The United States is currently in the midst of one of the most, if not the most controversial presidency ever. On January 20, Donald J. Trump, the real estate tycoon was sworn into office. He promised to change the country, yet showed little to no plans on how to actually go about doing that. He was seemingly elected by exploiting the uneducated in the country. A man who publicly discriminates against Muslims and women was sworn into the office. A man with no government experience.  His presidency so far has run exactly how it was expected. He has hidden behind his tweets, picking fights with each media outlet who have anything bad to say against him. He has attempted to make numerous large changes to the country and few of them have been approved. Although most of his followers expected his huge plans to actually change the country, he hasn’t been able to follow through thus far. His economic plan is very hazy, yet it still carries out the same “Make America Great Again” theme. His plan for the economy revolves around the idea that immigration isn’t good for the economy. He has begun to already implement many of his plans into the economy. Although some of his ideas seem to play a positive effect on the economy, some are very immoral. Many of his other plans seemingly won’t positively help the economy. In general, his plan for the economy seems very vague and not helpful to the greater good. His ideas are a mixture of examples of antigrowth and free market plans. The White House has also never seen such an unpredictable president, but by analyzing his plans for the economy, it’s easy to see that his ridiculous plans on cutting taxes and increasing spending doesn’t seem to support his “Make America Great Again” plan.

The 2016 presidential election was absolutely hectic. It was filled with hate and created a lot of divide in the country. The country was always holding its breath in anticipation of the next big controversial statement or action that Donald Trump would perform. However, controversy was the reason for one of the biggest upsets in U.S. history, when Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton to win the election. Despite holding very immoral values, Trump came out in front with enough electoral votes to beat Clinton. Analysts had Hillary winning in a landslide. The election showed that there were a lot of unspoken voters who didn’t want to publicly admit that they would be voting for Trump. The country seemed to want something new and radical that they felt would change the country for the better. For some reason, they looked to Trump, a man with no political experience, a man who had varying plans on how to fix the country’s issues. This shows specifically through his economic plans. Many of his proposals don’t seem very concrete or well thought. His radical ideas aren’t going to pass through congress, and are completely against the constitution. It seems that he wants to help the elitists of the country and not help out the majority. His tax reform is a great example of how this holds true. His immigration reform is absolutely unconstitutional, as he wants a complete ban of certain nations’ citizens from entering the country. He also plans to build a wall along the Mexico border, and make Mexico pay for it. The woes of his economic plan don’t stop there. He seems to want to make America rich without looking at the consequences of his ideas. He has already begun to implement policies that are clearly benefitting himself.

An essential part of Trump’s presidency will include how he handles the global economy. According to David Smick in, “Trump and the Global Economy”, Trump has assumed office with a weak global and national economy (Smick 1). Smick outlines all of the things Trump needs to do in order to fix the economy. Trump’s main concern is with trade, his campaign contained an economic theme that focused on trade, actually calling our trading, “weak”. In his trade policy speech in Pennsylvania, he fights against globalization and how it has negatively affected our country, yet claims that trade is essential to “making America wealthy again” (LesGrossman News, Youtube). In this speech, he criticizes that we have been taken advantage of by our trade partners. He even goes as far as to threaten to remove the country from NAFTA, an agreement that has benefitted our country greatly. Smick, in his article, claims that trade shouldn’t be his main concern as only thirteen percent of our GDP is represented by trade (Smick 1). He claims, “… trade represents only 13 percent of U.S. GDP. What Trump plans for the other 87 percent of the U.S. economy could make all the difference.” (1).  When it comes to his actual plan for trade, Trump has insisted on placing 35 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and 45 percent on trades from China. In, “Trump Economics. First: Do Harm”, by Steven Rattner, Rattner claims that these tariffs would actually raise the prices of imported goods. This raise in prices would ultimately lower the purchasing power of every American (1). Rattner states, “Lower-income Americans – including Mr. Trump’s core supporters – would be hurt the most because they disproportionately buy less expensive imported items.” (Rattner 1). As a matter of fact, when he proposed this idea, the Mexican peso dropped by more than 13 percent, due to the fact that the economic costs would be so great for Mexico. Rattner also added, “A recent study by the nonpartisan Peterson institute for International Economics estimate that, rather than bringing jobs back to the United States, Mr. Trump’s tariffs could result in a trade war that would cost our economy five million jobs and possibly lead to a recession.” (1).  This is a threaten to his previous promise to create more jobs than ever.

