Donald Trump is rapidly implementing the political programme on which he campaigned, entirely by decree. Let’s assess his avalanche of actions.
US president Donald Trump stormed out of the starting blocks on inauguration day by signing 25 executive orders on the same day, with another 10 following later in the week for a total of 35. That’s not counting proclamations and memoranda, which takes the total number of presidential actions published last week up to 72.
By comparison, when Joe Biden was inaugurated on Wednesday 20 January 2021, he signed nine executive orders on the same day, and signed another 12 in that week. Of these 21 orders, 12 were related to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2017, Trump was inaugurated on Friday 20 January, signed only one executive order on that day, and signed another three in the next week.
Former president Barack Obama signed no executive orders on his inauguration day in 2009, and signed only five in the subsequent week, three of which related to war on terror interrogations and detentions.
George W. Bush signed no executive orders at all in his first week in office. Bill Clinton signed two, Bush père signed one, and Ronald Reagan signed none.
Trump’s flurry of orders, therefore, is unprecedented in recent history. He is fast becoming a president who rules by decree. Under the US Constitution, executive orders count as rules, not legislation, and the people – i.e. the Houses of Congress – do not have the power to overturn presidential orders. At best, they can make it difficult to execute them by withholding funding, but even that is unlikely in a Congress dominated by Republicans too craven to gainsay their anointed leader.
Some presidential actions are largely administrative, but let’s try to score the more important executive orders, and a few memos and proclamations, too, if they turn out to be significant.
The list is long, so this will be a two-part exercise. The second half of the list will be published on Friday this week.
Get Carter
Trump’s first non-administrative action was a proclamation to order all US flags to be raised to full-staff for the remainder of inauguration day, and all subsequent inauguration days, despite a period of mourning having been declared after the death of former president Jimmy Carter.
Although the intent was to “honour … everything good and noble that [Inauguration Day] represents about our Nation, our people, and our form of Government,” it seems neither good nor noble to interrupt a 30-day mourning period for a departed president in this way.
This gets an F on my scorecard.
Discrimination
His next act was to revoke a whopping 78 of his predecessor’s executive orders – almost half of Biden’s total number of 162 orders.
Many of the revocations are justifiable, and many go without saying, knowing Trump’s views. Ending years of preferential treatment in the name of diversity, equity and inclusion, in favour of merit-based appointments, is a particularly welcome move, which gets an A from me.
Some, however, are troubling, such as the revocation of several orders related to preventing and combating discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. In Trump’s America, discrimination is okay again. That merits an F.
On balance, I’d rate this order a C, at best.
Free speech
The next executive order reaffirms the US government’s commitment to free speech absolutism, reversing the previous administration’s efforts to combat “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation.”
This is largely consistent with liberal principles. It is debatable whether disinformation that poses a substantive threat to public health or national security should not fall within the purview of a country’s government, but it is also true that such provisions are often abused by governments to suppress legitimate public speech.
I prefer to see the rules err on the side of free speech, so I’ll give Trump a pass on this one: B.
Revenge
Trump’s next order of business was to end the supposed weaponisation of the federal government. He considers the legal actions taken against him in the past to be politically motivated, and with this order aims to investigate and take “remedial action” against those responsible for what he believes to have been his unjust persecution.
The rule of law is a political and legal principle that says all people and institutions in a country, including its legislators, governing executives and judiciary, are equally accountable to the same laws. It stands opposed to the “rule of men”, in which law is arbitrarily made by leaders who themselves stand above the law.
Trump’s successful appeal to the court to be granted immunity for all official actions as president was a first indication that he seeks to be above the law, and this attack on the institutions of justice, in revenge for his own prosecution and conviction, affirms that the rule of law does not apply to Trump.
It is true that the police and judiciary should not be “weaponised” against political opponents, but it is far from clear whether this in fact happened, or whether it is simply the case that Trump violated several laws, and was justly prosecuted for those violations. I lean towards the latter interpretation, so this order scores a D.
Return to work
The next few edicts order all government workers to return to full-time office work, orders all regulatory action to cease pending a review of existing regulation, and orders a hiring freeze in all government departments other than the military.
