U.S. President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office have been marked by reciprocal tariffs, executive orders and historically low approval ratings. AWANI International takes a look back at his second term so far with Assoc Prof Saeed Khan from Wayne State University.
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00:00We're starting off today's show with a look back on U.S. President Donald Trump's first 100 days in office for his second term.
00:08Now, one of the defining moves so far has been his reciprocal tariffs.
00:12That's triggered a full-blown trade war with China, with both sides slapping tariffs of over 100% on each other's goods.
00:19Now, you can see the impact here.
00:21The S&P 500 was down 8.3% from the day Trump returned to the White House, and it continued on a decline, together with global markets in Europe and Asia as well.
00:34And it plunged right here in April when he announced his tariffs.
00:38There was, of course, a brief rebound when he introduced a 90-day pause, but the volatility hasn't let up.
00:45And according to the U.S. Commerce Department, the economy shrank 0.3% in the first quarter of the year.
00:52That's the first contraction in three years.
00:54Now, as a result of all of this, polling in the run-up to Trump's 100 days shows him posting historically low approval ratings.
01:02In this graph here, we see his ratings have been sliding in the last three months or so.
01:09Factors, of course, include his handling of negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
01:15As well as the controversial leaked signal chat involving his administration.
01:20It's even being reported that his approval has dropped to the lowest level for any U.S. president at this stage in office in the last 80 years.
01:29Still, he continues to maintain strong support from his core voter base.
01:33Now, earlier, I spoke to Associate Professor Saik Han from Wayne State University about this.
01:38Let's take a listen.
01:39So, we know that, of course, about 43% of the country voted for Trump.
01:47And we find that the numbers, although slightly less than that right now as far as approval, really, I think, reflect the fact that his support from his voters is really unshakable.
01:58It remains to be seen if some of those sectors are going to change their minds, especially farmers and others for whom tariffs that are imposed overseas are perhaps going to have a crippling effect.
02:11But I would say that the tariff issue correlates to his approval rating, perhaps mostly because of the chaos.
02:18One day he calls for tariffs and then he increases them and then he scales back from them.
02:24And so, that kind of volatility may work well for the stock market.
02:29But again, we find that for those who are small business investors, some of their life savings even have been severely impacted by this.
02:38And it doesn't really bode well for a sense of confidence, a sense of stability and a sense of security when there is a president that is this erratic.
02:46Hyman, again, if one listens to his supporters as they're interviewed, they firmly believe that he is going to bring back manufacturing, it will improve the economy.
02:57They're saying, as with the cases of tariffs, that it's going to just take time and they do not expect a short-term visibility of anything.
03:07He's going to be out of office in four years.
03:09He doesn't carry really any moral hazard to any of this.
03:13It is highly likely that what he has promised will not come to fruition.
03:20Another feature of Trump's first 100 days in office has been, of course, his heavy reliance on executive action.
03:27Figures here on this slide show that he has signed a staggering 141 executive orders, including 36 in just his first week.
03:36Now, this marks an unprecedented use of presidential authority in modern U.S. history
03:41that's far suppressing his predecessors, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
03:47Now, I also spoke to Associate Professor Saik Han about what this could signal for the next 100 days
03:53and what to expect heading into the midterms.
03:56Let's hear more.
03:56I would argue that perhaps the more telling focal point for us to see now is what seems to be the continuing deterioration of American commitments to the rule of law,
04:13whether that is on the international stage or whether that is even on the domestic stage.
04:17If the United States is not willing to even uphold the international system of law that it helped create and enforce, sometimes with force,
04:30then that is going to create one of two possibilities which are not mutually exclusive.
04:35One is a sense of deep consternation and anxiety about what will the world order look like without the United States supporting it.
04:45And the other is it's going to create a sense of opportunity.
04:48But with the United States now retracting from that role, who else might step up, if anybody?
04:56Or are we moving into a situation where it may look like for at least a while, a kind of Wild West,
05:02where the wheeling and dealing that occurs is going to be more of a function of big power geopolitics
05:10and the imbalance when it comes to smaller countries, much as we saw perhaps in the 19th century and even before that.
05:19Or are we moving into something entirely new and again with that, a sense of unpredictability?
05:28That wraps up our coverage on Trump's first 100 days.
05:32Stay tuned for more international news after the break.