Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration
UNB
Publish: 07 Nov 2024, 08:49 AM
WASHINGTON, Nov 7(AP/UNB) - Donald Trump has promised sweeping action in
a second administration.
The former president and
now president-elect often skipped over details but through more than a year of
policy pronouncements and written statements outlined a wide-ranging agenda
that blends traditional conservative approaches to taxes, regulation and cultural
issues with a more populist bent on trade and a shift in America's
international role.
Trump's agenda also would
scale back federal government efforts on civil rights and expand presidential
powers.
A look at what Trump has
proposed:
Immigration
"Build the wall!"
from his 2016 campaign has become creating "the largest mass deportation
program in history." Trump has called for using the National Guard and
empowering domestic police forces in the effort. Still, Trump has been scant on
details of what the program would look like and how he would ensure that it
targeted only people in the U.S. illegally. He's pitched "ideological
screening" for would-be entrants, ending birth-right citizenship (which
almost certainly would require a constitutional change), and said he'd
reinstitute first-term policies such as "Remain in Mexico," limiting
migrants on public health grounds and severely limiting or banning entrants
from certain majority-Muslim nations. Altogether, the approach would not just
crack down on illegal migration, but curtail immigration overall.
Abortion
Trump played down abortion
as a second-term priority, even as he took credit for the Supreme Court ending
a woman's federal right to terminate a pregnancy and returning abortion regulation
to state governments. At Trump's insistence, the GOP platform, for the first
time in decades, did not call for a national ban on abortion. Trump maintains
that overturning Roe v. Wade is enough on the federal level. Trump said last
month on his social media platform Truth Social that he would veto a federal
abortion ban if legislation reached his desk - a statement he made only after
avoiding a firm position in his September debate against Democratic nominee
Kamala Harris.
But it's unclear if his
administration would aggressively defend against legal challenges seeking to
restrict access to abortion pills, including mifepristone, as the Biden
administration has. Anti-abortion advocates continue to wage legal battles over
the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the drug as well as the agency's
relaxed prescribing restrictions. Trump is also unlikely to enforce Biden's
guidance that hospitals must provide abortions for women who are in medical
emergencies, even in states with bans.
Taxes
Trump's tax policies
broadly tilt toward corporations and wealthier Americans. That's mostly due to
his promise to extend his 2017 tax overhaul, with a few notable changes that
include lowering the corporate income tax rate to 15% from the current 21%.
That also involves rolling back Democratic President Joe Biden's income tax
hikes on the wealthiest Americans and scrapping Inflation Reduction Act levies
that finance energy measures intended to combat climate change.
Those policies
notwithstanding, Trump has put more emphasis on new proposals aimed at working-
and middle class Americans: exempting earned tips, Social Security wages and
overtime wages from income taxes. It's noteworthy, however, that his proposal
on tips, depending on how Congress might write it, could give a back-door tax
break to top wage earners by allowing them to reclassify some of their pay as
tip income - a prospect that at its most extreme could see hedge-fund managers
or top-flight attorneys taking advantage of a policy that Trump frames as being
designed for restaurant servers, bartenders and other service workers.
Tariffs and trade
Trump's posture on
international trade is to distrust world markets as harmful to American
interests. He proposes tariffs of 10% to 20% on foreign goods - and in some
speeches has mentioned even higher percentages. He promises to reinstitute an
August 2020 executive order requiring that the federal government buy
"essential" medications only from U.S. companies. He pledges to block
purchases of "any vital infrastructure" in the U.S. by Chinese
buyers.
DEI, LGBTQ and civil rights
Trump has called for
rolling back societal emphasis on diversity and for legal protections for LGBTQ
citizens. Trump has called for ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs
in government institutions, using federal funding as leverage.
On transgender rights,
Trump promises generally to end "boys in girls' sports," a practice
he insists, without evidence, is widespread. But his policies go well beyond
standard applause lines from his rally speeches. Among other ideas, Trump would
roll back the Biden administration's policy of extending Title IX civil rights
protections to transgender students, and he would ask Congress to require that
only two genders can be recognized at birth.
Regulation, federal
bureaucracy and presidential power
The president-elect seeks
to reduce the role of federal bureaucrats and regulations across economic
sectors. Trump frames all regulatory cuts as an economic magic wand. He pledges
precipitous drops in U.S. households' utility bills by removing obstacles to
fossil fuel production, including opening all federal lands for exploration -
even though U.S. energy production is already at record highs. Trump promises
to unleash housing construction by cutting regulations - though most
construction rules come from state and local government. He also says he would
end "frivolous litigation from the environmental extremists."
The approach would in many
ways strengthen executive branch influence. That power would come more directly
from the White House.
