A Mini Scorecard For President Trump's First Seven Months of Term Two

In Federalist Number 70, one of the most often-cited of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton famously made his pitch for a strong unitary executive as provided for in the then-proposed Constitution:

Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy. . . .

Our current President Trump carries the concept of “energy in the executive” to an extreme level, undertaking a dizzying array of initiatives, with new ones emerging so rapidly that it is difficult to keep up. Many of Trump’s initiatives have corrected disastrous and destructive policies of the Biden and Obama years. But with so many initiatives, perhaps it is inevitable that some will be misfires; or perhaps Trump lacks a capacity for self-criticism to distinguish his good ideas from the bad ones.

So I thought it might be useful to compile a short list of a few of Trump’s best and worst undertakings. I’m going to pick three of each. Obviously, readers may have different ideas as to which belong in the “best” and “worst” categories. And I’m only selecting a few on each side of the ledger. Have I maybe missed the very worst one?

Best Trump Initiatives

(1) Reversing the suppression of American energy production

At the very top of my list is the remarkable total reversal of the Obama/Biden policies of suppression of energy production. Obama and Biden had set the U.S. on the path of economic suicide in service to the insane climate cult. Trump is now undoing literally all of it. This reversal is particularly remarkable because Trump barely got started on the project during his first term.

Something called the American Energy Alliance spent the Biden years compiling a list of all the initiatives of that group to suppress energy production. In all, their list had over 200 entries by the time Biden left office. Kevin Killough of Just the News on August 16 has a write-up on the AEA compilation. Since Trump has taken office for the second term, AEA has compiled a comparable list of all the reversals, now also in the range of 200 items. The topics covered range from reversing the finding the CO2 “endangers” human health and welfare, to undoing efforts to force closure of power plants running on coal and natural gas, to undoing automobile fuel economy standards, and much, much more. And add to the list reversing hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies for useless wind and solar electricity generation.

(2) Closing the Southern border

President Biden and his Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas repeatedly claimed that they were doing everything in their power to restrict illegal crossings at the Southern border. According to this White House press release of August 1, 2025, the average number of daily illegal border crossings during the Biden term was 5,110, which would come to some 153,000 per month, or 1.87 million per year. In July 2025, the figure was just 4,598 for the whole month. The border has been effectively closed.

There are many reasonable people who argue that our level of legal immigration, at around 1 million per year, is unreasonably low and should be increased. But that is not a good argument for having our government refuse to enforce the existing laws, let alone allow a mass invasion of unvetted illegals at the levels seen for the previous four years. The Constitution directs the President to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed”; and Trump has shown that that can be done in the area of immigration.

(3) De-funding of the Left.

Early initiative of the second Trump administration included shutting down USAID, and also halting distribution of grants to various “climate”-related projects under the Inflation Reduction Act and other laws. Both of those were in substantial part money-laundering schemes to take taxpayers funds and turn them over to a network of left-wing NGOs for political advocacy of various sorts. With many of those grants now dried up, suddenly the institutional Left is much diminished in activity.

Worst Trump Initiatives

(1) Declaring national emergencies.

In my view, one of the very worst things that Trump has been doing has been declaring a series of “national emergencies” in order to claim for himself various powers beyond those he would otherwise have.

Here is a Wikipedia compilation of all the various “national emergencies” that have been declared by all Presidents in U.S. history — the first of them having been declared by Woodrow Wilson back in 1917. Trump has declared some 8 national emergencies so far in his second term, in addition to 13 that he declared in his first term. The 8 so-called emergencies in just seven months is indeed the highest rate of emergency declarations of any president.

Several of the most recent “emergencies” are highly dubious. Four of them declare trade-related emergencies to support Trump’s tariff policies and trade negotiations. I’m sorry, but I don’t regard “large and persistent trade deficits” — the basis claimed in the one of the declarations that supports most of the tariff initiatives — as a bona fide emergency. Another of the declarations declares an “energy emergency.” The fact that bad government policy was undermining our energy economy does not make it a bona fide “emergency.” (Nearly all of the energy policy reversals taking place do not rely on the existence of any “emergency.”)

The remaining three emergency declarations deal with the situation of illegal crossings at the Southern border, the International Criminal Court, and the aggressive tactics of a judge in Brazil. Each of these at least has a decent claim to being a bona fide “emergency.”

The problem with declaring emergencies is that these things set precedents for incremental power accretion that subsequent Presidents are sure to follow.

To be fair to Trump on this issue, although he has declared an unusually high number of emergencies in the most recent seven months, other Presidents have not shied away from using these powers. The Wikipedia list states that some 90 national emergencies have been declared since Wilson got the ball rolling in 1917; and of the 90, only 42 have lapsed, while 48 are still in effect. Most of the 90 have occurred since Congress passed the National Emergencies Act of 1976. The emergency declarations that are still in effect mostly relate to imposing sanctions against bad foreign governments or terrorist organizations.

(2) The crazed tariff initiatives

The seven months of this second Trump term have seen constant impositions and changes to tariffs against almost all our trading partners. Trump seems to be using the tariffs as negotiating leverage to get the trading partners to lower their own protectionist barriers. Perhaps he can even use his tariff measures effectively for this purpose.

But the biggest problem I have with the tariff initiatives is that I don’t think there is a basis in the law for Trump to do what he has been doing — even with the declaration of a supposed “national emergency.” In the main he as been relying on something called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. That statute give the President powers to impose embargoes and sanctions on other countries, but doesn’t say anything about tariffs.

A case challenging Trump’s numerous tariff initiatives has been brought by various importers who have been harmed by the levies. It got to argument on July 31 before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Here is a report on the argument from the Liberty Justice Center. Excerpt:

Members of the 11-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington appeared unconvinced by the Trump administration’s insistence that the president could impose tariffs without congressional approval, and it hammered its invocation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to do so. “IEEPA doesn’t even mention the word ‘tariffs’ anywhere,” Circuit Judge Jimmie Reyna said, in a sign of the panel’s incredulity to a government attorney’s arguments. Brett Schumate, the attorney representing the Trump administration, acknowledged in the 99-minute hearing “no president has ever read IEEPA this way” but contended it was nonetheless lawful.

I think it is likely that the CAFC will rule that the IEEPA does not give Trump a unilateral power to set and change tariff rates, even if he has declared a “national emergency.” While that may prevent him from negotiating some beneficial trade deals, it will be a healthy thing for the separation of powers, which in the big picture is more important.

(3) State corporatist initiatives

My third example of what I think is bad policy from Trump are some state corporatist initiatives. Two that come to mind are efforts to dictate drug prices, and the proposal to take a 10% stake in Intel. Federal meddling in the private economy may seem to offer some short term benefits. But the reason that the United States is the world’s dominant economic power — and becoming more so all the time — is that the government keeps out of these things. It should continue to do so.

I’m sure that readers can come up with many other examples of good and bad Trump policy initiatives, but these are my top three from both sides.