Trump can be fairly critiqued for failing to deliver on his more populist campaign promises. Candidate Trump had addressed, in blunt terms, issues a majority of voters care about but President Trump has not redressed these issues.
Candidate Trump, for example, had promised an ‘America first’ approach to foreign affairs. President Trump, however, is bombing the Middle East, still has the US in NATO, continues a new Cold War against Russia and has made conventional picks for most Defence and State Secretaries who would not have been out of place in a Bush Mark 111 presidency.
Candidate Trump had promised to halt the immigration-driven demographic transformation of America from Anglo to Latino. President Trump, however, has delivered little on illegal immigration – there is no Wall, no moves against visa-overstay illegals and, although Inward flows of illegals dropped dramatically in his first few months, they are now as high as they were in the Obama years. Meanwhile, on legal immigration, President Trump has done bubkis. Immigration does not appear to be a ‘heart’ issue with the President.
In his defence, it must be said that no US President can legislate; only Congress can and they are all in the pro-immigration, cheap foreign labour lobbyist grip. Nevertheless, with illegal immigration, a US President has significant unilateral powers, as confirmed by the Supreme Court, to suspend the entry of any class of aliens into the country, for example, the unskilled and poorly educated (the typical fodder of the Central American ‘caravans’ marching through Mexico) if he rationally believes it to be in the ‘national interest’ by protecting the jobs and wages of American workers. He can bar all those likely to become a public charge to the taxpayer for welfare benefits. The President has kick-started building the Wall by declaring the southern border to be in a state of emergency getting the Army Corps of Engineers to build it. The President can also, by regulation, end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens and birth tourists.
No congressional approval is needed for any of this Presidential action. Court approval, however, is required, as liberal activists reflexively seek out liberal judges to stymie Trump’s unilateral actions as unconstitutional. Trump, however, has not been willing to defy the hostile, politically-partisan judges. He should politely note the lower courts’ decisions, filing them in the ‘pending’ basket, taking the legal battle to the Supreme Court and in the meantime, carrying on with implementation of his agenda. Who, after all, is going to enforce a lower court block on his agenda? What police force and jailers do they have? As President Jackson said of his hostile Judges - “now let them enforce it!”.
Trump’s caution and inaction has disappointed many of his followers who see the anti-establishment, rebel Trump usurped by a Fake Trump who has been installed in the White House by the Republican establishment which hopes that if they can politically neuter Trump, then that will get rid of Trumpism and return the political agenda to their trusted, employer-first hands.
Trump shares some of the blame for his predicament by having naively tried to work within the Republican Establishment to get Congress (both houses of parliament) to enact Trumpist laws but as this Establishment is hostile to the anti-business elements of Trump’s agenda, it has meant that Trump has spent much of his populist capital on conventional, conservative, business-friendly policies, policies which his voters had rejected in the election. It is, further, a truism that ‘personnel is policy’ and his key personnel picks have sidelined genuine combative populists in preference for establishment Republican moderates.
Trump has also faced formidable opposition from members of the former Obama administration who are still in the highest levels of the bureaucracy, and from a security agency ‘Deep State’ constantly leaking anti-Trump material and ways to harass or derail his agenda. Such insubordination, however, should be treated with vigour by getting rid of the subversives. Trump was democratically elected. They weren’t.
Thus has the square-peg Candidate Trump allowed himself to be successfully hammered into the round hole of the Republican establishment, his election-winning, maverick policy agenda either lopped off or vastly reduced in ambition, scope, boldness and immediacy, whilst the Republican orthodoxies (on corporate tax cuts, government deregulation, environmental vandalism, etc.) that were also part of Trump’s policy kitbag have been allowed to slot smoothly into place.
The Republican Establishment will let Trump implement what is in the get-rich-quicker capitalist interests of their corporate clientele, but they will resist whatever elements of the ‘populist’ Trump’s platform (such as restrictions on free trade and opposition to cheap labour immigration) would dilute the corporate bottom line. Trump has allowed himself to be tamed, reduced to angry but impotent tweets as the swamp relentlessly closes in. Trump is a businessman and business lobbies have his ear. Trump has not harnessed the populist electoral wind at his back to turn anti-establishment mood into a movement.