It’s a sad day for the United States of America. We know the destruction Donald Trump caused during his first term as president, but his second term is going to be worse.
Trump only cares about making money for himself and his wealthy friends. Now, billionaires are ingratiating themselves to him. Times are going to be tough for consumers, especially low-income consumers.
Probably the most important thing is that more people will become ill and die under the Trump administration policies. That’s what happens when you reduce some regulations, air pollution, for example.
The environment
The Trump administration, in its first four years, overturned environmental protection regulations, arguing they were too restrictive and cost too much for companies to carry out. However, although cutting more than 110 environmental rules may have saved money for the gas and oil industry and other corporations, it resulted in the loss of lives. Former President Donald Trump’s slashing of regulations resulted in 22,000 excess deaths in 2019 alone, according to a study published by the British medical journal The Lancet.
Health
Covid
In the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency, more than 450,000 Americans died from covid-19, and life expectancy fell by 1.13 years, the largest decrease since World War II. Many of the deaths were avoidable, according to the Lancet study. Covid-19 mortality in the United States was 40 percent higher than the average of seven other wealthy nations.
Trump publicly downplayed covid-19 and often undermined health guidelines. He expedited the spread of covid-19 in the U.S., according to the Lancet study.
Between weeks ending June 20, 2020, through March 19, 2022, excess covid death rates were higher in states with Republican governors and greater Republican representation in state legislatures, according to an article in the American Journal of Public Health.
Other health issues
Trump’s trillion-dollar tax cut for corporations and high-income individuals opened a budget hole that he used to justify cutting food subsidies and health care, according to the Lancet study.
The study also said that, although Trump’s effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed, he weakened its coverage and increased the number of uninsured people by 2.3 million and has accelerated the privatization of government health programs.
In addition, Trump didn’t met his promises to bring down health care costs, according to an article by the Center for American Progress, public policy research and advocacy organization.
Fines
I wrote many times during the first Trump administration that enforcement of the nation’s laws dropped drastically.
During President Donald Trump’s first year in office, enforcement against corporate crime and wrongdoing declined dramatically, with total penalties for such violations dropping from the final year of the Obama administration, according to a report from Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization.
Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, total DOJ penalties against corporations fell 90 percent from $51.5 billion in President Barack Obama’s last year to $4.9 billion in Trump’s first year, and the number of enforcement actions against corporations fell by 22 percent from the Obama’s last year. Plea deals dropped to 50 compared to 117 in Obama’s last year.
More numbers
The numbers above are just some of the statistics summing up Trump’s first administration.
For more information, see Trump’s Final Numbers by FactCheck.org, a project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center. A few include:
- The economy lost 2.7 million jobs. The unemployment rate increased by 1.7 percentage points to 6.4 percent.
- The international trade deficit Trump promised to reduce went up. The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services in 2020 was the highest since 2008 and increased 36.3 percent from 2016.
- Illegal immigration increased. Apprehensions at the Southwest border rose 14.7 percent last year [2020] compared with 2016.
- Handgun production rose 12.5 percent last year [2020] compared with 2016, setting a new record.
- The murder rate last year [2020] rose to the highest level since 1997.
Ethics
As I was going through my blog articles on Trump’s first administration to write this post, I was reminded that dozens of officials in the Trump administration were charged with ethical violations or misconduct. Few went to jail.
This is another concern about Trump’s second administration. We know he’s going to cut taxes and regulations to help corporations and the wealthy. This will come at the expense of middle- and low-income people.
In addition, Trump officials, and Trump himself, will likely be bending ethical rules to enrich themselves even further.
An example: President Trump and his family on Friday started selling a cryptocurrency token featuring an image of Trump drawn from the July assassination attempt.
Final thoughts
Get ready for a rocky ride in your financial life during Trump’s second administration. Inflation is likely to go up again and interest rates probably will remain high. In addition, beef up your emergency fund as much as possible because government services and health plans may be weakened or eliminated.
So, best wishes to us all. It will take years if not decades to repair the damage Donald Trump is going to do to the federal government and the lives of the American people.
