President Trump has kept about one-fourth of his 2016 campaign promises, according to Politifact. The big ones: Cutting taxes, renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, slapping tariffs on Chinese imports and withdrawing from the Paris climate accord.
But there are many unkept promises, including a few Trump probably wants voters to forget about as they contemplate whether he deserves a second term. The Trump campaign recently released a list of 50 goals for a second Trump term, in 10 broad areas such as the economy and health care. There’s no detail on how Trump would accomplish any of the 50 bullet points, but the list gives Trump a starting point for outlining a vision for a second term.
Some of Trump’s new campaign promises are do-overs Trump didn’t accomplish the first time around. He still wants a big infrastructure program, for instance, but instead of using the $550 billion price tag he used in 2016, Trump now says he simply wants to “build the world’s greatest infrastructure system.” He still wants to bring back manufacturing jobs from China, an elusive goal that his trade war China has not yet brought about. And Trump still wants to impose term limits on members of Congress, which will never happen but plays well with voters sick of congressional gridlock.
Then there are the campaign promises from 2016 Trump seems to have given up on, perhaps because they were unrealistic to start with and ended up as political losers. Here are 5 promises from Trump’s 2016 campaign that don’t appear on his 2020 agenda:
Mexico paying for the southwest-border wall. Every rational person knew Mexico wasn’t going to pay for a wall it didn’t want. Trump insisted he could get Mexico to pay billions for the wall indirectly, through reduced foreign aid or some kind of adjustment in the trade balance between the two countries. But none of that has happened, and Trump hasn’t said much about Mexico’s contribution to the wall since 2019.
Repealing Obamacare. Eliminating the Affordable Care Act was a key plank of Trump’s pitch to voters in 2016. But the Republican-controlled Congress tried and failed to kill the law in 2017. Republicans have never had a replacement plan ready to go, suggesting the repeal chorus was mostly symbolic. There is still one active lawsuit seeking to overturn the ACA, which the Trump administration supports. The Supreme Court will hear the case in November, after Election Day, and rule sometime in 2021. It’s possible the suit could succeed, but the Supreme Court has upheld the ACA once before, and many legal analysts think it will again. The ACA has grown in popularity over time, with 51% of Americans now saying they support it. Only 36% oppose it. So the issue may now be a loser with voters.