I’m not convinced that a return to work necessarily makes all government officials more productive but welcome a freeze on regulation and hiring. I’ll give this a B+.
Price relief
The next order aims to “deliver emergency price relief” for Americans, to “[defeat] the cost of living crisis”.
While it correctly identifies pandemic-era stimulus and high government spending as having contributed to post-pandemic inflation, it recognises neither that massive stimulus spending began under Trump’s previous administration, nor that inflation is already back under control.
It orders vague “appropriate actions” to be taken to lower prices, including of houses. To the extent that those actions include removing burdensome regulations, I can only applaud this action.
If these actions veer into price controls, however, Trump will discover that the market does what the market does, and what it does not do is respond well to artificially low (or high) prices. Regulatory costs are within the purview of the government, but price levels are not. This order gets a B.
Paris agreement
Trump turned next to the ill-fated Paris climate agreement, from which he intends to withdraw the United States as soon as is legally possible. The same goes for any other international agreements under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, as well as America’s commitments to international climate finance.
I agree entirely with this move. Climate change mitigation is a very poor investment of limited resources, as the work of the Copenhagen Consensus Center demonstrates. A future of clean energy and thriving ecosystems is heavily dependent on first achieving human prosperity.
Not only the US, but all countries, ought to “prioritise economic efficiency, the promotion of [their own nation’s] prosperity, consumer choice, and fiscal restraint” in international agreements concerning energy. This order gets an A from me.
Jan 6 pardons
Trump’s next order grants “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021”.
This is predictable, but terrible. It is very clear that many of those convicted weren’t merely trespassing, but were there to riot, vandalise property, and attack police officers and members of Congress.
This wasn’t a “day of love”, but an organised attempt to overthrow a duly elected government, encouraged by Trump himself. Tolerating insurrection, and pardoning violence, undermine the rule of law and the orderly transition of power in a democratic republic. That’s worth an F for Fail, in my books.
TikTok
Trump promised to extend the deadline for the Chinese-controlled social network TikTok to find an acceptable divestment arrangement to avoid a ban on its distribution in the United States, and his next order grants it another 75 days.
The wording of the order is actually funny: he takes it personally that the 180 days from the enactment of the relevant law happened to fall on the day before he was inaugurated, since that, he says, didn’t give him the chance to assess the national security implications and negotiate a resolution that would avoid a shutdown of the service.
For undermining an Act of Congress, and caving pathetically to special-interest lobbying even though he was the first to argue TikTok ought to be banned, I give this order another F.
World Health Organisation
We’re still only on day one of Trump’s presidency, and with his next order he rescinds the Presidential Letter that cancelled the notification of withdrawal that the US government sent to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on 6 July 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. The US once again intends to withdraw from the organisation and cease all funding to it, transferring some of its functions to “credible and transparent United States and international partners”.
I have been a vocal critic of the World Health Organisation on many occasions, since well before the pandemic. A comprehensive argument on the successes and failures of the organisation can be found in my in-depth four-part series (part one, two, three and four), but I’ve also made more targeted criticisms on other occasions.
In short, I believe the WHO has a vital role to play in the campaign to prevent, combat and eradicate communicable diseases, but has become bloated, inefficient, and far too focused on non-communicable (i.e. “lifestyle”) diseases instead. Instead of protecting people from others, it has taken to protecting people from themselves.
I think summarily withdrawing from the organisation throws the baby out with the bathwater. While I sympathise with a lot of the negative perception of the WHO, I think it is worth reforming, to return it to its original mandate of fighting trans-national communicable diseases.
Trump claims to be the great negotiator: he should be able to do better than stamp his feet and storm out of the room. For this reason, I can’t score this order any higher than a C.
Border emergency
Skipping ahead by a few, we come to a hysterical piece of rhetoric that declares an “national emergency” at the southern border of the United States.
“America’s sovereignty is under attack. Our southern border is overrun by cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries, and illicit narcotics that harm Americans, including America. … This invasion has caused widespread chaos and suffering in our country over the last 4 years. It has led to the horrific and inexcusable murders of many innocent American citizens, including women and children, at the hands of illegal aliens.”
