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Donald Trump has been the President of the U.S. for only less than two years, but the consequences of his presidency for our country and the world could be profound and scary.  From the perspective of the environment, harmony with others, economy, American competitiveness, tax cuts and budget deficit/national debt, world stability/democracy/rule of law, his impacts have been grave and significant.

I.  Environment: One of the most urgent problems that will adversely affect the livelihood of our children and grandchildren is global warming.  In spite of what the Trump administration claims that it is not a problem and the problem is not due to human activities, the worldwide scientific community for more than 30 years has agreed that global warming is a real problem [1] and it is man-made. [2]  That was why the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in December 2015 adopted by consensus (by close to 200 countries) the Paris Climate Agreement to keep the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels (the current temperature is about 1°C above pre-industrial levels) in order to avoid problems such as rising sea level, less ice and snow, droughts, heat waves, and extreme weather incidents.  The temperature in 2017 was approximately 1°C above pre-industrial levels), and increasing at 0.2°C per decade, giving us to approximately 2067 to reach the 2°C.

However, a major report “Global Warming of 1.5°C” was just released on October 8, 2018 by the UN’s “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” (IPCC) based on inputs from 6,000 scientific references and the contributions of thousands of expert and government reviewers worldwide. [3]  This massive study concludes that significant global adverse impacts will already be occurring by 2040 when the temperature reaches 1.5°C.  These impacts include a world of worsening food shortages, wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs (important because coral reefs protect coastlines from the damaging effects of wave action and tropical storms. and provide habitats and shelter for many marine organisms), resulting in damages at a cost of $54 billion.  The adverse impacts of global warming apparently are occurring faster than what people thought as recently as just a few years ago, as exemplified by the following quote from Bill Hare, an author of previous IPCC reports and a physicist with Climate Analytics, a nonprofit organization:  “The report is quite a shock and quite concerning … We were not aware of this just a few years ago.” [4]

The report pointed out that although the required rapid technical changes to avoid such disasters could be doable, but unfortunately it may be politically unlikely.  President Trump in June 2017 already announced that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement at its earliest allowed date of November 2020.  Just like in other areas, Trump is just ignoring the truth and following the wishes of his oil and coal industry supporters.  This is just another example of Trump’s priority, which is to himself, his family, his financial empire, and his financial supporters. What is important to the people of the U.S., the people of the world, or the health of the whole planet is really not important to him.

II. Harmony With Others:  Not only that Trump is ignoring the truths, he is criticizing any criticism of him no matter how much evidence that exists to support the criticism, and labeling that evidence as fake news.  He then creates his own fake news and expects his staff and congressional leaders to push his fake news.  Although Hilary Clinton should not have used her non-secured private email server during her presidential campaign, her deeds were far less unlawful (and damaging) than the numerous illegal acts that Trump committed during his presidential campaign with respect to collusion with Russia, payments to hush publicity about extramarital affairs, dealings leading to potential personal financial gains, numerous lies, etc.  Yet, he continues and constantly yells out slogans like “lock her up.”

He has lied literally thousands of times, even when there is obvious evidence that he is lying.  [5]  Trump’s handling of the whole special prosecutor investigation provides plenty of additional information on his trying to cover up the truths. Another thing to consider is the large number of people in Trump’s staff who have either resigned from their positions or have been released of their positions, often due to conflict of opinions on how to do their job lawfully and to the best of their ability, instead of just blindly following Trump’s directives.  A generation or two ago, just a subset of deeds similar to Trump’s if performed by a presidential candidate or by the President of the U.S. would have caused him/her to drop out of the presidential race or landed him/her in impeachment proceedings.  One of Trump’s legacies is how far we have lowered the moral and legal standard in assessing our presidential candidates or our President.

Domestically, Trump has polarized the American people and the American congress into two opposing camps so that the two sides seldom discuss and try to reach any compromises.  Trump’s positions, public comments, and actions toward sexual harassment and racial inequalities have also negated progress that have been made in the last generation and more.

Internationally, Trump has alienated our allies, including allies such as Canada, Great Britain, France, and Germany.  Whatever trusts that have been built in more than half a century have greatly evaporated.  Because of his flip-flop on many issues, international allies can no longer trust Trump on any important issue, and other international leaders can not trust Trump in negotiations.  This creates divisions with our allies and makes it difficult in negotiations with other world leaders.  The end result is heightened tension both domestically and internationally, and increased conflicts and probability of wars, in times that the world can no longer afford more conflicts and wars.

Trump’s ambiguous position on the recent Jamal Khashoggi murder has raised serious question on his moral integrity and honesty, when he is ignoring the findings of his own intelligence organizations that there is solid evidence that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was directly involved in ordering the murder and dismembering of Khashoggi.  Instead, he looks at the large weapon sales contract by Saudi Arabia and his own financial gains from Mohammed bin Salman.  It proves once again that money is the dominant factor in Trump’s thinking.

