Mark Antonio Wright writes for National Review Online about what lies ahead for the second Trump administration.
That means that, 100 days in, there’s still 93.16 percent of the road left before we arrive at January 20, 2029. We all need to pace ourselves.
I largely agree with the National Review editors that “what we’ve gotten from Trump so far is, not unexpectedly, a mixed bag.”
I also think that it’s not unreasonable to think that what we’ve seen over this 100 days is likely to reflect what we see over the next 100 days, and over the next 45 months. There will be some good Trump, and there will be some bad Trump.
The nation’s anti-woke “vibe shift” has been notable, if incomplete. Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris’s candidacy and the shattering of her political coalition has seemed to break through to the general American popular culture, producing cultural artifacts that would have been unthinkable just a year or two ago.
On foreign policy and trade, I think Trump’s policies are unlikely to prove popular. I hope they will not prove disastrous, leaving America with few friends when we might need them most, such as in a confrontation with Communist China. But back home, I think it’s likely that Trump’s border policies will indeed prove enduringly popular, if less so over time as the memory of Joe Biden’s welcome mat for illegal immigration fades.
I’m quite doubtful that the Trump administration’s confrontations with the courts, its “Turn Everything Up to Eleven” aura, or Donald Trump’s comportment as president will be an asset to members of his party as the months turn into years, and Trump is no longer on the ballot.
What hangs over everything, of course, is “liberation day” and Trump’s personal association with and the championing of his tariff policy. If some combination of the normal economic headwinds at the present stage of the business cycle and the Trump tariffs contribute to bringing on a recession, inflation, or — worse — stagflation, I don’t see any way that Trump or his party can escape the political blame for it.
