 Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on April 4, 2025. Markets underwent a global selloff on April 4 as countries around the world reeled from US President Donald Trump's trade war. |
AS PRESIDENT Trump's first term in the White House was coming to a close in January 2021, I recalled in a column how, as a candidate for president, he had assured voters that his election would launch an era of "so much winning." He had indeed scored some important wins, I acknowledged. But those successes were overshadowed by more numerous and more comprehensive defeats and debacles. In the end, Trump's first presidency had been marked by so much losing.
His second presidency is off to a similar start.
One hundred days after he returned to office with the proclamation that "the golden age of America begins right now," Trump is again presiding over an administration marked by blunders, set backs, climbdowns, and failure.
To be sure, the president has devoted followers who will sing his praises no matter what enormities he commits. He also has implacable opponents who would never give him credit for getting anything right. But there cannot be too many Americans who imagined that within 100 days, Trump's new golden age would have collapsed into such chaos and ineptitude, or that a president whose victory was so decisive that even his critics saw in it a political and cultural "vibe shift" would quickly burn away the goodwill with which voters had returned him to office.
As President Trump's first term in the White House was coming to a close in January 2021, I recalled in a column how, as a candidate for president, he had assured voters that his election would launch an era of "so much winning." He had indeed scored some important wins, I acknowledged. But those successes were overshadowed by more numerous and more comprehensive defeats and debacles. In the end, Trump's first presidency had been marked by so much losing.
His second presidency is off to a similar start.
One hundred days after he returned to office with the proclamation that "the golden age of America begins right now," Trump is again presiding over an administration marked by blunders, set backs, climbdowns, and failure.
To be sure, the president has devoted followers who will sing his praises no matter what enormities he commits. He also has implacable opponents who would never give him credit for getting anything right. But there cannot be too many Americans who imagined that within 100 days, Trump's new golden age would have collapsed into such chaos and ineptitude, or that a president whose victory was so decisive that even his critics saw in it a political and cultural "vibe shift" would quickly burn away the goodwill with which voters had returned him to office.
Amid the shock and awe of his first 100 days, Trump has certainly made a mark. He has unleashed new tariffs, attacked prominent universities and law firms, upended US foreign policy, throttled even legal immigration, and fired tens of thousands of federal employees.
"In his first 100 days, President Trump has delivered on hundreds of promises," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said this week. Yet by one measure after another, Trump's first 100 days have added up to an astonishing record of failure.
Begin with the president's oft-repeated boast that his policies would add vast sums to America's wealth. "We're going to become so rich, you're not going to know where to spend all that money," Trump told reporters on Air Force One last month. But on his watch so far, the US economy has lost trillions of dollars. The first 100 days of Trump's current term have been the worst for the stock market since Richard Nixon's second term began in 1973.
Consumer confidence, far from rising, has declined every month since Trump returned to the White House. Millions of Americans who voted for Trump in the belief that he would be better for the economy than Kamala Harris now say his agenda is making the economy worse. It's not unusual for the public to sour on a president's handling of economic issues. It is very unusual for voters to grow so disenchanted within the first 100 days.
Behind much of the economic distress, of course, is Trump's global trade war.
The president is an ardent protectionist of many years standing, so it was not surprising that he would press for higher import taxes. But who anticipated that Trump would unleash new tariffs so wildly and incoherently, that they would be deployed so indiscriminately, or that he would repeatedly back down when markets responded in alarm? Trump's muscular talk about overhauling America's trade policies and resurrecting the glory of the McKinley years turned out to be just — talk. There was no well-crafted plan to implement it, and voters now realize there never will be. In multiple nationwide surveys this month, a solid majority of respondents say they disapprove of Trump's tariffs. That is not what a successful administration looks like after just 100 days.
It isn't only on economic issues and trade that Americans are having second thoughts about Trump. "His job approval rating is just 42 percent," wrote Nate Cohn of the latest New York Times/Sienna College poll, "and voters disapproved of his handling of every issue tested in the survey, including longstanding strengths like immigration and the economy." It is hard to convey just how abnormal it is for a president to shed popular support so quickly, even on the issues that won him the election.
As opposition to Trump becomes mainstream, he is being increasingly defied. Federal judges have blocked administration actions more than 120 times. The chairman of the Federal Reserve Board has warned, publicly and bluntly, of the damage that Trump's tariffs will cause. Trump's assaults on top law firms, initially so shocking, are now drawing determined pushback. His hostility toward Ukraine has galvanized European governments into strengthening their support for Kyiv.
It didn't take long for Trump to make it clear that he is not, after all, unstoppable. America's democratic institutions are not quite as fragile as many had feared. Already the president is less formidable than he was on Jan. 20. Another 100 days and he will be even less so.
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
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