Trump’s First Year Has Been Outstanding

The writer is in Australia.

It’s been just over a year since President Trump capped off the most remarkable comeback in US political history (okay, we can argue about Andrew Jackson) to win a non-consecutive second term as President. He was only the second man ever to do that. Now the US Constitution requires the election winner to wait over two months before taking power in the new year. That meant lots of time for the Biden autopen to issue pardons, spray money everywhere and allow myriad Third World people to keep pouring into the US. So any assessment around now is not of Trump’s first year of his second term, but rather more like a 10-month gauging or evaluation. But hey, for all those lovers of the metric system, let’s go ahead now and see how The Donald is doing.

For those with Trump Derangement System, you’ll be a tad disappointed to read that Trump has yet to start World War III or burn down the Capitol Building. In fact, his foreign policy accomplishments look a lot more substantial than Obama’s – the man who was given a Nobel Peace Prize for a combination of his skin pigmentation, being a Leftie and winning the election. Trump is deluding himself if he thinks the Norwegians will award him a Nobel Peace Prize for anything. But The Don has bombed Iran’s nuclear ambitions back by four or five years. He’s helped settle six or seven international disputes. He got the Muslim world behind the Gaza deal (which at least got the Israeli hostages home and further isolated Hamas). He’s signed myriad trade deals, not least with the EU, Japan and Australia. Sure, he has employed the threat (and use) of tariffs liberally and aggressively. But a consequence of that is that since taking office this past January there have been trillions of dollars of inward investments into the US.

What else? Elon Musk’s DOGE has ferreted out hundreds of millions of dollars of bogus overseas spending and turned off that tap. Trump has also ended all funding to the Public Broadcasting System (think the BBC or Australia’s ABC). He has torn up any and all commitments to Net Zero and opened the regulatory gates to supercharge fossil fuel exploration. He’s pulled out of not just the Net Zero Paris Agreement, but also the UN Human Rights Council, the Hamas-captured UNRWA and UNESCO. Oh, and let’s not forget his leaving the WHO, a lockdown cheerleading body that disgraced itself during Covid.

My favourite accomplishment, though, the one I think most important to the US, is that in under three months Trump closed the porous US southern border and since then has been finding and deporting illegal aliens at a high rate. (If you count those self-deporting, guesses run at about 2.5 million so far, or more.) And he and his administration are not being cowed by the Left-wing legacy media, Hollywood and the Democrats into just deporting those who have committed crimes once in the US. As he rightly says, coming into the US illegally is itself a crime. His administration will therefore seek to find you and deport you, no other crimes necessary. I think it is now plain that the Biden administration had, in large part, willingly opened the border. It then counted illegals in the 10-yearly census that determines which states get how many Congressional seats, a huge bonus to the Democrats gaining them an estimated dozen or more House seats.

You see, as Mr Abbott and Mr Trump have shown, stopping illegal immigration (and the legal type for that matter) is solely and completely a matter of will and being determined to do so. The UK Tories were never serious about it. They just repeatedly lied to their core voters. Hence the British polls now show the world’s oldest political party to be in fourth place. Some polls suggest an election today would see the Conservatives winning fewer than 20 seats. You reap what you sow. And that’s what is so baffling about Australia’s Liberal Party’s incompetence in not making a massive cut in immigration its headline policy, along with a clear, Abbott-like commitment to leaving Net Zero and Paris. It is to Peter Dutton’s eternal shame that he lacked the courage to stand up to his woeful advisors and the wets in the partyroom in order to run hard on these two issues. Had he, I think he’d today be the PM.

But back to Towering Trump. Under Biden inflation hit 9%. Right now it’s 2.7% in the US (and 3.2% here in Oz). There is 3% GDP growth (barely over half of that here). Stocks are at a record high. More importantly, real wages (including for the lowest paid) are increasing (and by more than for the rich), something that hasn’t happened going back decades (except in the first Trump term). Turns out that locals will do any jobs. You just have to pay them. And let us not forget that Trump is actively fighting the culture wars. Because he rightly recognises that everything – everything – is downstream of culture. This Trump administration has gone all-in against the transgender lobby and against DEI, an affirmative action worldview that sees the world in terms of groups, not individuals, and then sidelines the notion of merit. DEI is out in the US military. Out in the public service. Team Trump is fighting hard to get it out in the universities (though, as someone who knows about universities, it may be too late there because there are already vanishingly few conservatives left in academia).

Of course the scorecard is not all positive. For instance, Trump thought he could get Putin to cut a deal. Wrong! But I still trust him more than anyone not to drag the West into a war with Russia. (Those who want one are free to volunteer. Remember, after World War II the Allies basically gave away eastern Europe to Stalin rather than fight a new world war. And that was before Russia had nuclear weapons.) That just leaves all the lawfare that was employed against Trump. So far his administration has been disappointing in failing to charge any of the culprits. Because I don’t think there’s any doubt that what happened under Biden was far worse than Watergate. (For instance, Nixon tapped the phone of one Democrat. The Biden attempt to get Trump involved tapping dozens of Republican Senators’ phones.)

Last word. Where is the US right now? It’s as polarised as at any time since the Civil War. Democrat states will vote Democrat even where the candidate muses about murdering his opponent’s children, as happened last week in the Virginia Attorney-General race. Hatred of Trump, derangement if you will, justifies anything apparently. Here’s the thing to watch. Trump outpolls the Republican brand. He did far better in 2024 in New Jersey and Virginia than the Republicans did last week. There are voters who love him but not the Republican brand. So will this base that loves Trump turnout in next year’s midterms when The Don is not on the ballot? I think he’s going to ask them to and that they will, just enough, to hold the House. But it’s far from certain.

James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University. This article was first published in Spectator Australia.