Longtime So Cal resident Charles Carr is a nationally published journalist and playwright. His award-winning stories and articles have appeared in college textbooks published by Macmillan, St. Martin's Press, Bedford, and others. Charles enjoys writing a regular column for his hometown newspapers, The Times-Advocate and The Roadrunner.
98... 99... 100!
The first 100 days of any administration is often described as the "honeymoon period." Giving them a little room to show us their stuff is the reasonable thing to do. But, when that interval has passed, the gloves officially come OFF. Let's look at a few highlights, good and bad, of the first 100 days of President Trump's second (and final!) term and perhaps even do a bit of divining what may may be in store for us in the 1,300 or so days he has remaining.
It's not just eggs. A whole lot of things are getting more expensive and almost certain to continue to climb as the full effect of even the 10% across-the-board tariffs work their way toward consumers -- and if the 125% Chinese tariffs ever fully kick in, look out. The Chinese mega-retailer Temu just added a 145% "import surcharge" to all orders. Trump is using the 1930 Smoot-Hawley act to unilaterally impose his tariffs with the stated goal of returning manufacturing and jobs to US soil. It's an admirable goal, but any number of economists and GOP politicians including Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul are sounding the alarm that it was Smoot-Hawley that worsened the Great Depression and led to a political slaughter that kept the Republican party out of power for more than half a century. If lots of good-paying jobs really do materialize, every American should be happy to pay a little more. The question is whether those price increases plus the savings recovered from reshoring are enough to offset the astonishingly low wages of workers in China, Mexico, Vietnam, and other nations. Further, if the lion's share of these new American jobs end up being filled by robotic workers, we'll have the worst of worlds: fewer US jobs with higher prices to the consumer. Not good.
The DOGE firings have been chaotic to say the least. Fire them; hire them. Perhaps they should have borrowed the model used during the Clinton administration called the Reinventing Government Initiative which led to a reduction of half a million federal workers and saved billions (snopes.com) by working across departments to first offer worker buyouts, then cut with a scalpel, not the now infamous chainsaw.
The number of migrant crossings at the US southern border has plummeted in the past 100 days to the lowest level in more than 25 years. Control of any country's borders is essential, but now the administration needs to facilitate a return of legal immigration, welcoming the people of good character our America needs to maintain economic prosperity -- and also to show that its actions are not an ongoing effort to restore some sort of racial purity, as we hear so often from the Republican fringe.
Turning to the environment, as part of Trump's "Drill, baby, drill" campaign mantra, he has signed executive actions slashing EPA regulations across the board including loosening regulations on dirty coal, stepping up development of nuclear power to appease piggish AI power demands, allowing logging in more than half of our national forests, mining on federal lands, and opening up commercial fishing in the Marine National Monument Pacific Ocean reserve. Perhaps not in Trump's lifetime, but after we've trashed the place someone is going to have to clean up the mess. And it's going to cost a LOT more to do it.
And there's a whole lotta talkin' goin' on: talks with Iran over curtailing their nuclear program, talks with Russia and Ukraine, and talks with Israel and Hamas over the future of Gaza, all of which will hopefully bear fruit. At least they're talking.
But time is running out. Trump's own followers are turning on him and he knows it. A recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that half of Republicans now believe Trump is not focusing on the right priorities. In an article titled "The ‘Never Surrender’ President Retreats," even the right-leaning Wall Street Journal noted, "The White House tempered its position on key issues this week, as polling suggests voters are souring on Trump’s steering of the economy." Consumer confidence has nose-dived from over 70% in January to 50% in April. Stock market investors have been on a roller coaster, hostile nations are making ever bolder moves to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency, and the multi-trillion dollar bond market is flashing signs foreign investors may be losing interest in under-righting our debt.
Almost every one of the dramatic changes we've seen in the past 100 days brings into harsh light Trump's mercurial leadership style. Are these brilliant bargaining tactics, as he and his acolytes continually claim, or something we'll recognize a couple of years from now as the beginning of a disaster that was to come? The fact that Trump has rapidly reversed many of his own policies, not seemingly as a tactic but in response to public polls and emergency flares sent up by economists, suggests that he may be well over his skis. Add to that all the constant carping and whining and blaming of previous administrations for the kinds of problems every president faces; ones he said he could fix effortlessly -- like claiming he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours -- and it's easy to see why people are getting worried.
And that's perhaps the greatest single question we face one hundred days into this administration: Is he crazy or crazy like a fox?
Because if it's the former, heaven help us; a hard reign's gonna fall.