He would make it easier to
fire federal workers by classifying thousands of them as being outside civil
service protections. That could weaken the government's power to enforce
statutes and rules by reducing the number of employees engaging in the work and,
potentially, impose a chilling effect on those who remain.
Trump also claims that
presidents have exclusive power to control federal spending even after Congress
has appropriated money. Trump argues that lawmakers' budget actions "set a
ceiling" on spending but not a floor - meaning the president's
constitutional duty to "faithfully execute the laws" includes
discretion on whether to spend the money. This interpretation could set up a
court battle with Congress.
As a candidate, he also
suggested that the Federal Reserve, an independent entity that sets interest
rates, should be subject to more presidential power. Though he has not offered
details, any such move would represent a momentous change to how the U.S.
economic and monetary systems work.
Education
The federal Department of
Education would be targeted for elimination in a second Trump administration.
That does not mean that Trump wants Washington out of classrooms. He still
proposes, among other maneuvers, using federal funding as leverage to pressure
K-12 school systems to abolish tenure and adopt merit pay for teachers and to
scrap diversity programs at all levels of education. He calls for pulling
federal funding "for any school or program pushing Critical Race Theory,
gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on
our children."
In higher education, Trump
proposes taking over accreditation processes for colleges, a move he describes
as his "secret weapon" against the "Marxist Maniacs and
lunatics" he says control higher education. Trump takes aim at higher
education endowments, saying he will collect "billions and billions of
dollars" from schools via "taxing, fining and suing excessively large
private university endowments" at schools that do not comply with his
edicts. That almost certainly would end up in protracted legal fights.
As in other policy areas,
Trump isn't actually proposing limiting federal power in higher education but
strengthening it. He calls for redirecting the confiscated endowment money into
an online "American Academy" offering college credentials to all
Americans without a tuition charges. "It will be strictly non-political,
and there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed-none of that's going to be
allowed," Trump said on Nov. 1, 2023.
Social Security, Medicare
and Medicaid
Trump insists he would
protect Social Security and Medicare, popular programs geared toward older
Americans and among the biggest pieces of the federal spending pie each year.
There are questions about how his proposal not to tax tip and overtime wages
might affect Social Security and Medicare. If such plans eventually involved
only income taxes, the entitlement programs would not be affected. But
exempting those wages from payroll taxes would reduce the funding stream for
Social Security and Medicare outlays. Trump has talked little about Medicaid
during this campaign, but his first administration reshaped the program by
allowing states to introduce work requirements for recipients.
Affordable Care Act and
Health Care
As he has since 2015, Trump
calls for repealing the Affordable Care Act and its subsidized health insurance
marketplaces. But he still has not proposed a replacement: In a September
debate, he insisted he had the "concepts of a plan." In the latter
stages of the campaign, Trump played up his alliance with former presidential
candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines and of
pesticides used in U.S. agriculture. Trump repeatedly told rally crowds that he
would put Kennedy in charge of "making America healthy again."
Climate and energy
Trump, who claims falsely
that climate change is a "hoax," blasts Biden-era spending on cleaner
energy designed to reduce U.S. reliance on fossil fuels. He proposes an energy
policy - and transportation infrastructure spending - anchored to fossil fuels:
roads, bridges and combustion-engine vehicles. "Drill, baby, drill!"
was a regular chant at Trump rallies. Trump says he does not oppose electric
vehicles but promises to end all Biden incentives to encourage EV market
development. Trump also pledges to roll back Biden-era fuel efficiency
standards.
Workers' rights
Trump and Vice
President-elect JD Vance framed their ticket as favoring America's workers. But
Trump could make it harder for workers to unionize. In discussing auto workers,
Trump focused almost exclusively on Biden's push toward electric vehicles. When
he mentioned unions, it was often to lump "the union bosses and CEOs"
together as complicit in "this disastrous electric car scheme." In an
Oct. 23, 2023, statement, Trump said of United Auto Workers, "I'm telling
you, you shouldn't pay those dues."
National defense and
America's role in the world
Trump's rhetoric and policy
approach in world affairs is more isolationist diplomatically,
non-interventionist militarily and protectionist economically than the U.S. has
been since World War II. But the details are more complicated. He pledges
expansion of the military, promises to protect Pentagon spending from austerity
efforts and proposes a new missile defense shield - an old idea from the Reagan
era during the Cold War. Trump insists he can end Russia's war in Ukraine and
the Israel-Hamas war, without explaining how. Trump summarizes his approach
through another Reagan phrase: "peace through strength." But he
remains critical of NATO and top U.S. military brass. "I don't consider
them leaders," Trump said of Pentagon officials that Americans "see
on television." He repeatedly praised authoritarians like Hungary's Viktor
Orban and Russia's Vladimir Putin.
End/UNB/AP/SU