By Marc Jampole
Donald Trump has released an ambitious if highly general plan for the first one hundred days of his administration. He calls it a contract, and like virtually all contracts, its literary value is nonexistent. As a document for change, it should frighten everyone, those who didn’t vote for him and those who did.
Donald Trump has released an ambitious if highly general plan for the first one hundred days of his administration. He calls it a contract, and like virtually all contracts, its literary value is nonexistent. As a document for change, it should frighten everyone, those who didn’t vote for him and those who did.
The document consists of two parts,
things he thinks can do as the executive and things he will ask Congress to do.
This article looks at what he intends to do as head of a vast
regulation-creating bureaucracy. In a different article, we’ll consider his
program for Congress.
The executive’s part of Trump’s
“100-day action plan to Make America Great Again” consists of four types of
actions: 1) A few good ideas; 2) Things we already do and have done for a
while; 3) General actions that are inherently bad because they deny his Administration
the flexibility to address each problem in the best way possible; 4) Specific
actions that will harm us economically or in other ways.
The good, the done, the bad and the
ugly. Let’s look at these categories:
The Good
Trump wants to impose a five-year
ban on White House officials becoming lobbyists after government service and a
lifetime ban on lobbying on behalf of foreign governments; note he doesn’t
include foreign corporations. He also wants to impose a complete ban on foreign
lobbyists raising money for any American election. He will propose a
constitutional amendment imposing term limits on members of Congress. All these
moves will help reduce the influence of corporate and wealthy interests on our
federal government, although none would help as much as appointing a Supreme
Court justice who would vote to overturn the Citizens United decision.
He also proposes allocating funds
to fix our water and environmental infrastructure, although he proposes to fund
it by cancelling financial obligations to United Nation climate change
programs, which makes no sense for two reasons: 1) the UN programs are also
important to address the climate change he claims is not occurring; and 2) the
money we spend on these programs represent a small drop in a very large bucket
as far as what we have to expend to fix our city’s aging sewer systems, secure
our coastal regions and improve our ability to withstand future extreme weather
events.
The Done
During the election, Trump made a
number of false accusations regarding the way the federal government handles
basic functions, such as searching for undocumented immigrants who are
criminals and administering trade deals and regulations. He thus now has to
make a big show of doing things the right way. His ego demands it. I’m sure
that after a few months he’ll release statistics that show Obama era
improvements, take credit for them and declare victory. Here are the actions he
proposes that we are already doing quite well. In all these areas, we are
already doing everything we can to the extent that the law allows. For Trump to
attempt more, he would have to break the law and he would likely end up impeded
by lawsuits and constraining orders:
·
Identifying foreign trade abuses that unfairly
impact American workers and use every means possible under current law to end
any abuses uncovered.
·
Launch a program to identify and remove all
criminal undocumented immigrants.
·
Suspend immigration from regions in which safe
vetting of refugees cannot safely occur.
·
Implement “extreme vetting,” something we
already do.
·
Cancel every unconstitutional action, memorandum
and order issued by Obama: if any unconstitutional actions existed, the
courts would have already canceled them!
The other thing Trump will do that
has been done already is name a Supreme Court Justice to replace Antonin
Scalia. If his appointment enables a new conservative majority on the Supreme
Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, I wonder how the nine percent of white women who
believe in a woman’s right to an abortion but who nevertheless voted for Trump
will feel—they turned the election.
The Bad
Trump insists he will implement a
number of very rigid actions that apply across the board to all Administrative
branches. These actions represent management strategies that are known to fail
because they are too inclusive and deny organizations the flexibility they need
to address specific problems. Here are the bad management techniques Trump
wishes to implement:
·
Freeze all federal hiring not related to the
military or public health and safety to reduce the federal workforce through
attrition.
·
Require that for every new government
regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated.
For Trump seriously to implement
these two misguided principles he would have to cut into necessary and expected
government services or to gut further the oversight that the government
exercises over state governments and industries. Federal government employment
is at a low point right now when we take a look at the post-World War II era.
May agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Environmental
Protection Agency are already seriously understaffed.
