My friend, a former law professor who runs a federal agency employing 90 litigators and analysts in Washington, is beside herself with worry.
The Trump administration requested an urgent report on a critical issue relating to high-tech innovation.
She was told that if the White House didn’t like her findings, the agency could be defunded. When she asked if the administration had a view on the issue in question, so it could be addressed, she was told it was of no relevance. Catch-22.
The distinguishing features of Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, which will be reached on Wednesday, are arbitrary decision-making and contempt for due process. Law-making and government is done by social media edict.
His landmark 100-day period, in which he has caused so much havoc on the markets, is like no other in modern presidential politics, leaving businesses and investors in a state of trepidation.
Compare that to when Franklin D Roosevelt took office in 1932 during the Great Depression. He upended conservative thinking on the economy with radical bills designed to end mass unemployment and bring order to the financial markets. His New Deal set the US on the path of recovery.
He established better scrutiny of Wall Street with the creation of the Securities & Exchange Commission watchdog, and underpinned safety for savers with deposit insurance for banks.
Team Trump: The President with chainsaw-waving Elon Musk and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt
Meltdown: Trump’s antics have caused big falls in the S&P 500 and US Dollar, and a spike in US bond yields
The first 100 days of Lyndon B Johnson, in the aftermath of the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963, also was marked by a flurry of reforming laws.
Johnson immediately secured passage of the Civil Rights Act and moved on to inspire the Great Society, establishing a social safety net for left-behind Americans.
The contrast with Trump’s first 100 days could not be greater. Reforming legislation has been non-existent. Only five routine bills have become law, despite the President’s majority in both houses of Congress.
His period in office has been marked by mayhem, including on share and bond markets, and a series of U-turns.
Trump may like being the great disrupter but he has left Americans worrying about their pensions and fearing that the liberty prized by the founding fathers is in peril.
Trump’s ratings have slumped, with 52 per cent of Americans disapproving of his sojourn in the White House.
The reaction of his combative but calm press secretary Karoline Leavitt at her daily briefings is to tell critical reporters: ‘Have patience, you will see.’
Promises of instant peace in Ukraine and Gaza have turned to dust. Business confidence has cratered. Threats to take control of Canada, Greenland and Panama have shattered treasured alliances.
In Canada, Trump’s colonialist rhetoric has destroyed the campaign of the conservative candidate Pierre Poilievre, propelling the Liberal Party’s Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England but a political novice, into pole position for prime minister.
In his first term, Trump often cited the ebullient mood on Wall Street as evidence of his genius. He cannot make that claim now.
His strategy has rested on three planks: cutting the size of government, a blizzard of tariffs aimed at perceived trade sinners and persuading the independent central bank to cut interest rates.
All have ended in chaos with the White House often rowing back on decisions as financial markets, the ultimate arbiters of stability, forced Trump into hasty retreats.
What is surprising is that an administration stuffed with billionaires such as the weird and wonderful Elon Musk, boss of broker Cantor Fitzgerald Howard Lutnick, and hedge fund veteran Scott Bessent failed to restrain the President from an act of self-economic harm before it was too late.
Musk tasked himself with shaving $1 trillion off federal government spending in year one of office through his Department for Government Efficiency.
USAid, the world’s largest dispenser of assistance, has been abolished. Layers of management have been axed including tax officers at the Internal Revenue Service, threatening a reduction in collections.
But so far only $150 billion has been saved and critics say most of that has been made up. In the process, educational standards have been undermined, university research curtailed and the morale of public servants devastated.
The most wealth-destructive action has been Trump’s trade war, declared on April 2. Victims ranged from the tiny Marshall Islands, home to penguins, which was hit with a 50 per cent tariff to mighty China where the barrier stands at 145 per cent.
It is the tariff war, now partly frozen for 90 days, that sparked the big sell-off on Wall Street. In lockstep the dollar, the broad S&P 500 measure of US shares, the Nasdaq and more traditional Dow Jones index have suffered falls of 10 per cent or more. Bond yields have moved into stress territory.
Each time the markets rocked, the President has backtracked. He U-turned on his variable tariffs for a three-month cooling off period leaving a 10 per cent general levy and a 45 per cent penalty on foreign cars and steel in place.
At the International Monetary Fund last week, it was clear tariffs were dragging the US and global economy towards recession.
The President’s last hope was to convince the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, to cut interest rates. His threat to terminate Fed chairman Jay Powell and his description of him as a ‘loser’ sent markets into paroxysms.
After a plaintive, personal visit by Treasury secretary Bessent to the Oval Office, there was a rapid reversal in the shape of a social media post saying the President had no intention of sacking Powell.
So far, the markets have proved the ultimate brake on Trump’s economic insanity. The concern is that his disrespect for the law, his tariff wars and his assaults on the apparatus of government and universities will do lasting damage to the US economy and the world. That could take decades to repair.
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