Donald Trump has promised to take drastic action in his second administration.
Although the former president and the current president-elect often omitted details, over a year of policy announcements and written statements, the former president and the current president-elect emphasized their traditional conservative approaches to tax, regulatory, and cultural issues, as well as trade and trade. It outlined a broad agenda that combined more populist tendencies. America’s changing international role.
President Trump’s policies also include scaling back federal civil rights efforts and expanding presidential powers.
Let’s take a look at what Trump proposed.
President Trump’s plan on immigration and deportation
“Build the Wall!” His 2016 campaign led to “the largest mass deportation program in history.” President Trump has called for the deployment of the National Guard and increased powers for domestic police. Still, President Trump has provided few details about what the plan will look like and how he will ensure it only targets illegal people in the United States. He advocates for “ideological screening” of applicants to the country, abolishing birthright citizenship (which would almost certainly require a constitutional amendment), and implementing measures such as “Remain in Mexico,” which would limit official immigration. He said he would reintroduce the one-term policy. Severely restrict or ban immigration from certain majority-Muslim countries for health reasons. Taken together, this approach would not only crack down on illegal immigration, but also curb immigration overall.
President Trump’s position on abortion
President Trump downplayed abortion as a second-trimester priority, even as he credited the Supreme Court with ending women’s federal right to abortion and returning abortion regulation to state governments. At President Trump’s insistence, the Republican platform did not call for a national ban on abortion for the first time in decades. President Trump has argued that overturning Roe v. Wade is sufficient at the federal level. Last month, President Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social that he intended to veto the federal abortion ban once it reached his desk. His comments came after he avoided taking a strong position in a September debate with Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
But it is unclear whether the administration will vigorously defend against legal challenges to restrict access to abortion drugs, including mifepristone, as the Biden administration has. Abortion opponents remain active legal battle over the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug and the agency’s loosening of prescription restrictions. President Trump is also unlikely to enforce Biden’s guidance that hospitals must provide abortions to women with medical emergencies, even in states with a ban.
How will Trump change tax policy?
President Trump’s tax policy is broadly tilted toward large corporations and wealthy Americans. This is largely due to his promise to extend the 2017 tax reform with some notable changes, including lowering the corporate tax rate from the current 21% to 15%. It also includes rolling back Democratic President Joe Biden’s income tax hikes for America’s wealthiest citizens and repealing the Anti-Inflation Act tax that funds energy measures aimed at combating climate change.
Despite these policies, President Trump has placed greater emphasis on a new proposal aimed at working and middle-class Americans that would exempt earned tips, Social Security wages, and overtime pay from income taxes. But his proposal on tips could give high earners a backdoor tax break by allowing them to reclassify a portion of their pay as tip income, depending on how Congress writes it. is noteworthy. In extreme cases, hedge fund managers and top lawyers could take advantage of policies framed by President Trump as designed for restaurant servers, bartenders and other service workers.
President Trump’s Tariffs and Trade Plan
President Trump’s stance on international trade is one of distrust of global markets as detrimental to U.S. interests. He has proposed imposing tariffs of 10% to 20% on foreign goods, and in some of his speeches he has mentioned even higher tariffs. He promised to reimplement an August 2020 executive order requiring the federal government to purchase “essential” medicines only from U.S. companies. He promised to block Chinese buyers from purchasing “any critical infrastructure” in the United States.
President Trump’s views on DEI, LGBTQ, and civil rights
President Trump is rolling back society’s emphasis on diversity and calling for legal protections for LGBTQ people. President Trump is seeking to leverage federal funding to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in government agencies.
On transgender rights, President Trump has promised to generally end “the inclusion of male students in women’s sports,” a practice he claims is widespread without evidence. are. But his policies go far beyond the standard applause lines of a rally speech. Among other proposals, President Trump will ask Congress to reverse the Biden administration’s policy to extend Title IX civil rights protections to transgender students and require them to identify as only two genders at birth. It’s planned.
President Trump will make it easier to fire federal employees
The president-elect is seeking to reduce the role of the federal bureaucracy and regulation across economic sectors. President Trump views any regulatory cuts as a magic wand for the economy. He wants to lower U.S. household utility bills by removing obstacles to fossil fuel production, such as opening all federal lands to exploration, even though U.S. energy production is already at record high levels. promises to significantly reduce President Trump has promised to free up housing construction by cutting regulations, but most construction regulations are set by state and local governments. He also said he would end “frivolous lawsuits by environmental extremists.”
This approach would strengthen the executive branch’s influence in many ways. That authority would come more directly from the White House.
