Enacting the Trump Agenda
Or at least how to think about which policies might be implemented
Kamala Harris would have been an extremely predictable president. Donald Trump is…much less so. He’s ignorant of policy, essentially non-ideological beyond bigotry and authoritarianism, and has an unusual – especially for the 21st century – relationship with his party. The short version of that is that he’s fully captured the Republican Party, but when it comes to policy in most cases the fringe of the party has captured Trump.
For the best overview I’ve seen of the overall likely direction of the administration, see Don Moynihan here. It’s grim. Indeed, it’s grim even if you generally support normal, traditional conservative Republican policies. Worse, of course, if you don’t.
So which policies will actually happen? There’s a ton of uncertainty, but here are four factors that will structure it. In each case, in the real world they’ll all interact.
Who Wants What. This turns out to be more complicated than you might think. There are basically three categories:
Stuff Trump alone wants: This includes massive tariffs, buddying up to autocrats and ditching NATO, opposing wind power, and a few other items. Also includes authoritarian obedience to Trump, and using the government to punish his enemies – some Republicans are gung-ho on that, but many (in fact I think most) are better characterized as either indifferent or having modest support or opposition.
Stuff only the Republican Party or groups within the party wants: There’s no evidence, for example, that Trump cares at all about most of the Christian conservative agenda. He was willing to do what they wanted in his first term; now that they’ve built him up as practically a Messiah, it’s not clear whether he’s still on board with that strategy.
Stuff on both the Trump and Republican agenda. Punishing immigrants is probably the top of this one. Also, lower taxes for corporations and rich people. Some of the authoritarian agenda fits here, such as making it harder for Trump’s opponents to vote. There’s more, but not that much, because Trump doesn’t care about all that many things.
Obviously, anything in the third category is more likely to happen, all else equal. One key point: Details matter, and some overall policies might be third-category while the details are first or second category. Also? Trump rarely cares about details.
Easy or Hard. Building is generally harder than destroying. Something that needs legislation is harder than something that can be done by executive action or agency action. Legal is easier than illegal! Something the government can do unilaterally is harder than something that requires private-sector cooperation. Same with the federal government vs. state and local governments – and in that case, some will enthusiastically jump on board while some will prove very capable of resisting. Popular programs are easier than unpopular.
Then there’s policy complexity. Some things are just more complicated than others – lowering corporate taxes by some percentage is a lot simpler than, say, building an alternative to the Affordable Care Act. The former is very likely to happen; the latter, almost impossible to imagine.1
This doesn’t mean none of the difficult things will happen, or that all the easy ones will happen. One of the many Trump-specific wild cards is that normal presidents gravitate towards easy, but he typically doesn’t understand any of these distinctions. Another somewhat Trump-specific thing? He’s generally not interested in the results. All of this in the first term produced a lot of inaction, but he has fewer constraints this time.
Personnel. A Harris administration would have had a fairly predictable cast of Democratic Party governing professionals and it wouldn’t have mattered much which ones got which jobs.2 That’s very much not the case with a Trump presidency. Instead, Trump and his transition team will be choosing among ideologues, cranks, and grifters, with presumably very little quality control. Some of the ideologues and cranks will be capable administrators who would get a lot done if they wind up in a key position; some will be, well, much less so.
There’s been a lot of speculation that all of this will go much more smoothly in a second Trump administration than it did in 2017, but I’m skeptical. Trump himself remains as much of a random factor as ever, which means that even if conservative think tanks think they know who will go into which slot, there’s every possibility that they won’t be the ones making those decisions. It’s also the case that there are real differences between various conservative groups about policy priorities and even policy direction, and it’s far from clear that party groups, let alone a party consensus, will be able to impose discipline on personnel selections.
The Courts. We can be sure that Trump and his administration will attempt to ignore norms and legal constraints. We know that there’s a strong Republican majority on the Supreme Court. What we don’t know is whether the 6-3 majority will hold no matter what. And if not, where the limits may be.
Yes, there’s no question that after a four-year (mostly) pause, the Supremes will resume supporting an “imperial” presidency. But the Republicans on the Court didn’t always rule for Trump during his first term, nor have they always ruled against Joe Biden during his presidency. Could they become even more partisan now that Trump was re-elected?Yes! But nothing is certain. By my count, only two of the Republican Justices, the two oldest ones, are absolute without-question knee jerk partisans.3 The others are certainly partisans, and very conservative, but they do seems to have some other considerations than just what Fox News thinks they should do.
Of course this is crucial: To the extent that the Court so decides, Trump could conceivably rule as an absolute unconstrained monarch perfectly legally.4 And to be sure, Justice Roberts and the court majority giving presidency immunity for law-breaking is a big step in that direction. But it doesn’t guarantee that Trump overreach can’t be slapped down by the Court after all. At least sometimes.
All of this isn’t going to give you a formula for predicting exactly which policies will change. But it should give you a starting point for thinking about what is coming.
We very much could, however, get the ACA or other policies torn down without a real replacement, leading to policy chaos. Which is not good at all.
It matters some! Capable administrators get more done than fourth-rate hacks, and the personal preferences of White House staffers, cabinet secretaries, and other people the president selects for the executive branch may matter on the margins. But with a well-run administration linked to a functional party, policy freelancing has significant restrains. I do not expect the second Trump administration to be well-run, and the Republican Party remains massively dysfunctional.
For what it’s worth, this means that it’s unlikely that the Court would get any more partisan if Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas step down. Also? We don’t know yet whether Trump will be as willing to follow the Republican legal establishment when it comes to his judicial nominations — and if he doesn’t, then the usual Trump randomness could apply, with a Republican Senate less likely to revolt than it was when George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers.
Well, theoretically the Senate could convict him after a House impeachment, but that’s not going to happen.