Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Evaluating Trump’s first ‘Hundred Day’ economic plan
Evaluating Trump’s first ‘Hundred Day’ economic plan
Feb 13, 2026 8:52 PM

In a radio address on July 24, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to the 100-day session of the 73rd United States Congress between March 9 and June 17, a session thatproduced a record-breaking volume of new laws.

Despite the fact that the 100 days referred to a legislative session and not the beginning of a presidency, the term has e a metric for what a new president can plish and how effective they will be during their term. For this reason, president-elects often lay out a proposal for what they hope to plish during the early days after the Inauguration.

During a speech at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania last October, Donald Trumplaid out his own planfor what he’d do in his first days.

Below is a summary of all the actions related to economics that Trump promised to tackle in his Hundred Days and an evaluation of what he actually plished:

EXECUTIVE ACTIONS

The following are actions Trump said he would take either through the executive orders or through the other powers of his office:

Promise: Issue a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated.

Evaluation: Promise kept. Ten days after taking office the president signed an executive order titled, “Reducing Regulation And Controlling Regulatory Costs.”One of the provisions of the order is that whenever an executive department or agency publicly proposes for notice ment or otherwise promulgates a new regulation, it must identify at least two existing regulations to be repealed.

Promise: Announce his intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205.

Evaluation: Promise deferred. According to Trump, he was all set to announce his intent to renegotiate NAFTA—and then had his mind changed by phone calls with the leaders of Canada and Mexico.

Promise: Announce that the United States will be withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Evaluation: Promise kept. Trump withdrew from the trade agreement three days after taking office.

Promise: Direct his Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator.

Evaluation: Promise broken. “They’re not currency manipulators,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal in April.

Promise: Direct his Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that “unfairly impact American workers” and direct them to use “every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately.”

Evaluation: Promise kept. In April Trump signed an executive order calling for pletion of a large-scale report to identify “every form of trade abuse and every non-reciprocal practice that now contributes to the U.S. trade deficit.”

Promise: Lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.

Evaluation: In process. Trump signed an executive order to that will begin rolling back some of the energy restriction put in place by President Obama.

Promise: Remove any obstacles to “vital energy infrastructure projects” (e.g., the Keystone Pipeline) so that the projects can move forward.

Evaluation: Promise kept. Four days after taking office Trump signed a memo clearing the way for construction on the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Promise: Cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure.

Evaluation: Pending. Trump included this in his proposed budget, but it’s unclear whether Congress will cancel the payments.

LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS

The following are proposals for economic-related legislation that President Trump said he would send to Congress:

Promise: Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act— An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, bination with trade reform, regulatory relief, and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with 2 children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from 7 to 3, and tax forms will likewise be greatly simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35 to 15 percent, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10 percent rate.

Evaluation: Partial credit. In an attempt to get something out before the Hundred Day deadline, the Trump administration released a one-page outline on tax reform. No detailed plan yet exists, though, and nothing has been sent to Congress.

Promise: End The Offshoring Act— Establishes tariffs to panies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free.

Evaluation: Promise broken. No legislation has been proposed by the Trump administration.

Promise: American Energy & Infrastructure Act— Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over 10 years. It is revenue neutral.

Evaluation: Promise broken. No legislation has been proposed by the Trump administration.

Promise: School Choice And Education Opportunity Act— Redirects education dollars to give parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. mon core, brings education supervision to munities. It expands vocational and technical education, and make 2 and 4-year college more affordable.

Evaluation: Promise broken. No legislation has been proposed by the Trump administration.

Promise: Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act— Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications.

Evaluation: Promise deferred. Neither the Trump administration nor Republicans in Congress have a way to fully repeal Obamacare, and the current plan to make changes has been rejected by both Democrats and conservative Republicans.

Promise: Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act— Allows Americans to deduct childcare and elder care from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-side childcare services, and creates tax-free Dependent Care Savings Accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for e families.

