Summary: President Trump’s Second Year

President Trump’s second year in office is now in the history books.

Forget all the hopeful 4D Chess arguments. Forget all the Q posts. Forget all the podcasts you listened to over the course of the past year. This is what was actually accomplished:

OD Timeline: Trump’s Second Year (Part I)

OD Timeline: Trump’s Second Year (Part II)

OD Timeline: Trump’s Second Year (Part III)

OD Timeline: Trump’s Second Year (Part IV)

Here’s a brief summary of our key findings:

– Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court and a bunch of other judges were confirmed to the lower federal courts.

– Islamic terrorism ebbed after the destruction of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

– President Trump imposed some tariffs on steel and aluminum, solar panels and washing machines. He imposed a 25% tariff on 800 categories of Chinese goods.

– The economy performed well and the job market improved. It remains to be seen, however, if this was sacrificing a pile up of long term debt for a short term jolt to economic growth.

– Progress was made toward peace with North Korea. An argument can be made that this was due more to President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, but regardless it is worth celebrating.

– The tax cuts were passed last December.

– A sex trafficking bill was passed which shutdown Backpage.com.

– A banking deregulation bill was passed which weakened Dodd-Frank.

– The US embassy in Israel was moved to Jerusalem.

– The US withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal.

– Shlomo Rubashkin, Scooter Libby and the early 20th century negro boxer Jack Johnson were pardoned.

– Congress spent $700 billion on the military in 2018 and $717 billion in 2019.

– The Omnibus bill was passed which banned President Trump from building the border wall with his own prototypes.

– Congress passed a 2 year budget deal.

– The Trump administration allowed the states to impose work requirements for Medicaid.

– New sanctions were imposed on Iran, Russia and Venezuela.

– USMCA was negotiated and is pending approval.

– The US launched airstrikes against the Assad government in Syria. There were numerous lower profile clashes between the US military and Syrian government troops.

– The trends we identified around this time last year – leftwing violence, social media censorship, a conservative legislative agenda and the Alt-Right losing confidence in Trump – all accelerated. I will be addressing each of these trends in their own articles to update our analysis.

If I missed anything significant, please let me know in the comments.