SURE ENOUGH, THE big trans-Pacific trade deal is toast.
Climate change action is on the ropes and various regulations from the Obama era have been scrapped.
It’s also a safe bet President Donald Trump hasn’t raced a bicycle since 20 January – so he’s kept that vow.
Add a Supreme Court justice — no small feat — and call these promises kept.
But where’s that wall?
Or the promised trade punishment against China — will the Chinese get off scot-free from “the greatest theft in the history of the world”?
What about that “easy” replacement for Obamacare?
How about the trillion-dollar infrastructure plan and huge tax cut that were supposed to be in motion by now?
Trump’s road to the White House, paved in big, sometimes impossible pledges, has detoured onto a byway of promises deferred or left behind, an AP analysis found.
Of 38 specific promises Trump made in his 100-day ‘contract’ with voters — “This is my pledge to you” — he’s accomplished ten, mostly through executive orders that don’t require legislation, such as withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
He’s abandoned several and failed to deliver quickly on others, stymied at times by a divided Republican Party and resistant federal judges.
Of ten promises that require Congress to act, none has been achieved and most have not been introduced.
“I’ve done more than any other president in the first 100 days,” the president bragged in a recent interview with AP, even as he criticised the marker as an “artificial barrier”.
In truth, his 100-day plan remains mostly a to-do list that will spill over well beyond today, his 100th day.
Some of Trump’s promises were obviously hyperbole to begin with.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for alleged Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl to be dropped out of an airplane without a parachute, as Trump vowed he’d do at many of his campaign rallies.
China’s leader got a fancy dinner, complete with “beautiful” chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago this month, not the promised “McDonald’s hamburger” and humble pie.
But many promises were meant to be taken seriously.
Trump clearly owes his supporters a Mexico border wall, even if it doesn’t end up being a foot taller than the Great Wall of China.
One page of his 100-day manifesto is devoted to legislation he would fight to pass in 100 days. None of it has been achieved.
The other page lists 18 executive actions and intentions he promised to pursue — many on Day One.
He has followed through on fewer than a dozen, largely through the use of executive orders. That’s a change in tune.
“We need people in Washington that don’t go around signing executive orders because they can’t get people into a room and get some kind of a deal that’s negotiated,” he declared in New Hampshire in March 2015.
We need people that know how to lead, and we don’t have that. We have amateurs.
Efforts to provide affordable childcare and paid maternity leave, to make college more affordable and to invest in urban areas have been all but forgotten. That’s despite the advantage of a Republican-controlled Congress, which the White House failed to pull together behind Trump’s first attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare.
An AP reporter who followed Trump throughout the presidential campaign collected scores of promises he made along the way, from the consequential to the fanciful.
Here are some of them, and his progress so far:
— Lift President Barack Obama’s roadblocks on the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.
— Lift restrictions on mining coal and drilling for oil and natural gas.
— Cancel payments to UN climate change programmes and pull out of the Paris climate accord.
— Pass a tax overhaul. “Just think about what can be accomplished in the first 100 days of a Trump administration,” he told his supporters again and again in the final weeks of the campaign. “We are going to have the biggest tax cut since Ronald Reagan.” He promised a plan that would reduce rates dramatically both for corporations and the middle class.
—Designate China a currency manipulator, setting the stage for possible trade penalties because “we’re like the piggy bank that’s being robbed. We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that’s what they’re doing.”
—Announce his intention to renegotiate or withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement.
— Direct his commerce secretary and trade representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly hurt American workers.
— Slap a 35% tariff on goods from companies that ship production abroad. Force companies like Apple and Nabisco to make their products in the U.S.
—Embark on a massive $1 trillion effort to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, including airports, roads and bridges.
— Immediately suspend the Syrian refugee program.
— Inform his generals they have 30 days to submit a new plan for defeating the Islamic State group.
— Suspend immigration from “terror-prone regions” where he says vetting is too difficult.
— Implement “extreme” immigration vetting techniques.
—Build an “impenetrable physical wall” along the length of the southern border, and make Mexico pay for it.
—End federal funding to “sanctuary cities” — places where local officials are considered by Washington to be insufficiently cooperative in arresting or detaining people in the country illegally.
— Immediately deport the estimated 2 million “criminal aliens” living in the country, including gang members, in joint operations with local, state, and federal law enforcement.
—Cancel visas for foreign countries that won’t take back criminals deported by the U.S.
—”Immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties,” one of which allows young people brought into the country as children to stay and work.
— Ask agency and department heads to identify job-killing regulations for elimination.
— Propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.
— “Drain the swamp.”
— Impose a hiring freeze on federal employees, excluding military and public safety staffers.
—Require that two regulations be eliminated for each new one imposed.
— End the strategy of nation-building and regime change.
Move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
— Negotiate the release of all U.S. prisoners held in Iran, even before taking office. Renegotiate or leave the Iran nuclear deal.
— Create a safe zone in Syria for refugees, paid for by the Gulf states.
—”My first day in office, I’m going to ask Congress to put a bill on my desk getting rid of this disastrous law and replacing it with reforms that expand choice, freedom, affordability. You’re going to have such great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost. It’s going to be so easy.”
— Begin selecting a new Supreme Court judge to fill the court’s vacancy.
— Eliminate gun-free zones in schools and on military bases.
—Bar his generals from being interviewed on television.
—No time for play.
—Season’s greetings. ”If I become president, we’re gonna be saying Merry Christmas at every store. … You can leave ‘happy holidays’ at the corner.”
— “I promise I will never be in a bicycle race.”
- Additional reporting Daragh Brophy
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