Evaluation: Promise broken. No legislation has been proposed by the Trump administration.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
PBR: Cheesy Christian Movies and the Art of Narrative
Writing on the Big Hollywood blog, Dallas Jenkins asks the question: “Why are Christian Movies So Bad?” Jenkins, a filmmaker and the son of “Left Behind” novelist Jerry Jenkins, points to a number of telling reasons for the glaring deficit in artistic plishment, what you might call the dreck factor, that is evident in so many films aimed at the faithful. Jenkins’ critique points to something we’ve been talking about at Acton for some time: the need for conservatives to...
Acton Commentary: From Crisis to Creative Entrepreneurial Liberation
A new study from the Kauffman Foundation shows how Americans are increasingly turning to entrepreneurship to pull themselves out of an economic crisis. “When individuals are truly free to exercise their talents and trade the production of their labor, without oppression from tyrants or the entanglements of unnecessary government ‘oversight,’ the net effect is mutually beneficial for society as a whole,” writes Anthony Bradley in this week’s Acton Commentary. Read mentary at the Acton website and share your response in...
Review: Joker One
It is appropriate that Donovan Campbell offers an inscription about love from 1 Corinthians 13:13 at the beginning of his book, Joker One: A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood. That’s because he has written what is essentially a love story. While there are of course many soldier accounts from Afghanistan and Iraq, some that even tell more gripping stories or offer more humor, there may not be one that is more reflective on what it means to...
Global Giving and Local Needs
This month’s Christianity Today features a cover package devoted to the challenge faced by non-profit ministries amidst the recent economic downturn. The lengthy analysis defies any easy or simplistic summary of the state of Christian charity. There are examples of ministries that are scaling back as well as those who are enjoying donations at increased levels. Compassion International and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship are cited as those bucking the conventional logic that giving to charities decreases during a recession. “So far,...
Using ‘Human Rights’ to Squelch Free Speech
In the June issue of Reason Magazine, Ezra Levant details his long and unnecessary struggle with Canadian human rights watchdogs over charges that he insulted a Muslim extremist, who claimed to be a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. This sorry episode also cost Levant, the former publisher of Canada’s Western Standard magazine, about $100,000. Read “The Internet Saved My Life: How I beat Canada’s ‘human rights’ censors.” (HT: RealClearPolitics). Levant sums it up this way: The investigation vividly illustrated...
Review: The Unlikely Disciple
Brown University student Kevin Roose has written a largely sympathetic and often amusing outsider’s account on the spiritual lives and struggles of conservative evangelical students at Liberty University. Roose, who took a semester off at Brown, decided to enroll at Liberty posing as an evangelical for his book, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University. Possibly setting out to write an expose of sorts on Liberty’s quirky Southern Baptist fundamentalism and the students efforts there to gear...
A Question for Notre Dame
For those following the University of Notre Dame controversy, this moving article over at First Things poses pelling question at the end – a question that each member of the Board of Notre Dame (meeting today) ought to ask themselves: There have been many things written about the honors to be extended to President Obama. I’d like to ask this of Fr. John Jenkins, the Notre Dame president: Who draws support from your decision to honor President Obama—the young, pregnant...
PBR: Only as Good as the People
What’s wrong with populism? Nothing, necessarily. But, to hazard a tautology, populism is only as good as the people. I think this territory was covered pretty well by Alexis de Tocqueville, whose view was in turn covered pretty well by Sam Gregg in mentary of a couple weeks ago: “The American Republic,” Tocqueville wrote, “will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” As Sam notes, Tocqueville cited the importance of religion...
Gregg on the Moral Environment of Entrepreneurship
In today’s Detroit News, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg talks about the sort of “moral, legal and political environment” that must exist if entrepreneurs are to flourish. He applies these precepts to the very serious economic problems in Michigan, where Acton is located: … in the midst of this enthusiasm about entrepreneurship, we risk forgetting that entrepreneurship’s capacity to create wealth is heavily determined by the environments in which we live. In many business schools, it’s possible to study entrepreneurship...
PBR: Politics and Populism
Last week Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, made the case for “ethical” populism. Speaking of the Tea Party phenomenon, he writes, the tea parties are not based on the cold wonkery of budget data. They are based on an “ethical populism.” The protesters are homeowners who didn’t walk away from their mortgages, small business owners who don’t want corporate welfare and bankers who kept their heads during the frenzy and don’t need bailouts. They were the...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved