
18 Jan The First 100 Days
“Expect the unexpected.” – The Lonely Realist
Although there is no necessary significance to the first 100 days of a President’s term, the first 100 days of the Donald Trump Administration has the potential to be world-changing.
Upon assuming office, President Trump promises to deport illegal aliens, close America’s borders, abandon “green” in favor of “drill baby drill,” reduce Americans’ taxes, cut the deficit, and shrink the Federal bureaucracy. If he can do all that, 2025 will resonate with historical consequence, even more so than 1933 and 1981, the beginnings of FDR’s New Deal and the Reagan Revolution. Both FDR and Reagan knew exactly what their Administrations’ goals would be and prepared accordingly. President-elect Trump appears equally prepared. Both FDR and Reagan in their first 100 days successfully executed monumental government policy changes. So, too, may Donald Trump. FDR, in the midst of the Great Depression, declared a bank holiday, took America off the gold standard, crammed through groundbreaking legislation for farmers, homeowners and the unemployed, and effectively canceled prohibition. Ronald Reagan assumed office immediately following the calamitous Jimmy Carter years that had included out-of-control inflation and the disastrous handling of the Iran hostage crisis. Reagan was sworn in just as the hostages were released and immediately launched a legislative and administrative blitz that included 83 major program changes, 834 amendments to the budget, 151 lesser budgetary actions and 60 additional pieces of legislation. FDR and Reagan spent years preparing for their first days in office. So has Donald Trump. His action plan is summarized in Project 2025.
Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the Trump Administration intended to reshape the Federal government under the “unitary executive theory” by treating the Executive Branch as subject to the absolute control of the President. Implementation of Project 2025 would include reclassifying Federal civil service employees as “political appointees” in order to replace them with Trump loyalists. Control of the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the IRS, and all other Federal agencies would be placed in the hands of Presidential appointees who, among other things, would undo “most everything implemented” by the Biden and Obama Administrations. The policies articulated by Project 2025 are revolutionary…, and consistent with those proposed by Candidate Trump. Whether or not successfully executed, pursuit of those policies will be disruptive. If successful, those policies would be as significant as those of FDR and Ronald Reagan.
How likely is it that the blueprint provided by Project 2025 will be followed by President Trump?
Let’s start with taxes. Candidate Trump promised to renew his 2017 tax cuts, eliminate taxes on Social Security income, exempt overtime pay from taxation, and add “NO TAX ON TIPS. IT WILL ALL BE MADE UP WITH TARIFFS.” Is this possible? Economists are skeptical, believing that doing so would be both inflationary and increase America’s deficits. How far will Congress go in supporting the Presidential agenda?
President Trump is no fan of the IRS (which is part of the Treasury Department) and Congressional Republicans have proposed severe cuts to the IRS budget. The President-elect recently posted on Truth Social that he would create a new tax authority, the “External Revenue Service,” to collect “tariffs, duties and all revenue” from foreign sources (“We will begin charging those that make money off of us with Trade, and they will start paying, FINALLY, their fair share”). That’s not part of Project 2025, and creating binary tax authorities would be contrary to Candidate Trump’s pledge to cut the Federal bureaucracy (ED NOTE: because tariff collection is the sole domain of the Department of Homeland Security, the ERS would be an agency of Homeland Security). However, the creation of an ERS would confirm the seriousness of Candidate Trump’s promises to gut the IRS and impose sky-high tariffs of 25% on Canadian and Mexican goods and 10% on Chinese goods. The President-elect has said that those tariffs will occur by executive order on his first day in office…, which is Monday. We therefore will soon find out how serious President Trump is about imposing tariffs, noting that, although tariffs would raise revenue, they necessarily are inflationary. Tariffs added to any product are an additional cost that is passed on to consumers, and inflation is the last thing the incoming Trump Administration would want.
There already are competing subgroups within the Administration: traditional Republican conservatives; America Firsters; and the Tech Bros. Can they reconcile to a single, cohesive agenda? The President-elect has indicated that he will press for “one powerful bill” that includes tax cuts, tariffs and border security. House Speaker Mike Johnson supports that strategy and will load “everything” into one bill, indicating that although doing so would be difficult and time-consuming, it would be easier to pass since it would include “enough elements to pull everyone along.” Yet, some of President Trump’s closest advisers are pressing for a phased approach that would place immigration first, tax cuts second, and tariffs third. The House Freedom Caucus, on the other hand, supports breaking the legislation into two pieces, the first “a very small border piece where we give the president the money that he needs to secure our southern border and start deporting illegal, criminal aliens…, saving the large, big, beautiful bill till the summer because it will take time to iron out.” A phased approach would take more than 100 days and risk a loss of momentum that could undercut success.
What deportation policy will the Trump Administration pursue? Immigration is at the top of Donald Trump’s to-do list. He has said that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” that they come “from prisons and jails, insane asylums” and “savage gangs” to occupy parts of America that have turned into “war zones.” He has claimed that there may be 21 million of them and that he will carry out “the largest deportation operation in American history.” Supporters claim that his election rhetoric will be tempered by economic and logistical realities and that the Trump Administration will deport only those undocumented immigrants who have a criminal background. Perhaps. Given the President-elect’s rhetoric and his priorities, Americans are likely to soon see a number of well-publicized workplace raids…, and perhaps quite a bit more. The President-elect, however, would be unlikely to risk hamstringing America’s agricultural, construction and food production industries by depriving them of necessary, low-cost workers.
And what of increasing the debt ceiling, providing economic support for a flaming Los Angeles…, and military support for Israel coupled with imposing “maximum pressure” on Iran…, and ending the Ukraine War “in a day”?
The first 100 days of the Trump Administration, like the incoming President, will be unpredictable. It therefore would be prudent to expect the unexpected.
Finally (from a good friend)
No Comments