Trump’s first semester

Six months into his presidency, Donald Trump continues to receive bad rap in the mainstream media. So intense is the negative feedback that one imagines if Trump were a freshman, he would have dropped out in the first semester. But short of an impeachment, he’s not going anywhere. Though he could be reduced to a one-term president – progressives in the US, and in the world at large, would like nothing more.

The disrupter-in-chief has deployed anger and resentment to undermine his opponents at home and allies abroad. While his approval ratings are stuck in the mid-thirties, data suggest that his core supporters, in the hardcore Republican states, are sticking along. But Trump hasn’t been able to unify the country, as an overwhelmingly majority of Democrats disapproves of his job performance. His partisan musings on Twitter don’t help. Now even his trusted loyalists aren’t safe from his criticisms.

Much of the Trump legislative agenda remains stalled. The “repeal and replace Obamacare” campaign promise remains just that, highlighting the difficulty of taking away subsidized healthcare from citizens who may have gotten used to it. Similarly, there is no progress on bills for tax reforms, infrastructure overhaul, and regulatory rollback. The administration’s crackdown on immigration continues, but it faces legal challenges.

On economy, Trump gives himself credit for “bringing jobs back” and the “booming stock market”. The so-called “Trump bump” revealed itself in the stock markets early this year. But the real-economy indicators – such as jobs growth and consumer spending – are moving along the same ameliorating path as they did under Obama since 2009. As for the future, Trump’s inability to get done a fiscal stimulus on infrastructure led the IMF to cut US economic growth forecast to 2.1 percent for both 2017 and 2018.

Some observers think that Trump’s economic-nationalism streak has mellowed since he took office. There may be some truth to it: for instance, the administration is reviewing Nafta instead of scrapping it; it hasn’t really confronted China over trade and North Korea; and Trump’s working relationship is finally developing with Franco-German leaders. But it’s too early to tell. The cop-out from Paris Climate Accord set things back. Reportedly, White House is mulling import tariffs and quotas on various commodities.

Meanwhile, the news stories about alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 US presidential-election in Trump’s favour continue to surface. Whether or not there is truth to the allegations, they are testing the fragile composure of an embattled president. Some commentators suggest it is driving the Donald paranoid and sapping his administration’s energy to get anything concrete done on policy matters.

A divided polity; sluggish economic growth; and a besieged president acting like a bull in a china shop – from what it looks, US politics will putter about in the same fashion, at least until the mid-term elections in November 2018. Mid-term polls are usually a referendum on a sitting president’s policies. The clock is ticking for Trump to accomplish something meaningful before then.

But the mid-terms are still more than a year away. The Democrats have yet to find a coherent message that can resonate with the disaffected voters. That is surprising, given Trump has given the opposition a lot to chew on. Or maybe, that’s the whole point of Trump: fire on all cylinders, create chaos, and enervate the opposition’s focus. That strategy worked well during the campaign and it is working okay so far.