So far the Trump presidency hasn’t exactly lived up to expectations for the little under majority of the nation that voted for him. His past 3 months provide a great example of how much of his presidency is going to turn out. Thus far has proven that some of his ideas have been very unconstitutional. The supreme court has recently turned down the “Muslim ban” which would have completely denied the entry of Muslims from certain countries. The Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional. Then, the overhaul of Obamacare was turned down. He demanded that his health care bill be put into place, then admitted that it would hurt his own supporters.  He claimed that it would cover and assist everyone. He actually knew very little about his proposed healthcare bill and demanded it be put into place instead of improvising it. Ultimately, Republicans voted to keep Obamacare in place instead of putting a new health care bill in place. Trump has also accused Obama of wiretapping the White House, based solely on public news reports. The amount of hypocrisy that is present in his actions is unbelievable, how can we trust someone who constantly lashes out at news sources for being “fake” then turns to public news sources to provide claims that his phones are tapped to run our country and our economy. 

One of Trump’s main plans for the economy is the immigration reform. So far in his presidency he has attempted to banish any illegal immigrants from entering and staying in the country. This idea has come with a lot of backlash and has ultimately been turned down by the supreme court. Trump’s thought process behind this is that it takes away from jobs being distributed to Americans. With less illegal immigrants in the country, there will be more jobs for people born in the country. Trump believes that the middle class is fading away so he wants to get more Americans in the workforce and less immigrants. He believes that Mexico has been taking advantage of our trade deals and our lack of immigration policy. He wants to create a wall that runs along the border of the U.S. and Mexico, and make Mexico pay for it. This idea is just completely wrong. For starters, it’s a complete waste of money, as most illegal immigrants aren’t actually coming in through the Mexico border (Casselman 1). The majority of illegal immigrants are actually coming from Central America and Asia, not Mexico (1). As a matter of fact, the number of illegal immigrants coming through Mexico has declined since 2007. He also uses the idea that illegal immigrants are using up resources to place more blame on immigrants for the woes of our economy. In his speech titled, “Immigration: Let Me Tell You About My Plan.”, Trump states, “For instance, we have to listen to the concerns that working people have over the pace of immigration and its impact on their jobs, wages, housing, schools, tax bills, and living conditions.” (Trump 1). He believes that they’re taking up our taxpayer money by taking welfare, healthcare costs, education costs, etc. This is yet another fallacy. These government social programs aren’t available to illegal immigrants, and they’re actually not even available to legal immigrants until they have resided in the states for 5 years (Casselman 1). Although the thought of more jobs being given to Americans sounds nice in retrospect, it actually creates a problem in the nation. The theory that immigrants take up a large portion of the workforce and take up jobs for Americans makes sense. However, according to both Republican and Democratic economists, immigration drives up demand for services and products (1). Therefore, creating jobs in order to meet this demand.  Immigrants also still pay taxes regardless of their immigration status. Undocumented workers actually paid almost 12 billion dollars in local and state taxes in 2012 (1). Not to mention that they pay income taxes and medicare taxes each year. Trump’s immigration reform is a key component of his economic reform. Many of his plans to keep immigrants out are based on false information, and other plans are just unconstitutional altogether.

Another part of Trump’s economic plan is his tax reform. Trump has yet to release enough of his tax records to see exactly what he has been paying in taxes. It seems quite hypocritical that we don’t know what he has paid in taxes over the past ten years, yet he is deciding what the country has to pay. Although he plans to make America great again, this reform actually only helps the upper class of the nation. According to Hilary Russ, almost all of New York City’s millionaires would encounter a huge tax cut with his plan, while only one third of middle class American families would see an increase (Russ 1). City comptroller Scott Stringer stated that Trump’s tax overhaul would give more than $5 billion of tax cuts to those living in the city, but two thirds of those cuts would be given to those who earn more than 500,000 dollars (1). As a matter of fact, a single mother making less than 50,000 dollars a year would actually face a tax increase. Steven Rattner, in “Trump Economics. First: Do Harm”, writes, “According to the Tax Policy Center, by 2025, 51 percent of Mr. Trump’s reductions would go to the top 1 percent, who both least need it and would be least likely to spend it.” (Rattner 1). This is clearly a completely selfish reform, as it is only helping those that he associates with, and himself. Trump isn’t making America great again, he is keeping the rich elitists of the nation great. Another stipulation of his tax reform has corporations taking quite a large tax cut. Erik Sherman recently wrote an article titled, “Trump’s Tax Plan is Even More Dangerous Than it Sounded”, in which he talks about how corporations will now be paying a 15% maximum tax rate rather than 35% (Sherman 1). He talks about how beneficial this is for these corporations, the scariest part comes when he states, “In any given year, according to the most recent U.S. General Accountability Office analysis, at least two-thirds of active corporations pay no federal taxes at all. Dropping the rate to a maximum 15% without a complete overhaul of tax law would likely mean corporations could use the same tools to reduce the 15% to next to nothing.” (1). The hypocrisy of this country is ridiculous, its citizens are constantly being reprimanded for not paying taxes, yet the wealthy and powerful find ways to evade taxes without any drawback. This is also hurting small business owners, as this is affecting mainly the top one percent. This means that family businesses and small business owners would take a hit from his reform. Yet again, Trump is not sticking up for those pursuing the American dream that he has promised to help those in need attain. Instead, he plans on helping himself and his associates. Recently, Trump has also proposed a tax rate of fifteen percent for pass-through companies from the current forty percent. Pass through companies are businesses that only get taxed once. Instead of on the corporate level, their profits are taxed as only the owner’s income. This is also a plan that seems to be unbelievably self-beneficial. According to Trump’s attorneys, Trump owns five hundred of these pass through businesses.  So in reality, does Trump’s tax reform actually benefit the country for the greater good, or only the rich and powerful of our country?