How hard does Trump work?  He has spent more vacation days than any previous president.  For example, when Trump was at 437 days in office, he had spent 140 days at Trump properties, and 105 days at golf properties, and during his first seven months in office to the end of August 2017, he had spent 53 days on vacation and played 33 rounds of golf, as compared to 15 days of vacation and 17 rounds of golf for Obama. [6]  When he is on vacation, he often spends it at his own properties, such as in Florida, Washington, D.C., or New Jersey, incurring for his accompanying staff and secret service agents large expenses paid for by tax payers and resulting in income for Trump.  Although it is difficult to calculate the cost of these vacations away from the White House, it is most likely of the order of tens of millions. [7]  When a lot of Americans are trying hard to meet their needs, the president is spending extravagantly with the people’s money.

III. Economy:  Trump has often pointed to the economic boom in the last two years to support his own boasting and political agenda.  Let’s analyze more carefully various economic indicators, and discuss whether the economic improvements during the Trump presidency is a continuation of the progress made during the Obama presidency, since during Obama’s eight years of presidency, the economic situation improved significantly from the serious recession of 2008.  We also need to address the question of short-term gains versus potential long-term losses.

For the economic indicators and the comparison of the Obama period versus the Trump period, we use the statistics and analysis in a recent article in The Washington Post [8].

A.  Jobs:    Trump claims that a lot of jobs were created after Trump became president.  True, but the economy added more jobs in every year of Obama’s second term than it did in Trump’s first year as indicated in the table below.

As a matter of fact, the average monthly job growth in 2014 was about 45% more than the average monthly job growth in 2017!  This really raises doubts on the claim that the increased job growth was due mostly to Trump.  However, Trump’s supporters would claim that the economy performed during Trump’s presidency better than what the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had projected at the start of 2017.  Since the country was already near full employment at the end of 2016, CBO projected that the economy would slow down in 2017 and 2018, so their projections for the monthly job growth would be around 140,000 for 2017 and only 94,000 for the first six months of 2018, but the actual monthly job growth was 175,000 for 2017 and 218,000 for the first six months of 2018.   So the growth during Trump’s second year in office was significantly better than the CBO’s projection.  We will discuss more on this later in Section V “Tax Cuts, Budget Deficit and National Debt.”

B.  Unemployment Rate:  Trump claims that the unemployment rate is the best it has been in a decade.  In February 2017 shortly after Trump took office, the unemployment rate was 4.7%, and it has held steady at 3.9% since August 2018.  However, one should note that the unemployment rate reached a peak of 10% in October 2009 nine months after Obama took office, and in the next 5-6 years it dropped by more than 5% to a range of 4.6-5.0% starting in August 2015.  Therefore, Obama should get a lot of credit for reducing the unemployment rate.  It is true that the unemployment rate has dropped during the Trump period faster than what the CBO had predicted at the beginning of Trump’s term.  In Section V “Tax Cuts, Budget Deficit and National Debt,” we will also revisit this issue.

With the low unemployment, one might expect that the average wage has gone up.  But that is not the case at all.  The real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago, and whatever wage gains that exist, it is mostly for the highest-paid workers. [9]  This implies that the companies doing the hiring may not have faith in the longer-term economy; otherwise, the average wage should be going up.

C.  Stock Market: Trump always points to the performance of the stock market as proof that his policy is good for the country.  Let’s examine more carefully the performance of the U.S. stock market during the last 10 years. Below is a table showing the performance of the S&P 500 for the last 16 years. [10] [11]  The left column shows the year-end date, and the right column shows the S&P 500 index at closing on that date.  We have put in bold four lines:  2009 corresponding to first year of Obama’s first term, 2013 corresponding to the first year of Obama’s second term, 2017 and 2018 corresponding to the first two years of Trump’s presidency.

It is true that the stock market did very well in 2017, first year of Trump’s presidency, with a gain of 21.83%.  But the stock market did even better in 2013, first year of Obama’s second term, with a gain of 32.39%, and in 2009, first year of Obama’s first term, with a gain of 26.46%.  After the great recession around 2008, the stock market has been rising for the last 9 years to 2017.  However, in 2018, the 2nd year of Trump’s presidency, it did drop by 6.2%, making it the worst year since 2008.  This may indicate that the longer-term economy may not be as rosy as what 2017 suggested.  Later in Section 5 “Tax Cuts, Federal Deficit and National Debt,” we will discuss more the future implications of Trump’s economic policy.

Continued in Part II for Sections IV – VI.

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[1] “Environmental Problems:  Global Disasters Waiting to Happen”

[2] “Is Global Warming Due Mostly to Human Activities?”

[3] The IPCC Special Report “Global Warming of 1.5°C”:  https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/

[4] “Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040” by Coral Davenport, New York Times, October 7, 2018:  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate

[5] Chris Cillizza, “President Trump lied more than 3,000 times in 466 days,” CNN, 5/9/2018.

[6] Kelsey Goeres, “Which President Takes More Vacation Days: Barack Obama or Donald Trump?” CheatSheet, April 23, 2018.

[7] Eric Schaal, “Trump’s $56 Million in Golf Trips, Cost by Extravagant Cost,” CheatSheet, April 23, 2018.

[8] Meg Kelly, “The ‘Trump economy’ vs. the ‘Obama economy’,” The Washington Post, September 18, 2018.

[9] Drew DeSilver, “For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades,” Pew Research Center, August 7, 2018.

[10] S&P 500 Annual Total Return Historical Data.  I also included the 2018 year-end closing data.

[11] “US stocks post worst year in a decade as the S&P 500 falls more than 6% in 2018,” CNBC, December 31, 2018.