Promises, promises: has Donald Trump kept his word in office?
Promise: building a border wall and making Mexico pay for it
Verdict: failure. As of last month, no new wall had been erected in places where there was not already a barrier at the border. Trump has awarded contracts for 247 miles of wall construction but this has been challenged in court. Even if he prevails, all but 17 miles would merely be replacement for existing barriers, not new construction. Expect to hear a lot more about the wall in 2020.
Related: Democrats look for that old debate magic – but can anyone defeat Trump?
Promise: repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare
Verdict: failure. Trump’s hopes were torpedoed by Democrats and three Republican senators in July 2017 amid concerns his plan would destabilise insurance markets and push up costs for people with pre-existing conditions. The president is still pressing in court for full repeal of Obamacare and promising a “phenomenal” replacement but while Democrats control the House, this is dead in the water.
Promise: reforming tax
Verdict: success. Republicans passed the most sweeping tax rewrite in decades in December 2017. Trump has claimed it was the biggest tax cut in history but it will add up to $1.5tn over 10 years which as a share of the total economy ranks 12th, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Republicans claim it was a win for working families but 83% of the benefits went to the top 1% of earners, according to Center for American Progress Action.
Promise: appointing conservative judges
Verdict: success. Trump had filled 123 vacancies as of 19 June, compared with 88 for Barack Obama, 132 for George W Bush and 145 for Bill Clinton at the same stage in their presidencies, according to the Heritage Foundation thinktank. Importantly, Trump’s appointments include two supreme court justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, delighting his base and tilting the court to the right with potentially devastating implications for abortion rights.
Promise: renegotiating trade deals
Verdict: stalled. Trump pulled out of the Trans Pacific Partnership and replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement with the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which has just been ratified by Mexico but faces domestic opposition. Deals with the UK, Japan and European Union are moving slowly. Meanwhile, the president has used tariffs to embark on a trade war with China which critics say hurts American farmers and could wreak havoc in the global economy.
Promise: jobs, jobs, jobs
Verdict: not bad. Trump boasts that he has created 6m jobs and that unemployment is at its lowest in half a century. Critics say he is merely riding Obama’s economic wave – and doing slightly worse. Trump created an average 188,542 jobs a month in the first 24 months of his presidency, compared with 202,417 a month in the last 24 months of the Obama administration. In the May jobs report, the economy created just 75,000 jobs.