Trump does bring up plenty of very good points. Some of his controversial claims do have plenty of supporting facts. His ideas on how to handle criminal aliens that entered our country illegally does make plenty of sense. In his immigration speech, he claims, “According to federal data, there are at least 2 million criminal aliens inside the country. We will begin moving them out day one, in join operations with local, state and federal law enforcement. Beyond the 2 million, there are a vast number of additional criminal illegal immigrants who have fled or evaded justice. But their days on the run will soon be over. They go out, and they go fast….. We will terminate the Obama Administration’s deadly non-enforcement policies that allow thousands of criminal aliens to freely roam our streets.” (Trump 3). This is actually essential for our nation; we can’t afford to be jailing these illegal criminals. With the violence of the cartel, we can’t afford to be taking our chances with letting these criminals freely roam our streets. According to the daily wire, “In 2015, ICE released almost 20,000 illegals that committed 64,000 crimes…” (Bandler 1). Although these facts provide a very viable claim, what Trump promises is not as easy as it sounds, catching these criminals that have been freed isn’t a simple task, not to mention the amount of money it would take to actually catch and then release these criminals back into Mexico. Steven Rattner claims, “The conservative American Action Forum calculated that his deportation plan would cost $400 billion to $600 billion…” (Rattner 1). In retrospect, tax cuts sound very beneficial to the common individual. Less taxation on incomes means more money in the pockets of workers. Yet a 5.8 trillion-dollar tax cut doesn’t exactly lead to “making America rich again”. Our country is currently facing a debt crisis that doesn’t get enough attention. A tax cut of this size requires expenses to be taken from elsewhere, and with Trump’s current infrastructure and military enhancement plan, it doesn’t seem that spending will be slowing down anytime soon. Trump also plans on repealing the estate tax, which removes all taxes on estates given to relatives when the owner dies. This is another plan that sounds nice in hindsight. However, according to Jeff Bukhari, “Of the 2.7 million people the Census Bureau estimates will die in the U.S. this year, only about 11,000 of them will need the executors of their estates to file for the estate tax, according to the Tax Policy Center.” (Bukhari 1). Many of his ideas sound very appealing before the undermining facts are shown. 

According to Investopedia, “Trumponomics” describes, “the economic policies of U.S. president Donald Trump, who won the November 8, 2016 presidential election on the back of bold economic promises to cut personal and corporate taxes, restructure trade deals and introduce large fiscal stimulus measures focused on infrastructure and defense.” The idea of “Trumponomics” sounds amazing but it is actually a complete fraudulent idea, created by Trump to help the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It is proven to yield great amounts of inflation as it seems there will be a ridiculous amount of spending. It’s actually hard to believe that we have a president in office that has no past political experience, and is running the country on his own beliefs and morals. It seems as though he has this idea of plug and play, implementing policies and seeing how they play out. The end of Steven Rattner’s article sums up much of Trump’s ideals, and seems to be a solid concluding statement, “This much is certain: Mr. Trump’s proposal would confer vast monetary gains on wealthy Americans while leaving middle- and working- class Americans—his electoral base—further behind. For his supporters, the irony of a Trump victory is that they may end up even less well off.” (Rattner 1). 
