Donald Trump has won the 2024 presidential election, becoming the 47th president of the United States. This is a historic win as Trump will be the first convicted felon to be president of the United States and the second president to not have two consecutive terms of presidency. Trump defeated Harris in a landslide victory of 295 electoral votes to 226 and won the popular vote. The results of the election shocked the country as Harris and Trump were seemingly close in the election polls in the days leading up to the election. However, with major wins in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, Donald Trump won.
Along with winning the presidential candidacy, Republicans also won control of the Senate, flipping the seats of West Virginia, Montana, and Ohio. Winning control of the Senate means a major boost for Trump’s plans to confirm his officials and secure lifetime appointments for federal judges, including any potential openings on the Supreme Court.
According to AP exit polls, the primary reason Americans voted for Trump was the idea that he will be better for the economy and bring down high inflation prices. This is not flawed thinking as inflation was lower during his candidacy and the economy was seemingly increasing. However, it is unfair to credit Trump for that prospering economy as it was Obama’s economy that Trump inherited and made minimal changes to.
Trump claimed he inherited a “disaster” from President Obama and built it from the ground up. However, that has been proven false according to the Joint Economic Committee. Obama became president after the 2008 economic recession where over 1.9 million people lost their jobs and gross domestic product plummeted by 8.4%. Obama took action to build the economy by implementing Recovery Acts to boost household income, provide tax relief to typical American families, and improve education nationwide from grades K-12.
At the peak of the unemployment rate from October 2009 to the end of Obama’s presidency in November 2016, unemployment went from 10 percent to 4.6 percent with a continuous decline. Household income also improved from -0.7 percent to 5.8 percent as well as high school graduation rates improving from 75 percent to 83 percent. With this, the economy was already showing a strong upward trend when Trump took office in 2016.
Trump’s most significant economic policy came from his $1.9 trillion economic tax cuts which has shown ultimately do more harm than good as they only benefited those in the top 1% and 5% of household incomes as their tax cuts almost tripled those in the bottom 60% of incomes and left the US in $1.9 trillion in debt.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, the Trump administration promised that these cuts would boost the economy and provide an almost $4,000 addition to household incomes, however, that failed to be shown as congressional research claimed there was “no evidence that any wage response close to these claims occurred in 2018 and 2019.”
Trump’s plans for his next presidency do not stray far from his initial policies including promising tariffs. A tariff is a tax on the import or export of goods. He claims that all exported manufacturing will have a blanket tariff of 20% and increase depending on the countries such as China, which will have a 60% tariff, or Mexico which will have a 40% tariff. If enacted, all imported goods would become more expensive with American consumers having to pay more money.
With this, Trump is trying to encourage all production to come back into the U.S. however, this isn’t sustainable for most goods including smartphones or certain appliances. Trump has also proposed a series of targeted tax breaks that would eliminate federal tax on tips, social security benefits, and overtime pay. Eliminating taxes on tips would mean cutting out funding for Social Security and Medicare which millions of Americans rely on.
Another major promise of the Trump administration and an issue Biden has been criticized for is the promise of cutting gas prices. Gas prices increased due to the economic disruptions caused by Covid-19 as well as Russia invading Ukraine. Americans have grown tired of the high prices so these promises Trump made seem appealing to voters. However, the Trump administration has yet to release any plans on how they would achieve this.
Trump has said upon taking office in January, one of his first priorities will be to execute mass deportation and build a strong and secure border. Trump claims the majority of crime is due to illegal immigrants and has placed blame on them for “stealing American jobs.” Trump has promised to carry out the “largest deportation effort in American history” disregarding the expense in doing so saying “It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not — really, we have no choice. When people have been killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”
Though Trump places the blame on illegal immigrants, there has actually been no correlation between immigration and higher crime rates. There has, however, been a correlation with immigration reducing crime in places with inclusive policies and an established immigrant population. It is shown that immigrants have had lower incarceration rates than those born in the U.S. and are 60% less likely to be incarcerated according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
With this, a mass deportation seems unnecessary and may cause more harm than good as immigrants who are here without legal status do have a right to be here and legally need a court hearing before being removed. Most immigrants that enter the country enter through the deportation system which is run by local law enforcement, not Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This causes further issues with Trump’s plans as many of the country’s largest cities and counties have passed laws restricting local police cooperation with ICE. Cooperation between ICE and local officials would be a critical aspect of any mass deportation plan. With federal law protecting that from happening, his plan is unlikely to be executed to the degree he says it will.
The financial aspect of the plan also seems intangible as currently, the ICE budget for deportation and transportation in 2023 was $420 million and with that, they deported over 140,000 people. The estimate of the total bill for one million or more deportations would run into tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars. That doesn’t even account for other factors of Trump’s plan such as continuing and strengthening the border and encampments to house the immigrants waiting for trial. With this, it’s hard to see Trump’s plan doing any more good than it will harm.
An issue that directly affects Blue Valley West students is Trump’s plans for education. The Trump campaign has proposed cutting the Department of Education, but what does that mean? The Department of Education “provides funding for public schools, administers federal student aid programs, and collects data on US education.” It also provides programs such as Title I funding for low-achieving or high-poverty K-12 schools in need of support, as well as Pell Grants for undergraduate students in high financial need.
Removing the Department of Education also means removing FAFSA and other financial aid opportunities for post-secondary schooling. Along with wanting to cut the Department of Education, he has also proposed major restrictions. This includes a mandated prayer in public schools, and cutting schools or programs that teach “critical race theory, gender ideology or other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content.” That also means removing thousands of books from libraries that feature those topics. Trump plans on removing Biden’s policy on extending Title IX civil rights protections to transgender students. Trump plans to set us back to “traditional American values.”
These are only some of the policies that will be taking place when Trump is set to take office. So the question is will he do more harm than good for our country?