The Ugly
Most of the specific actions Trump
wants to take will inflict short- and/or long-term pain on the economy and
American workers.
The most damage derives by his actions related to energy policy. Trump says he is going to lift Obama roadblocks to oil and gas development projects like the Keystone Pipeline and lift restrictions on the domestic production of shale, oil, natural gas and coal. By focusing on increasing domestic fossil energy supplies he makes a fateful decision: to develop fossil fuels instead of alternative energy and energy conservation. Let’s forget the deleterious impact on the environment that this decision will have and focus on the economic impact. There is currently a surplus of fossils fuel that has driven prices down significantly, in part as corporations and governments react to the global warming that Trump still denies. Figuring in inflation, American gas pump prices are the lowest in years. At this point, all the fossil fuel transmitted along the proposed Keystone pipeline will end up being sold to China, which will enrich the Canadian producers, but not Americans. If we want to sell more fossil fuels abroad, we will face some pretty stiff competition from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela and Russia.
The most damage derives by his actions related to energy policy. Trump says he is going to lift Obama roadblocks to oil and gas development projects like the Keystone Pipeline and lift restrictions on the domestic production of shale, oil, natural gas and coal. By focusing on increasing domestic fossil energy supplies he makes a fateful decision: to develop fossil fuels instead of alternative energy and energy conservation. Let’s forget the deleterious impact on the environment that this decision will have and focus on the economic impact. There is currently a surplus of fossils fuel that has driven prices down significantly, in part as corporations and governments react to the global warming that Trump still denies. Figuring in inflation, American gas pump prices are the lowest in years. At this point, all the fossil fuel transmitted along the proposed Keystone pipeline will end up being sold to China, which will enrich the Canadian producers, but not Americans. If we want to sell more fossil fuels abroad, we will face some pretty stiff competition from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela and Russia.
By contrast, when it comes to competition
in the emerging alternative fuels industry, only China can rival U.S. technical
prowess. Pushing alternative fuels should be a major plank in any job-creation
program of the early 21st century. Unfortunately, it’s a simple fact that
anything that lowers the price of oil and natural gas hurts the alternative
fuel industry, which is one of our major growth industries today and well into
the future.
Three actions Trump promises in the
area of trade could be disastrous. He wants to renegotiate the North American
Trade Agreement (NAFTA), walk away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and
label China a currency manipulator. Whether you think NAFTA was a good or bad
idea in 1992, let’s take a look at it today, when it supplies millions of jobs
to American workers. Renegotiation in and of itself could be a good thing,
especially if it leads to higher wages for workers in all three countries. But
I have a feeling that Trump really wants to end NAFTA, which will put a lot of
Americans out of work. Walking away from TPP would drive our trading partners
to make a deal with China that doesn’t include us. Instead we should renegotiate
TPP to make sure that the countries party to it comply with wage, environmental
and our product and workplace safety regulations and to make sure it does not
give corporations the right to sue governments.
Labeling China a currency
manipulator will get us off on the wrong foot with a country that could be a
friend or a foe. Strange that Trump is making rapprochements to Russia while
poking a stick into China’s eye. When we take a look at the two countries, the
size of their armies, their intentions beyond their own borders, the business
opportunities represented by their respective domestic markets, and the way
their interests coincide or clash with ours, selecting Russia over China makes
no sense at all. Unless, of course, those close to the Russian government have
invested a lot into your companies.
The final specific action Trump
will take chills free speech, hurts the economy and wreaks havoc on anyone who
depends on city services like mass transit to survive. It is also likely
illegal and will embroil the Trump Administration in a large number of lawsuits
it is likely to lose: Trump says he is going to cancel all federal funding to
sanctuary cities, which are municipalities that adopt policies not to prosecute people solely for being undocumented.
Imagine the economic chaos Trump will create by withdrawing all federal funding
from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas,
Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington DC, Seattle, Oakland, San Jose,
Baltimore, the Portland on both coasts and other major cities that have taken
seriously the concept of local control that Trump touts for education, wage
rates and women’s health issues.
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