He would classify thousands of federal employees as exempt from civil service protections, making it easier to fire them. This could reduce the number of employees on the job, weaken the government’s authority to enforce laws and regulations, and have a chilling effect on those who remain.
President Trump also argues that the president has exclusive authority to control federal spending even after Congress appropriates the funds. President Trump says the budget measure from lawmakers “sets a cap” on spending but does not set a floor, meaning the president’s constitutional duty to “faithfully execute the law” will be met. It is argued that this includes the discretion to decide whether or not to This interpretation could trigger a legal battle with Congress.
As a candidate, he also suggested giving more presidential power to the Federal Reserve, an independent agency that sets interest rates. Although he did not provide details, such a move would represent a significant change in the way the U.S. economic and monetary system works.
President Trump says he will abolish the Department of Education
In the second Trump administration, the federal Department of Education will be subject to elimination. That doesn’t mean President Trump wants to kick Washington out of the classroom. He continues to use federal funds as leverage to pressure the K-12 school system, abolish tenure and adopt merit pay for teachers, and increase diversity at all levels of education, among other tactics. It is proposed that the program be abolished. He called for ending federal funding to “schools and programs that impose critical race theory, gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on children.” I am asking you to do so.
In higher education, President Trump has proposed taking over the university accreditation process, which he describes as his “secret weapon” against the “Marxist lunatics and lunatics” that control higher education. It’s movement. President Trump has taken aim at higher education endowments, threatening to “tax large private college endowments, impose fines, and sue” schools that don’t comply with his executive order, resulting in “dozens of losses.” He said he would raise as much as $1 billion. That would almost certainly lead to a lengthy legal battle.
As in other policy areas, President Trump is not actually proposing to limit federal authority in higher education, but rather to strengthen it. He wants to direct the confiscated donations to an online American Academy that would provide tuition-free college credentials to all Americans. President Trump said on November 1, 2023, “It’s strictly apolitical, and there’s no room for wokeness or holy war. None of that is allowed.”
Will President Trump cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid?
President Trump claims to protect Social Security and Medicare, popular programs for older Americans and the biggest slices of the federal spending pie each year. There are questions about how his proposal to not tax tips and overtime would affect Social Security and Medicare. If such a plan ultimately includes only income taxes, entitlement programs will not be affected. But exempting these wages from payroll taxes would reduce funding for Social Security and Medicare spending. President Trump said little about Medicaid during the campaign, but his first administration restructured the program by allowing states to implement work requirements for recipients.
President Trump says he will repeal the Affordable Care Act
As he has done since 2015, President Trump is calling for an end to the Affordable Care Act and its subsidized health insurance markets. However, he has not yet proposed a successor. In a debate in September, he claimed to have a “planning concept.” In the final stages of the campaign, Mr. Trump emphasized his alliance with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines and the pesticides used in U.S. agriculture. Mr. Trump repeatedly told the crowd that he would give Mr. Kennedy the responsibility of “making America healthy again.”
President Trump’s views on energy and climate
President Trump, who falsely claims climate change is a “hoax,” is ramping up Biden-era spending on clean energy aimed at reducing America’s dependence on fossil fuels. He proposes spending on energy policy and transportation infrastructure that focuses on fossil fuels, such as roads, bridges, and internal combustion engine vehicles. “Drill, baby, drill!” was regularly chanted at Trump’s rallies. President Trump does not oppose electric vehicles, but he has promised to eliminate all of Biden’s incentives to encourage the development of the EV market. President Trump has also promised to roll back Biden-era fuel economy standards.
Trump could make it harder to unionize
Mr. Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance disguised their ticket as favoring American workers. But President Trump could make it harder for workers to form unions. When discussing autoworkers, Trump focused almost exclusively on Biden’s push for electric vehicles. When he mentioned unions, he often lumped together “union bosses and CEOs” with being complicit in “this disastrous electric car project.” In a statement on October 23, 2023, President Trump said of the United Auto Workers union, “What I’m saying is, we shouldn’t pay its dues.”
President Trump aims to expand military
President Trump’s rhetoric and policy approach in world affairs is diplomatically isolationist, militarily noninterventionist, and economically protective compared to the United States since World War II. Be principled. But the details are more complicated. He has pledged to expand the military, protect Pentagon spending from austerity efforts, and proposed a new missile defense shield, an old idea from the Cold War’s Reagan era. President Trump claims he can end Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s war with Hamas, but he has not explained how. President Trump sums up his approach through another phrase from President Reagan: “peace through strength.” However, he remains critical of NATO and the US military leadership. President Trump said of the Pentagon officials Americans “see on TV”: “I don’t consider them leaders.” He has repeatedly praised authoritarians like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
— Associated Press writer Amanda Seitz contributed.
