Why for Donald Trump 2017 was a much better year than it may seem
"Tweets and smoke". That expression could summarize the balance that critics of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, make of the president's management during his first 11 months in the White House.
"What happens with Donald Trump is that he says many things, but it is difficult to find evidence that he has fulfilled his main campaign promises, apart from a little rhetoric," Chris Edelson, professor of Government at the American University School of Public Affairs.
"He has not kept his promises and, at times, he has done the opposite of what he had promised," Edelson adds.
"He said he was going to build a wall on the border and that Mexico was going to pay for it and that is not going to happen. He promised a tax cut to help the middle class and not the rich, but the planned cut is very focused. in benefiting big business and the rich, "he says
"He announced that he was going to get rid of the Paris Climate Agreement, but I think he cannot abandon it for three years. What he did was sign a document, but he has not succeeded."
The list of unfulfilled or only partially fulfilled promises includes the repeal and replacement of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, a central flag of Trump's election campaign and, in general, of the Republican Party, which has not been able to come true despite having a majority in Congress.
However, beyond this failure on an emblematic issue and the numerous controversies in which the presidency of Donald Trump has been involved, there are analysts who assure that the real estate mogul has made great, although not very visible, advances, which will leave an enduring brand in America.
"There is so much attention focused on each new tweet and the majority discourse is that he has had a very unsuccessful year because there is no wall on the border with Mexico and because of a general lack of the elements with which we usually measure the success of a Presidency, but Trump is someone unconventional, "Nicholas Jacobs, a researcher at the University of Virginia School of Politics, told BBC Mundo.
Jacobs conducted a study with Professor Sidney M Mulkis, from the same university, in which they take stock of this first period of Trump's term and conclude that so far "there are many things for which he can take credit - or guilt - when it comes to fulfilling their electoral promises. "
A fuzzy agenda
According to Jacobs, one of the difficulties in evaluating the Trump presidency lies in clearly defining his agenda.
In this sense, the expert identifies two types of issues: those that were characteristic of the Trump campaign (immigration, national security, reform of the federal government and economic nationalism); and those in which the tycoon assumed a position similar to that which any candidate nominated by the Republicans would have had (energy, health or justice, among others).
"In each of those areas Trump has moved forward on his agenda and I think that despite everything, he has had a more successful year than many experts are willing to admit," says Jacobs.
He notes that when the study began, he was in awe of the sheer number of decisions made by the White House since January 2017.
The data seems to agree with him at least when it comes to the approval of executive orders.
According to a comparison made by CNN of the first 9 months of the last 13 presidents of the United States, Donald Trump is the president who has applied the most measures of this type since the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969).
As of October 13, he had signed 49 executive orders. In that same period, his predecessor, Barack Obama, had only signed 26.
"Much of what Trump has done has been to reverse the things that Obama did," says Jacobs.
The researcher warns, however, that some of the decisions that have been made may mark long-term changes in the country.
Changes in progress
Among the topics most typical of Trump's agenda, one of the most controversial measures was the travel ban to the United States for citizens from a number of Muslim-majority countries.
The presidential order generated great controversy, it was taken to court and had to be modified twice, but now it has finally received the approval of the highest judicial authorities.
On the immigration issue, Jacobs also points out that the White House adopted a policy to end the so-called "sanctuary cities" and reversed the measures adopted by Obama to protect young people who came to the United States as minors from deportation ( DACA, for its acronym in English) and the parents of these children (DAPA).
"People will say that this is part of his tough anti-immigrant policy, so he can attribute it to him. But basically what Trump did was put the issue in the hands of the Republicans in Congress so if something comes out of there, he You can also score a legislative success, "he explains.
It indicates that on the issue of national security - "something that Trump rhetorically links to immigration" - there was an increase in the Defense Department budget, in exchange for cuts in all other sectors of the government and despite the current Republican discourse against of the fiscal deficit.
"On the economic agenda is probably where Trump probably made less progress than he expected. The only thing I think he can present as a fulfilled promise is the withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement (TPP), which underpins their idea of seeking more restricted trade agreements, "says Jacobs, who spoke with BBC Mundo before Congress approved the recent tax reform.
In relation to this, which was finally signed into law on December 20, Jacobs believes that it is more an achievement of Congress than of the White House, despite the fact that during the election campaign Trump had promised a drastic tax cut and a simplification of tax legislation.
"I have not seen Trump as involved in that negotiation as he was with the attempts to repeal Obamacare, although I have no doubt that he will want to attribute it to himself as his own achievement," says the expert.
"Draining the swamp"
One of the attractions that Trump's candidacy had for his voters was his status as an "outsider" and his promise to go to Washington to "drain the swamp" (a metaphor he uses to talk about reducing the federal bureaucracy and fighting corruption and special interests).
After his arrival at the White House, one of the president's first executive decisions was to generally freeze the hiring of personnel and order a reorganization of the workforce of all federal agencies and departments.
