Donald Trump has extensive plans for another government. Here is what he has suggested

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump has promised sweeping action in another administration.

The former president and now president-elect often skimmed the details, but through more than a year of policy statements and written statements outlined a broad agenda that blends traditional conservative approaches to taxes, regulation and cultural issues with a more populist stance on trade and a shift in the United States’ international role.

Trump’s agenda would also scale back the federal government’s civil rights efforts and expand the president’s powers.

A look at what Trump has proposed:

Immigration

“Build the wall!” from his 2016 campaign has gone on to create “the largest mass deportation program in history.” Trump has called for using the National Guard and strengthening domestic police forces in the effort. Still, Trump has been sparse on details about what the program would look like and how he would ensure it only targeted people in the United States illegally. He has pitched for “ideological screening” of potential entrants, ending birthright citizenship (which would almost certainly require a constitutional amendment) and said he would reinstate first-time policies such as “Remain in Mexico” that restrict migrants in public on health grounds and severely to limit or ban participants from certain Muslim-majority nations. Overall, the approach will not just crack down on illegal migration, but limit immigration in general.

Abortion

Trump downplayed abortion as a secondary priority, even as he took credit for the Supreme Court ending a woman’s federal right to end a pregnancy and returning abortion regulation to state governments. At Trump’s insistence, for the first time in decades, the GOP platform did not call for a national ban on abortion. Trump maintains that overturning Roe v. Wade is enough at the federal level.

Still, Trump has not explicitly said he would veto national abortion restrictions if they reached his desk. And in an example of how the conservative movement can continue with or without Trump, anti-abortion activists note that the GOP platform still claims that a fetus must have due process protections under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The constitutional argument is a road map for conservatives to seek a national abortion ban through federal courts.

Taxes

Trump’s tax policy leans largely against corporations and wealthier Americans. This is largely due to his promise to extend his tax overhaul in 2017 with a few notable changes that include lowering the corporate tax rate to 15% from the current 21%. It also involves rolling back Democratic President Joe Biden’s income tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans and eliminating Inflation Reduction Act taxes that fund energy measures aimed at fighting climate change.

Despite these policies, Trump has placed more emphasis on new proposals aimed at working and middle-class Americans: exempting earned tips, Social Security wages and overtime pay from income taxes. Notably, however, his tipping proposal, depending on how Congress might write it, could provide a backdoor tax break to top earners by allowing them to reclassify some of their pay as tips—a prospect that, at its most extreme, could see hedge fund managers or top lawyers benefit from a policy that Trump is framing as being designed for restaurant servers, bartenders and other service workers.

Tariffs and trading

Trump’s position on international trade is to distrust world markets as harmful to American interests. He proposes tariffs of 10% to 20% on foreign goods – and has mentioned even higher percentages in some speeches. He promises to reinstate an August 2020 executive order requiring the Food and Drug Administration to buy only “essential” drugs from US companies. He vows to block the purchase of “any vital infrastructure” in the United States by Chinese buyers.

DEI, LGBTQ and civil rights

Trump has called for rolling back society’s emphasis on diversity and for legal protections for LGBTQ citizens. Trump has called for ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs in state institutions, using federal funding as leverage.

On transgender rights, Trump generally promises to end “boys in girls’ sports,” a practice he insists, without evidence, is widespread. But his policies go far beyond the standard cheer lines from his rally speeches. Among other ideas, Trump would roll back the Biden administration’s policy of extending Title IX civil rights protections to transgender students, and he would ask Congress to require that only two genders can be recognized at birth.

Regulation, Federal Bureaucracy, and Presidential Power

The president-elect is seeking to reduce the role of federal bureaucrats and regulations across economic sectors. Trump is hitting all regulatory cuts like an economic magic wand. He promises steep drops in US household utility bills by removing barriers to fossil fuel production, including opening up all federal lands to exploration – even though US energy production is already at record highs. Trump promises to unleash housing construction by cutting regulations – even though most building regulations come from state and local governments. He also says he would end “frivolous lawsuits by environmental extremists.”

The approach would in many ways strengthen the influence of the executive branch. That power would come more directly from the White House.

