Promise vs Performance

 

Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 after making more than 100 promises, about half of which he has broken, according to a tracker by PolitiFact. Supporters of Mr. Trump who spoke to The Times said overwhelmingly that they were pleased with how he had lived up to his pledges.  In reality, Mr. Trump has broken about half of 100 campaign promises, according to a tracker by PolitiFact. The fact-checking website does not measure intention, only verifiable outcomes. (On average, presidents break about a third of their promises.)

·       Build a Wall and Make Mexico Pay for It  Erecting a barrier along the southwestern border was the defining rallying cry of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. “Build the Wall” became a chant — he promised to build 1,000 miles of border wall — and passing on the cost to Mexico was the delicious kicker. Over the past four years, the Trump administration had constructed 371 miles of border barriers, as of Oct 16. And it is on pace to reach 400 miles next week. However, all but 16 miles of the new barriers replace or reinforce existing structures.

• Appoint Conservative Judges  With three Supreme Court Justices and 25 percent of the federal judiciary now made up of Trump appointees, according to data from Russell Wheeler, a judiciary expert at the Brookings Institution, the president has been more successful on this campaign promise than perhaps any other. His campaign boasts that he has flipped the balance of three federal appeals courts and shifted nine appeals courts to the right. His nomination of Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the weeks before the election could reshape abortion rights, immigration law and the government’s regulatory power. Confirming a Supreme Court justice so close to an election was unprecedented, and Democrats framed it as an illegitimate power grab by Republicans.  Mr. Trump has defended his right to do so, arguing that elections have consequences.
• Repeal and Replace the Affordable Care Act The years long Republican campaign to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act came to a head unsuccessfully and dramatically in the first year of Mr. Trump’s presidency, when Senator John McCain of Arizona cast the decisive vote against the effort. The Democrats’ regaining a majority in the House of Representatives after the 2018 midterm elections all but doomed any subsequent legislative attempts to strike down the whole law. Mr. Trump has not forgotten Mr. McCain’s role, and sometimes re-enacts the 2008 Republican nominee’s thumbs down vote before rally crowds. The president and his party are still trying. Republican lawmakers eliminated the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate as part of the 2017 tax cuts, and the Trump administration is arguing before the Supreme Court that the whole health care law should go down with it.
• Cutting Taxes  The 2017 tax cuts are one of the biggest legislative achievements of Mr. Trump’s first term in office, and one celebrated by his supporters.  “Business is booming. We’re coming back even stronger after Covid,” said Justin Davies, 36 and small-business owner in Rutherfordton, N.C. “The Trump tax cuts have saved us somewhere between $20,000 to $30,000 a year in taxes.”  Some critics, however, have noted that the final tax cut that Mr. Trump signed into law was far smaller than what he promised as a candidate. The Tax Policy Center, run by the Brookings Institution, estimated that it was only one-quarter the size of the plan Mr. Trump campaigned on four years ago. Mr. Trump said he would cut the top corporate income tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent, for example. His final bill brought it down to 21 percent. Those nuances, however, have been left out of his rallies, where Mr. Trump has been telling his supporters (falsely) that he succeeded in passing the “biggest tax cut in history.”
• Renegotiate Trade Deals  During the 2016 race, Mr. Trump broke with bipartisan orthodoxy and questioned Washington’s decades-long support for free trade deals. He vowed to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement or withdraw from it entirely, pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and raise tariffs. He has delivered on those promises. He withdrew from the T.P.P. in his first days in office. He waged a trade war with China and slapped tariffs on numerous imports, leaving American consumers to bear the financial brunt. He signed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which included significant changes but also an array of simple updates of the 25-year-old Nafta. Though some experts are skeptical that Mr. Trump’s trade policies have been economically beneficial — with the conservative Tax Foundation estimating that the tariffs have brought in revenue, but reduced wages, gross domestic product and job growth — supporters have been delighted.