Jacobs explains that each federal agency has been told that for each new rule that wants to be approved, the economic cost of enforcing it is evaluated, as well as the cost for those who have to apply it.
Also, they should evaluate how the structure of each office may hinder job creation or if they are assuming functions of state or local governments.
"They are looking to cut corners everywhere. They are doing what Steven Bannon (the former White House chief adviser) once called 'deconstructing' the administrative state. What you want is to restrict the amount of bureaucratic activities that government offices They can do. This is something that has been talked about in previous Republican administrations, but now there is a concerted effort to apply it, "says the expert.
"Trump has placed great emphasis and attention on how the federal government is involved in making regulations. I think there will be big changes in that and we will see a lot less activity from the federal government in the short term," he adds.
In a show of his intention to reduce regulations and cut bureaucracy, on December 14, Trump held a ceremony at the White House next to two stacks of paper: a small one representing the 20,000 pages of federal regulations that existed in 1960 and another of 1.9 meters high as a sample of the 185,000 pages that exist today.
"We canceled or delayed around 1,500 regulatory actions that were planned, well above any previous president," Trump said in the event in which he cut a red ribbon with gold scissors and reminded federal agencies that they must reduce even more bureaucracy in 2018.
Republicans in power
"When I think about most of the things that Trump has done, they fall into the broader category of what any Republican president would have done. In that sense, many of these measures are not surprising, except for the spectacle that they seem to accompany. everything Donald Trump does, "says Jacobs.
A part of these changes has occurred in the area of civil rights.
Thus, for example, Trump ended a rule that prohibited the sale of military weapons to state and local police forces.
He also repealed another rule that allowed civil organizations to file complaints against possible abuses by their local police officers with the Department of Justice, something the Obama administration launched after a series of complaints and protests over alleged excesses of officials. police.
"Trump also reversed Obama's decision to stop using private prisons for profit. That measure had been taken because the government concluded that mass incarceration of people was a civil rights problem and that one of the reasons it was the existence of private prisons for profit, where certain types of abuses are committed, "says Jacobs.
In the energy sector, in addition to withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement against Climate Change, the Trump administration approved the construction of the Dakota and Keystone XL pipelines, and ordered a review of several regulations adopted by Obama, such as the one that sets the fuel economy performance standards for vehicles or those regulating oil exploration on the continental United States.
He also ordered all government departments to review how their regulations may be limiting energy production in the country, especially in relation to oil, natural gas and coal.
"I think Trump has been very effective in launching a team within the bureaucracy that has been very efficient in using the government's administrative discretion to alter policy," says James Wooley, Professor of Political Science at the University of California Santa Barbara. , in response to BBC Mundo.
"Despite everything, he has faced determined (and prepared) opposition that is acting mostly through the courts," he adds.
Jacobs, for his part, highlights the great extent of the changes made by the Executive.
"As can be seen, there is a great variety of decisions, from the most visible ones such as the withdrawal of the Paris Agreement to other smaller ones, that show how relevant this government will be from the point of view of public policies. The scope of these measures is huge, since they encompass everything the federal government does, "Jacobs explains.
The sentences of the future
The measures adopted by the Trump administration are not limited to the Executive Branch and, on the contrary, can extend its legacy much further in time due to the decisions that are being made in relation to the Judiciary.
In addition to the appointment of the conservative Neil Gorsuch as the new Supreme Court magistrate, the US president has made an unusual number of applications to fill vacancies in federal courts.
"A massive transformation is underway in the way our fundamental rights are defined by federal justice. Although President Trump is incompetent in myriad aspects of his work, he is proving to be tremendously successful on one issue: the nomination of young conservatives in the federal courts in record numbers, "wrote Ronald A. Klain, a former adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, in The Washington Post.
Klain's text was published last July, when Trump had already nominated 27 judges to those courts, triple what Obama had done in his first six months in the White House.
"Those chosen by Trump are surprisingly young. Obama's first appellate court nominees were 55 on average; Trump nominees are 48. That means, on average, Trump candidates will be in office for almost two more presidential terms than Obama's, "Klain warned.
And he adds: "Many of the judges selected by Trump will be deciding on the scope of our civil liberties and shaping civil rights laws in 2050 and beyond."
As of the end of last November, the number of judges nominated by Trump for federal courts had risen to 59, as reported by The Washington Post.
"It has been pointed out that those postulates are mostly men and white," Edelson told BBC Mundo.
Jacobs considers along with Gorsuch's appointment to the Supreme Court, the decisions that Trump has made in administrative terms will have an equally great impact on the development of public policies in the future.
"In the long term I think that, beyond the promise of reduction of the administrative state, what you see are numerous moves by the government that follow the route traced by their predecessors Reagan and Bush of using the federal government to achieve conservative ends. ", he warns.
