Will Trump's Major Initiatives Succeed or Fail?
Marty Looks Into His Crystal Ball
The President’s bull rush of dubiously legal executive orders leaves many of us uncertain as to which will likely succeed in the coming years. If there is one unifying philosophy behind them, it is that the Executive Branch should step in where the Legislative Branch has failed to act. And, while many disagree as to the President’s solution, the public’s consistently low opinion of Congress leaves little doubt that they agree with him: the Legislative Branch isn’t actually legislating to meet the challenges that face our country. While we have yet to see whether Trump’s immigration, economic, education, and tax proposals will succeed or fail, congressional inaction and the Supreme Court’s desire to uphold the current overall distribution of government power lead to some predictable conclusions.
Trump’s executive orders mostly seek to remedy Congressional inaction on issues that the public cares about. However, because they address matters largely delegated to the Legislative Branch, the orders will have limited effect. For instance, the Executive Branch has great discretion on how to conduct immigration enforcement, but it is Congress that allocates the funding for ICE and Customs and Border Patrol and Congress that establishes the due process required to deport an immigrant. Conversely, Congress has delegated substantial power to the President to impose emergency tariffs, meaning his actions are more likely to be upheld. When it comes to education, the President’s initiatives are fighting both the limited role of the federal government in that space and 70 years of precedent. Finally, the President’s ability to influence even a Republican Congress is limited by his declining personal popularity and the public’s disagreement with some of his goals.
Immigration. President Trump will mostly succeed in reforming immigration enforcement, but not the overall structure of the immigration system. Border crossings are significantly down under Trump, not because of his wall-building or militarization of the border and more because the primary driver of border crossings is the perception of the likelihood of success in remaining in the US. Potential border crossers no longer believe they will be able to claim asylum or escape capture, so fewer try. Similarly, with Congress allocating significantly more funds to immigration enforcement within the US, the President will likely achieve his goal of increasing deportations of those who do not have proper documentation.
However, he will be less successful in deportations without due process and in restructuring legal immigration. Congress controls the level of due process associated with deportation proceedings and the level of regular immigration. The last effort at comprehensive immigration reform failed and, as Senator Lankford, the primary Republican negotiator on that effort put it, it takes a long time for everyone to forget how painful immigration reform is for the politicians involved. The Supreme Court tends to defer to executive power, but only when Congress has not spoken clearly. Here, Congress has spoken clearly and seems unlikely to change the message. Overall, we are likely to see an immigration system with more vigorous enforcement, but few changes in levels of legal immigration in the next four years.
Economy. Without a clear picture of the President’s economic goal, how can we know how close he is to achieving it? If the President’s goal is a return to US primacy in basic manufacturing, there is no scenario in which he could succeed. Put simply, the US lacks the workforce and infrastructure to support low-level manufacturing, whereas other countries do. However, reversing the decline of high end manufacturing could happen with the right incentives. The problem is that the President’s current round of tariffs do not adequately incentivize that goal.
Similarly, he will likely succeed in maintaining at least some of the tariffs, as Congress has ceded significant authority to the President for emergency tariffs. Some may be overturned by the courts, but the courts tend to defer to the executive when Congress provides for emergency powers, pointing out that Congress can end those states of emergency. The President seems sensitive enough to his support in Congress to retreat when support starts to fail.
If the goal is the success of the US economy overall, he is unlikely to succeed. The President’s “back to the Gilded Age” approach ignores the economic factors that led us to the economy we have, and his solutions do not fundamentally change those factors. Expect to see the markets decline and economic growth stagnate in direct proportion to the President’s commitment to his broad tariff policy.
Education Reform. The President is unlikely to succeed in forcing a new direction in education, but he will cede the federal government’s role in providing guidance. At the prekindergarten to 12th grade level, we’ll see an erosion of federal financial support and a decrease in federal oversight. A surprising number of voters who oppose federal intervention in their public schools seem not to recall why it was necessary in the first place. Without federal support, public school systems rampantly discriminated against racial minorities and provided few services to children with special needs. Fortunately, four years is not enough time to reverse decades of progress, although it will be a “lost” term with respect to improving outcomes for these kids. Do your part - vote for school board candidates who insist that your public schools help all kids succeed.
