First 100 Days of the Second Trump Term
by Azfar Hasin and Kaden Shin
Ever since his comeback in the 2024 election, President Trump has been the center of a flurry of political activity in the honeymoon period of his term. The “honeymoon period” is usually the first 100 days of the first year of a president’s term. In this time frame, a president has a much easier time passing laws and appointing positions. One such example can be seen with the nomination of Marco Rubio for Secretary of State, who was approved with a unanimous vote, or for an older example, during the Obama administration, who passed a $3.6 trillion spending bill to address the recession of 2008 in the first 100 days of his first term.
President Trump has used much of his honeymoon period to confirm controversial Cabinet members and enact elements of his agenda, such as deporting illegal immigrants, leaving the WHO (World Health Organization) and the Paris Climate Agreement, as well as renaming Mt. Denali and the Gulf of Mexico to Mt. McKinley and the Gulf of America. As of March 20, 2025, Trump has also managed to begin more consequential motions, like attempting to abolish the Department of Education and circumventing the Judiciary in order to deport people to Venezuela.
In a surprising and unexpected development for most voters, Elon Musk has been given wide powers in the management of the administration. His Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has already laid off nearly 2,000 Department of Education employees, 400 from the Department of Homeland Security, and 10,000 Department of Health and Human Services employees, with more cuts planned.
And throughout all of this, the Democratic party has mostly seemed to have just given up on trying to counter these actions, seemingly from Trump’s decisive victory over the Democrats in November. While there are some groups fiercely opposed to Trump such as Indivisible and 50501, it has had limited pressure on Trump’s presidency, at least so far.
However, Trump’s honeymoon period seems to be over, as his approval rating dips below 50% and the stock market slides due to his imposition of widespread tariffs on an extensive variety of imported goods from every country and territory in the world, except Russia, Belarus, Cuba, and North Korea, who already have been sanctioned, embargoed, or have no trade with the United States. Trump has long pushed for increased tariffs on several foreign nations, perhaps as a way to fiscally balance the administration’s goals of increased tax cuts. Tariffs can be thought of as taxes on goods entering the U.S. from areas such as Europe and Asia, as well as from major U.S. trade partners like Canada. Usually, these tariffs result in increased prices of goods as the costs are passed down to the consumer. Tariffs can be targeted at companies, at countries, or at specific materials, like Canadian aluminium or European cars. The objective of most tariffs are to target goods from other countries in order to grow a domestic industry. However, targeted countries can respond in kind with their own tariffs, starting a trade war. Economist reactions to these tariffs have been negative overall, with growing fears that they could cause a net job loss after accounting for retaliation and import costs.
We interviewed several Science Academy STEM Magnet students during the second week of March about their opinion on Trump’s tariff plans. The general consensus is that they are a “tax on goods coming in from other countries.” We also asked students whether they believed that tariffs would lead to a positive economic effect, with varied responses. A majority, around 50%, believed that it would have mixed effects, mostly as tariffs would provide some revenue at the expense of impacting international relations and decreased trade. Around 25% were strictly opposed to tariffs, while 25% thought it would have some positive effects. We also asked a few individuals as a follow-up question if moderate tariffs in the range of 5-10% could be helpful, and they overwhelmingly reported that it would. However, the release on April 2 of widespread tariffs in the 10-65% range went far beyond what most people, even those who support tariffs, anticipated, and quickly triggered a wave of reciprocal tariffs and protests across the nation, all while the stock market has been on the rout, causing significant market crashes to occur.
As mentioned, Elon Musk, a non-governmental employee, is running the Department of Governmental Efficiency, or DOGE. For the last 2 decades, Musk has created an empire of businesses which has included SpaceX, Twitter (renamed to X), and Tesla, boosting him to be the richest person on earth. DOGE’s stated purpose is to streamline government and cut down useless spending. However, many critics believe that it has been rather ineffective at this goal, and is succeeding in only bringing down American soft power through measures such as gutting USAID. Soft power, in essence, is the reach of the United States through non-military means. Such examples include our foreign assistance to other countries, trade deals, student programs and mass media. These positively impact our relationships with other nations and allow us to extract favorable advantages from other nations, like economic and international security partnerships. USAID in particular helps other nations by providing vaccines, administering civilian aid, spreading democracy, education, and much more. In response to the elevation of Musk and the influence of American billionaires on the administration’s policy, critics assert that Trump’s courting of American businessmen represents the creation of an oligarchy, the degradation of democracy, and a return to the Gilded Age, a sustained period of extreme economic inequality during the late 19th century.
It is clear that Donald Trump wants to be known as a peacemaker by ending the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars. So far, however, his choices with regards to NATO have instead built a sense of betrayal and abandonment of Europe, as well as continued war in Ukraine and the restart of hostilities in Gaza. Donald Trump’s bashing of NATO and the European Union has pushed them to boost defense spending. Netanyahu’s increasing links with the far-right in Israel and its escalating war on Gaza is putting a major dent on Saudi-Israel normalization, a major goal of Donald Trump’s Middle Eastern policy. The President is also attempting to diplomatically pressure his own allies in Denmark and Panama to cede Greenland and the Panama Canal, despite their insistence on not being open to doing so. Perhaps he is thinking about cementing his legacy by expanding the territorial control of the United States.
Throughout the campaign cycle, Donald Trump maintained a strong anti-illegal immigration stance. In his characteristically large rallies, Trump supporters held numerous signs supporting the deportation of all illegal immigrants. Trump and his supporters have also supported ICE, the federal law enforcement wing of the Department of Homeland Security, despite previous abuses of detaining teenaged immigrants and refugees in poor conditions and its most recent arrest of student protesters. In the first few months of the year, Twitter accounts related to the Trump administration frequently touted their campaign of deportations targeting alleged gang members from Central America. These alleged gang members are flown to Nayib Bukele’s El Salvador, a regime that has been repeatedly criticized for frequent human rights abuses. However, it does appear that some of the deported turned out to be non-criminals as well as American citizens, a massive error made by ICE, who even went so far as to defy court orders to turn back planes bound the El Salvador.
In conclusion, the presidency of Donald Trump might soon prove to be one of the most consequential and divisive in modern history. And it has only just begun.