Winging it.
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Subject: [Salon] Trump is pursuing a radical agenda. Does he have a strategy, or is he winging it?
Trump is pursuing a radical agenda. Does he have a strategy, or is he winging it?
The haphazard execution of the administration’s initiatives is leading to chaos and confusion for the American public and U.S. trading partners.
April 13, 2025 The Washington Post
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President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Analysis by Dan Balz
For the first weeks of the new administration, it was possible to believe, whatever anyone thought of the specific initiatives and actions, that President Donald Trump and his team had a plan of action with specific goals in mind
and the discipline to implement it. So much for that.
As Trump nears the 100-day marker of his second term in office, his opening months have been rife with mistakes, overreach and the hubris that goes with a team that interprets a slender popular vote victory as a sweeping mandate.
The administration did have a plan for disruption and was ready with a flurry of executive orders to get it moving. The strategy combined policies outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, Trump’s long-standing desire
to use tariffs to punish countries he believes have ripped off the United States (especially China), and a determination to amass as much power in the presidency as possible. Added to that was Trump’s thirst for revenge against those who dared challenge him
in the past.
Those factors have produced a series of actions: the deportation of undocumented immigrants, mass firings of federal workers, the elimination of some federal agencies, the decapitation of the leadership of various agencies and
units of government, attempted intimidation of outside institutions (universities and law firms specifically), and now, perhaps most importantly, a trade war that is upending the world’s economic order.
But in pushing forward, the administration has stumbled on many of these fronts, renewing questions about the capabilities of the president and those he has empowered. Trump’s handling of the trade war is Exhibit A.
The tariffs he instituted more than a week ago were based on a formula that baffled mainstream economists. The breadth of the tariffs, hitting allies around the world, alarmed foreign policy analysts who saw it as leading to the
isolation of the United States and robbing the country of its credibility as a reliable partner.
Tumbling stock and bond markets forced a
partial rollback by the president, a 90-day pause in many of the tariffs, which sparked a rally on Wall Street. In the aftermath, Trump hiked tariffs on China even more, setting off a tit-for-tat escalation that could
bring significant damage to the world economy.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller summarized all this in a recent post on X: “You have been watching the greatest economic master strategy from an American president in history.” But the Wall Street Journal editorial
page opined Friday, “The reality is that Mr. Trump is making it up as he goes, and it would help if he had an actual strategy to deal with China in particular.”
Trump told reporters that “the bond market had a little moment but I solved that problem very quickly. I’m very good at this stuff.”
No amount of White House spin can undo the impression that the president, spooked by the financial markets and influenced by a public warning of dire economic problems ahead from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, blinked.
Chaos in the bond market will likely cost the government — and therefore taxpayers — billions more in interest on the national debt.
Nor can the White House confidently explain what the arms race in tariffs with China, its most significant economic adversary, is meant to produce. Is it an end to the trading relationship between the two largest economies in
the world? Is it to produce a more level playing field with a country that has abused the rules? If the latter, what are the terms of a peace agreement?
That China is an abuser of the trade rules is a given. Trump imposed tariffs on China in his first term but never moved successfully to rectify the underlying problems.
Now he’s raised the stakes significantly and
must prove that he knows what he wants and how to get it from the Chinese President Xi Jinping. But he’s also been adjusting on the fly,
as witnessed by the sudden backing off on tariffs on electronics and computers, which could have seen prices on popular products like the iPhone soaring more than $700.
The sudden shift on smartphones, computers and other electronics adds another layer of inconsistency to the administration’s claim that the president’s goal is to bring manufacturing back to the United States. At the same time
he has called on Congress to scuttle the bipartisan law to encourage the manufacture of chips in the United States that was approved during the Biden administration, he has now created more confusion about which sectors of manufacturing he wants to bring back
home.
Trump’s pattern is to do or say bold or outrageous things. That often leads to some type of negotiation with his targeted offender. That leads to often modest (and perhaps useful) changes, which provides Trump with the opportunity
to claim a huge victory. In this case, even if that is the outcome, the collateral damage as this conflict escalates could be huge.
But the tariff policy is only the most extreme example of an administration sputtering as it goes along. Trump has strong public support for locking down the U.S.-Mexico border and for deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal
records and he has general support for the broader policy of more significant deportations as well. The implementation, however, threatens to undermine public confidence.
On Thursday, the
Supreme Court told the administration that it must “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant married to a U.S. citizen and a resident of Maryland, who was sent to a prison in El Salvador by mistake. The administration had acknowledged
that Abrego Garcia was deported by mistake but claimed it had no ability to bring about his return. Even in the face of the ruling, the administration
failed to meet a deadline set by a federal district judge to explain how they would bring Abrego Garcia home.
The case represents one giant mistake, but the deportation policy’s problems go beyond this one incident. Trump promised to deport millions. So far the numbers have fallen far, far short. The administration in response takes more
extreme moves.
The latest was to have the Social Security Administration
move more than 6,000 migrants to what is called the Death Master File, in essence declaring them dead, which means they are not able legally to earn wages. The hope of the Trump team is that this would force the migrants to self-deport. The changes came
over the
objection of a senior Social Security official, who as a result was forced out of his office.
Then there is Elon Musk and the multibillionaire’s swashbuckling march through the federal government under the auspices of the U.S. DOGE Service. Musk & Company have claimed huge savings, though those claims are exaggerated.
The initiative has broken or shuttered various agencies, from the Department of Education to the U.S. Agency for International Development to the Voice of America. In some cases, the rationale for the actions has been to save
money, even though some are warning that the cuts could mean starvation of millions globally. In other
cases, the rationale is that the agencies had become nests of left-wing bureaucrats. In some cases, the claim has been fraud and abuse of taxpayers’ dollars.
Cutting back on a bloated bureaucracy is a necessary and perennial task in broad terms. Many officials who have overseen government agencies acknowledge that reform is needed. But as with the president’s tariff policies, blunt
instruments and the lack of a clear strategy call into question whether the administration has a goal beyond pure disruption.
The haphazard nature of the job cuts has
produced warnings about the consequences to the health and safety of Americans. And the haste with which some cuts were made has forced administration officials to
reverse them in some cases.
Trump claims he won the election in a landslide and has free rein to act.
In reality, he fell a fraction short of winning a majority of the popular vote and defeated Vice President Kamala Harris by just 1.5 percentage points. His electoral college majority, a margin of 86 votes, does not qualify as a big landslide.
Among modern presidents, Trump’s victory pales in comparison to the electoral college margins run up by Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Richard M. Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson and John F.
Kennedy. Some people might see his landslide rhetoric as harmless hyperbole. In practice, it has justified the most radical effort to change government of any recent president.
Trump has sold himself as a successful business executive who has the capability to oversee the economy. Many voters believed that. His biggest economic promise was to lower prices. Now that’s been called into question.
The decline in financial markets offered one reaction to Trump’s actions. Plunging consumer sentiment amid fears of a recession provided another measure. The Washington Post’s average of polls shows that Trump’s approval rating
has declined over the past month and the few polls so far in early April show steeper declines.
Until the president demonstrates the competence expected of a chief executive and begins to produce the results he has promised, those trend lines are likely to keep ticking down, Republicans’ worries will grow and confidence
in his leadership will decline.