100 Days of Damage: Taking Stock of Trump 2.0

Few will deny that the first 100 days of the second Trump Administration have been tempestuous and chaotic. After a whirlwind of actions that has virtually gutted the federal government and is readying to transform the world economy for the worse, it is perhaps time to take stock of the situation.

Trump has taken his nation on a big leap of faith from a spate of Executive Orders on a range of issues, to implementing the highest tariff rates the country has seen since World War II. In a deliberate strategy, he generated such a flood of news and actions that it has left his interlocutors dazed.

At this stage, according to some polls (FiveThirtyEight, ABC/Washington Post, The New York Times and Fox), he has the lowest approval rating of any president in the post WWII period. While his actions on the immigration front remain popular, his handling of the economy and other issues has done the real damage.

Characteristically, Trump has dismissed the polls saying that the pollsters should be investigated for electoral fraud.

The whirlwind of his actions have made it difficult for the opposition to keep up. Despite everything, it is difficult to see a coherent plan in his policies. For the MAGA crowd, his actions are proof that they have a president close to their heart who is working to restore a US they have known and who is reducing the bloated and woke bureaucracy.

For the rest, there is a sense of bewilderment accompanied by rising concern and anger. Some actions are being halted by court injunctions, but in most cases Trump has been getting his way. Many of the actions, like the evisceration of the US bureaucracy are difficult to undo. It is also difficult to see in what form the USAID could be re-created.

Equally, it is difficult to see how the country will restore confidence in the system where the executive is treating law as an instrument of personal vengeance, where its great universities and scientific institutions are under attack, where climate and health science are being ridiculed and where allies, who have stood with the US through thick and thin, are being casually repudiated. All this has also happened in just 100 days.

The big concern of the people in the country and around the world remains his 'reciprocal' tariff policy which has had to beat a hasty retreat with a 90-day suspension. But retail prices have risen in anticipation of his tariffs taking hold. Markets have slumped and tax cuts are not in sight. Market volatility has led to people seeing their retirement funds go up and down causing consternation across a section of the senior population. The benchmark S&P 00 stock index has fallen about 8% since inauguration. Market behaviour also constrained his attacks on the Federal Reserve chairman Jay Powell.

Trump has had strong support for his immigration policies and there has been support for the forced deportation of criminal elements. But there has been concern over the denial of due process to others, students and ordinary workers.

Trump’s actions have also caused consternation abroad. We have just seen how the Canadian Liberal Party used the Trump rhetoric to effect a historic turnaround and win the elections on Tuesday. But smaller actions such as visa revocations and detention of European and Canadian tourists have caused their own damage. As a result, there has been a marked drop in foreign passengers travelling to the US.

India has been walking a tightrope ever since Trump took office. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policy has been to accommodate Trump wherever he can and hope for the best. One fallout of the tariff war has been Apple's decision to transfer iPhone production of all the phones it hopes to sell in the US to India.

But remember that Trump wants them made in the US. This is despite the knowledge that it will take an enormous amount of effort to manage the iPhone supply chain involving 2700 parts and 187 suppliers. China makes most of the components, though Taiwan, South Korea and Japan make some of the key ones, and India still imports most components from east Asia. Doing all this could hike the price of US iPhones to over $3000. In any case, whether it is iPhones or other merchandise, production is unlikely to come back to the US given the unstable and unpredictable domestic economic environment.

The list of what Trump has not achieved is growing by the day. Neither Canada nor Greenland has joined the American Union. The war in Gaza grinds on as does the conflict in Ukraine. Trump has virtually underwritten what Netanyahu and Putin want, yet, they do not seem ready to end their wars.

By removing reciprocal tariffs on all countries except China, Trump thought he could bulldoze it. But Beijing did not budge.

Now after plaintively demanding that Xi call him over the tariff issue, Trump now seems to be resorting to concocting events. In an interview to Time magazine last week, Trump claimed that Xi had called him. “He’s called. And I don’t think that’s a sign of weakness on his behalf,” Trump said. He also softened his tone and said that the huge US tariffs on Chinese goods would “come down substantially” and promised to be “very nice” at the negotiating table.

On Monday, the Chinese officially denied that any talks had taken place and their spokesman said “China and the United States are not engaged in consultations or negotiations on the tariff issue.”

China had a trade surplus of almost $300 billion in 2024 and has nearly 15% of its exports going to the US. There is little doubt that the 145% tariffs Trump has put on Chinese goods will hurt them significantly. But it is also true that the US will probably hurt more. China will of course feel the pain of its higher end imports from the US – aircraft parts, pharma products and semiconductors. But the US will not find it easy to source electronics, machinery and processed critical minerals it gets from China easily.

In the longer term, by undermining the very basis of its prosperity, its transactional world outlook will reduce its attractiveness as an ally. By trashing its cultural, intellectual and political system, which has made it the most productive economy in the world, Trump is setting a stage for losing the competition with China.

Manoj Joshi is a distinguished fellow with the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi.

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