Mr. Trump may have greater success with higher education. The government has the most authority when it comes to spending its own money. While the courts seem likely to require existing grants to be disbursed, Congress seems disinclined to force renewal of many of these grants. There are few remedies in the law for potential grantees to force disbursement of allocated funds from an executive who doesn’t want to spend the money. These actions may force changes upon the academy as federal research funds dry up. The US has the greatest research institutions in the world largely because we pay for them through the federal government. If the government chooses not to pay for research, we’ll likely have to refocus higher education more toward the teaching mission. By the end of the Trump presidency, our four-year institutions may look more like community colleges.
Tax Reform. The future of tax reform is uncertain. The Republican majorities in Congress and the President agree most strongly on renewing the President’s 2017 tax cuts. The biggest threats to the renewal are (1) the dependence of many red states on Medicaid, which is set to be cut in the proposed budget and tax bill; (2) the Freedom Caucus’s desire for a balanced budget; and (3) the President’s decreasing popularity. When I talk with Democrats about Republican officeholders, they’re quick to point out the spinelessness of those politicians, who don’t oppose the President even when he attacks programs they care about. But Democratic critics often fail to understand the merciless calculus of primary politics in the Republican party. The President’s willingness to back challengers to members of his own party and his popularity in the primary electorate constitute a huge threat to Republican incumbents who object to his actions.
However, if the President’s popularity continues to fall, that calculus changes. There seems to be little hope the President’s support will fall below 50% in the Republican primary electorate, but more states have open primaries that require more moderation in their incumbents, even when the states are safely red. It’s difficult to support cuts to Medicaid to afford tax breaks for the wealthy when over half your electorate is on Medicaid. Possibly the Republican electorate will find the backbone to moderate the tax cuts or insist on beginning a process to eventually produce a balanced budget - their holy grail.
The President’s biggest agenda item relies on a budgeting process that has been broken for 30 years. With Congress unable to address the major problems facing the country through a regular budgeting process, the safest bet is probably a series of continuing resolutions into the new fiscal year as these fights go unresolved. Over the President’s term, we will see further erosion of non-defense discretionary spending, but we probably won’t see the kind of structural reforms necessary to put the country on a fiscally sustainable path. To put it bluntly, balancing the federal budget will require both tax increases and benefit cuts, politically unpopular requirements that the current congressional structure does not allow to happen. We desperately need a comprehensive re-examination of the budget, but we don’t have a Congress that can do that.
Conclusion. The President’s chaotic and lawless executive orders create panic, but they can’t accomplish the wholesale reforms he seeks. While there is increasing agreement that the US faces significant problems in immigration, the economy, education, and balancing the budget, the country remains deeply divided on how to address these problems. The President’s executive orders certainly put forth his views, and he is not wrong when he states that he was elected to address voters’ concerns that we are failing to act on the major problems facing our country. But our constitutional system does not vest the authority in him to dictate solutions unilaterally. Looking to the future, we need to consider how our government can regain the ability to work collaboratively to tackle difficult issues, not just elect executives who agree with our preferred outcome.
Upcoming Columns. Thank you for the feedback on your preferred topics. This column responds to your top interest, as expressed in the poll I posted two weeks ago. In future columns, I will try to cover the impacts of a smaller federal government (the second preference). I may try to tackle the big question I’ve been thinking about lately - whether Trump will fundamentally break the existing norms in Washington, DC, so Congress will accept the need to reform itself and tackle the problems it is currently too polarized to work on. As always, I welcome your suggestions for future columns in the comments or by e-mail.
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The views expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Department of Navy, the Department of Defense, the University of Oregon, or any other entity with which the author is affiliated.