And so on. In response, he is mobilising the defence forces of the United States to “seal the border”. A further executive order clarifies the use of the military for this purpose, and, like a babbling old man, Trump felt the need to reclarify the clarification in a third order, which also establishes a mass deportation programme.
In a further order, he declares that America is too poor to admit refugees, and in yet another one, he creatively re-interprets the Fourteenth Amendment.
It says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Trump says that doesn’t mean that all persons born in the United States are citizens of the United States, because some are not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”.
All this emergency decreeing, and yet there is no emergency.
There is no crime wave associated with immigrants, legal or otherwise. Despite public perceptions, shaped by sensationalist media reporting and partisan politics, crime rates have been on a long decline, with only a temporary hiccup during the Covid-19 pandemic visible in the statistics.
This is a sop to his xenophobic, nativist, white-nationalist base.
To address a perceived immigration problem with a military build-up on the border of America’s second-largest trading partner is belligerent and hostile. It is not likely to sit well with the Mexican government, whose cooperation the US government seeks.
Again, as a supposedly excellent deal maker, Trump ought to be able to do better than bullying and saber-rattling. This order scores a D for deplorable.
America First
I’ve written enough about Trump’s idiotic belief that tariffs and trade wars will be good for America and make Americans rich.
His next order directs officials to “investigate the causes of our country’s large and persistent annual trade deficits in goods, as well as the economic and national security implications and risks resulting from such deficits, and recommend appropriate measures, such as a global supplemental tariff or other policies, to remedy such deficits.”
It also orders them to establish the moronically named “External Revenue Service (ERS) to collect tariffs, duties, and other foreign trade-related revenues.”
Once again, tariffs are taxes on your own people. They are not paid by foreign exporters, but by importers, and their cost is passed on to consumers.
There are no winners in a trade war. For a government to levy a fee on trade makes everyone poorer. It is a massive tax on economic activity.
It puzzles Trump that America should have trade deficits with other countries, but it is really no mystery at all. America has trade deficits because it is more productive and more prosperous than other countries. Its people can afford to import foreign goods.
Let me repeat what I wrote before: “Exports don’t make a country richer. Imports make it richer, and exports merely pay for them. You can’t eat gold. Prosperity is based on the productivity of the people, not on the money earned from exports. As P.J. O’Rourke wrote: ‘imports are Christmas morning; exports are January’s MasterCard bill’.”
There’s nothing wrong with having a trade deficit, especially if foreign exporters are willing to accept your own currency in payment. It makes nobody poorer; on the contrary, imports are what make Americans richer.
Levying tariffs on those imports will make Americans poorer. This scores a G for godawful.
Capital punishment
Trump next restores the death penalty, orders the federal attorney general to pursue it whenever possible, and encourages state attorneys general to do the same, despite the fact that there is no meaningful evidence that the death penalty deters crime.
He wants the death penalty applied particularly in cases not of gruesome child murders or serial killers or something, but for people who kill police officers and illegal aliens who commit capital crimes.
Since the resumption of the death penalty in the US in 1973, an estimated 21 prisoners were wrongfully executed, and another 185 were exonerated, two thirds of which were convicted on the basis of false accusations or perjury.
The monopoly on violence that a government wields is an awesome power, and it should never be wielded against citizens except in extreme circumstances. The death penalty is a gross violation of the right to life and should be anathema to any country that professes to uphold classical liberal values. Another F score is appropriate here.
Architecture
Let’s end today’s list with a memorandum, and one of the more absurd memos I’ve ever seen: Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.
For some reason, Trump believes that his own taste, well, trumps that of the hoi polloi. I beg to differ.
Trump’s memo aims to “advance the policy that Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government”.
To achieve this, the design of every public building must be sent to him for approval.
Who made the president the arbiter of public taste? Next they’ll want to add Trump to Mount Rushmore. Oh, wait. They already do.
To be continued…
Image: Donald Trump on Mount Rushmore. Composite image based on “mt Trumpmore soon to be unveiled” by Rafael Edwards on Flickr.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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