He would make it easier to fire federal workers by classifying thousands of them as outside public service protections. It could weaken the government’s power to enforce statutes and regulations by reducing the number of employees who engage in work and potentially impose a chilling effect on those who remain.

Trump also claims that presidents have exclusive power to control federal spending, even after Congress appropriates money. Trump argues that lawmakers’ budget actions “set a cap” on spending, but not a floor — meaning the president’s constitutional duty to “faithfully execute the laws” includes discretion over whether to spend the money. This interpretation could set off a court battle with Congress.

As a candidate, he also proposed that the Federal Reserve, an independent entity that sets interest rates, should be subject to more presidential power. Although he did not provide details, such a move would represent a significant change to how the US economic and monetary systems work.

Education

The federal Department of Education would be targeted for elimination in another Trump administration. That doesn’t mean Trump wants Washington out of classrooms. He still proposes, among other maneuvers, to use federal funding as leverage to pressure K-12 school systems to abolish tenure and adopt merit pay for teachers and to scrap diversity programs at all levels of education. He calls for pulling federal funding “for any school or program that pushes Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”

In higher education, Trump is proposing to take over accreditation processes for colleges, a move he describes as his “secret weapon” against the “Marxist lunatics and lunatics” who he says control higher education. Taking aim at higher education endowments, Trump says he will collect “billions and billions of dollars” from schools by “taxing, fining and suing exorbitant private college grants” at schools that don’t comply with his edicts. It would almost certainly end in protracted legal battles.

As in other policy areas, Trump actually proposes not to limit federal power in higher education, but to strengthen it. He calls for redirecting the confiscated scholarship money to an online “American Academy” that offers college credentials to all Americans without tuition fees. “It will be strictly non-political and there will be no vigilantism or jihadism allowed — none of that will be allowed,” Trump said on November 1, 2023.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

Trump insists he would protect Social Security and Medicare, popular programs aimed at older Americans and among the biggest chunks of the federal spending pie each year. There are questions about how his proposal not to tax tips and overtime pay might affect Social Security and Medicare. If such plans eventually involved only income taxes, entitlement programs would not be affected. But exempting those wages from payroll taxes would reduce the funding stream for Social Security and Medicare spending. Trump has spoken little about Medicaid, but his first administration generally failed to approve state requests for waivers from various federal rules, and it approved broad work requirements for state-level recipients.

Affordable Care Act and Health Care

As he has since 2015, Trump is calling for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and its subsidized health insurance marketplaces. But he still hasn’t proposed a replacement: In a debate in September, he insisted he had “the concept of a plan.” In the final stages of the campaign, Trump played up his alliance with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines and of pesticides used in American agriculture. Trump repeatedly said he would put Kennedy in charge of “making America healthy again.”

Climate and energy

Trump, falsely claiming climate change is a “hoax,” blasts Biden-era clean energy spending designed to reduce America’s dependence on fossil fuels. He proposes an energy policy – ​​and spending on transport infrastructure – rooted in fossil fuels: roads, bridges and vehicles with internal combustion engines. “Stay, baby, stay!” was a regular chant at Trump rallies. Trump says he is not against electric vehicles, but promises to stop all Biden incentives to promote the development of the electric market. Trump also promises to roll back Biden-era fuel efficiency standards.

Workers’ rights

Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance framed their ticket to favor American workers. But Trump may make it harder for workers to organize. In discussing auto workers, Trump focused almost exclusively on Biden’s push for electric vehicles. When he did mention unions, it was often to lump “the union bosses and CEOs” together as complicit in “this disastrous EV scheme.” In a statement on October 23, 2023, Trump said of the United Auto Workers, “I’m telling you, you’re not going to pay these dues.”

National Defense and America’s Role in the World

Trump’s rhetoric and policy approach in world affairs is more isolationist diplomatically, non-interventionist militarily, and protectionist economically than the United States has been since World War II. But the details are more complicated. He promises expansion of the military, promises to protect Pentagon spending from austerity efforts and proposes a new missile defense shield – an old idea from the Reagan era during the Cold War. Trump insists he can end Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war without explaining how. Trump sums up his approach through another Reagan phrase: “peace through strength.” But he remains critical of NATO and the top American military. “I don’t consider them leaders,” Trump said of Pentagon officials that Americans “watch on TV.” He repeatedly praised authoritarians such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.