Trump immediately started a trade war that actually increased the trade deficit. By the end of 2018, we had lost almost 2,000 American manufacturing plants and about 300,000 jobs as businesses closed or moved overseas. American farmers went bankrupt as Russia supplanted the US as the chief importer of soy into China. The tariffs increased the cost of vital manufacturing components which led to heightened inflation. A carryover effect of that has been that the domestic manufacturers that didn’t close reduced their inventory of such components in hopes that the tariffs would end and their costs would decrease, and this is a contributing factor to the product shortages we have now. That’s one policy.
In the 26 months between Trump’s tax bill and the economy’s peak before the pandemic, economic growth slowed by about two-thirds. Between Obama’s recovery act and the tax bill, the Dow grew at an average of 16.2% annually. After the tax bill that dropped to 5.8%. Before the tax bill, unemployment was dropping by about .75% annually. After the tax bill, about .25% annually. In 2019, the Fed lowered interest rates for the first time since Bush was President to combat the slowing economy, and Trump himself complained that they didn’t commit to do more to prevent a recession. And the Trump recession officially began in February 2020 while Trump was still pretending the pandemic was a Democratic hoax. That’s two.
Starting in 2019, Trump began undermining our operations in Afghanistan. That began with an invitation to the Taliban to a private meeting at Camp David on the anniversary of 9/11. That meeting was changed after outrage from both sides of the aisle. Nevertheless, Trump insisted on meeting with Taliban leaders outside the presence of the legitimate Afghan government, and negotiated with the Taliban rather than Afghan leaders about the future of the country after the American withdrawal. Trump promised and secured the release of 5,000 Taliban terrorists being held prisoner in Afghanistan including more than 150 that had been sentenced to death, 44 who were known to be involved in high profile attacks against US forces, and the mastermind of the deadliest attack of the entire occupation. Then he committed to a withdrawal date about 100 days after he knew he’d be out of office. A few days after he was determined to have lost his re-election bid, he announced that before leaving office he would reduce our troop presence to its lowest of the entire occupation. This drew so much criticism from all sides that Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which in part barred the removal of any troops from Afghanistan prior to Inauguration Day. Trump vetoed this bill, and his veto was easily overridden even as his own party controlled the Senate at the time. Then five days before leaving office, he illegally withdrew the troops anyway in knowing violation of the law. That’s number three.
Of course we can’t skip the pandemic. The Obama administration left a robust pandemic response team in place, but all accounts are that Trump was completely disinterested in understanding the threat posed by a potential viral outbreak, and instead immediately started dismantling the team. In 2017, Trump's budget request called for massive cuts in spending on scientific research, medical research, and disease prevention, cutting $1.2 billion from the CDC, $82 million from the center that works on vaccine-preventable and respiratory diseases, making a 17% cut to CDC’s global health programs that monitor and respond to disease outbreaks around the world, and cutting 10% from the CDC’s office of public health preparedness and response. Former CDC director Tom Frieden described the administration's CDC request as “unsafe at any level of enactment. Would increase illness, death, risks to Americans, and health care costs.” In 2018, Trump fired homeland security adviser on the NSC Tom Bossert, whose job included coordinating the response to global pandemics. Bossert was not replaced. That same year, his biodefense preparedness adviser warned that a flu pandemic was the country’s number one health security threat, and the U.S. was not prepared. Rear Adm. Tim Ziemer, the NSC's senior director for global health security and biodefense, left the council and was not replaced. Luciana Borio resigned as the NSC's director for medical and biodefense preparedness policy and was not replaced. By 2019, an independent study reported that the US was not prepared for a pandemic. Biden responded to the report by criticizing the Trump administration’s dismantling of the pandemic response team. Again, this is months before Covid-19 was even discovered. Trump then spent 23 of the first 69 days of 2020 on vacation, repeatedly downplaying the pandemic before declaring it a national crisis on day 70. Despite that, he refused to develop a national strategy to slow the spread, instead going on the offensive against state and local officials working to protect their communities. As a result, by the end of 2020, hundreds of thousands of businesses had permanently closed, 75% of schools were closed, and unemployment was over 6%. That’s number four.
Trump was by far the most wasteful President in modern history. He grew the deficit every year he was in office—a feat not even GW Bush accomplished. He wasted billions on an idiotic border wall (and shut down the government for the longest time in history because his own party wouldn’t fund it). He wasted millions if not billions rebranding part of the Air Force to look like Star Trek cosplayers. When he should have been investing in making the country safe for commerce during the pandemic, instead he borrowed trillions to prop up the stock market and to pay people to not work. He would become the first President in history to maintain a debt to GDP ratio over 100% for his entire term, added more to the national debt in four years than Bush 41 and Bush 43 added in their twelve years combined, and added more in one year than Reagan added in two full terms. That’s number five.
Trump consistently undermined our national security by siding with hostile dictators against our own intelligence agencies, by holding private meetings with Putin, by tweeting classified photos, by ordering the assassination of an Iranian general in violation of international treaties, by sabotaging our operations in Afghanistan (as described previously) and by diverting money from national defense to fund his idiotic wall. That’s number six.
Does attempting to subvert our elections count as a “policy” or is that just a crime? What about spending a century of Presidential salaries on golf trips? How about appointing racists, criminals, unqualified campaign donors and his own children to positions in his administration? How about pathologically lying every time he opened his mouth? Are any of those “policies”? Because those were all harmful to our democracy. And if you notice, I didn’t even need to bring up the mean tweets.
So in short, Trump was a complete disaster for the US in every way imaginable. The best way for America’s enemies to try to hurt the country would have been to help Trump gain power. And obviously Putin was smart enough to realize that early on. It’s too bad that so many Republicans still haven’t figured it out themselves.