . .
The Bad
  • Presidential Power & Authority - we may be chipping away at the Cult of the Presidency, but I don't yet see the groundswell from the left or the center that I might hope for. They are much to tied up in the emotion of this particular president's actions and words.
  • Immigration - unlike in trade (below), Trump's actions have matched his rhetoric in this area. Here it looks to be an on-going real fight and will perhaps be the most lasting and impactful negative consequence of Trump.
  • Trade - as I mentioned, his administration is a lot of (bad) talk on this, but so far little action. Still, he has many opportunities to make good on his very bad desires.
  • War - I was not pessimistic enough on this. Drone attacks have increased under Trump as the list of places we are at war have grown. The U.S. government with the help of a complicit even if blissfully ignorant populace continues to be wrongfully aggressive. Include in this the surveillance state, but I am fairly certain this one is sadly nonpartisan. 
  • Drug Policy - yep, unfortunately I nailed this one.
The Ugly
  • Hatred, Nationalism, Bullying, etc. - I was not as pessimistic as I should have been in this general area. The downside of losing the always undue respect for the U.S. presidency is that it took this buffoon to get us there. He is at best sloppy and inconsiderate, at worst hateful and demagogic. If you need links on this topic to prove the point, you have been in a coma for 12+ months.
On balance there are reasons to claim "silver linings" and reasons to claim "not so fast".

PS. For a better analysis of the economic policy results of Trump's first year, read Scott Sumner's take

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