The 15 reasons that make the Trump presidency a successful presidency
Sorry for Giuliano Ferrara, who on 9 January in Il Foglio warned readers: "Don't tell me that Trump has also done good things". Because Trump has pretty much only done good things. A historian of the future, provided that history is not a subject monopolized by progressives, will have to recognize that Donald J. Trump's was one of the most successful administrations in recent US history and certainly the best in the first two decades of the 21st century. We already say it today, hoping to be ahead of the times.
It was good administration for at least fifteen valid reasons, which are by no means few. First of all for the economic miracle it helped launch with its tax reform. When the Gallup Institute asked Americans the famous question, "Are you better today or 4 years ago?" 56 percent said they were better today. And it's not just economic well-being. Obama was the first to get the US out of the shallows of the Great Recession of 2008, but the "new normal" (a typical phrase used by the left to justify its failures) was considered a scenario of asphyxiated growth, of 1 or 2 percent per year. With Trump, who drastically cut taxes and removed the equivalent of $ 250 billion in government spending through the elimination of regulations, US GDP has started growing again by more than 3 percent annually. No such economic miracle has been seen since the Reagan days. A miracle that, in practice, also translated into a period of full employment, also to the advantage of the Hispanic and African-American minorities who had never known such high employment rates in their history (and this explains why they voted for a Republican candidate with percentages never seen before).
In foreign policy there are countless successes, unfortunately never recognized either by the media or by international institutions. Although the Republican president was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, he successfully brokered four Middle East peace agreements. Just to give an idea of the measure of success: from 1979 to 1994, there were just two peace agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors, with Egypt and with Jordan. During the Trump administration alone, agreements were signed for the normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and: United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, Morocco. The first two were small states, but very close to Saudi Arabia. They can be a prerequisite for a truly historic agreement between the capital of the Muslim world and the Jewish state. Sudan, a still unstable reality, is however the state where the Arab League had sworn eternal war on Israel. A peace with Sudan can also be underestimated by the media in the West, but it has a very strong symbolic value.
Even more important (and overlooked) is the agreement signed between Serbia and Kosovo. In 21 years, the EU has failed in the task. The president snubbed by the EU because he is considered anti-diplomatic, has instead managed to make economic peace in Belgrade and Pristina. Precisely by avoiding a purely political speech and without entering into an endless discussion for a formal recognition of the new state, the Trump administration has at least managed to get the parties to sign an economic agreement, including the construction of common infrastructure. And it is the premise for peace. Also in this case, American diplomacy also managed to bring home another agreement in favor of Israel, which was recognized by Kosovo, a country with a Muslim majority in which unfortunately Islamic armed fundamentalism has taken root (just look at the number of ISIS volunteers in relation to its small population). So this is a recognition that is far from obvious, a harbinger of important consequences also in the internal development of Kosovo, its removal from the radical Islamic galaxy.
These successes, and we come to the fourth valid reason to regret the Trump administration, appear even more striking when we consider that they were preceded by the relocation of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This decision, taken for more than twenty years by Congress, had never been implemented by the Republican predecessors, for fear that a Middle Eastern "Armageddon" would break out. Trump instead had the courage to recognize reality for what it is: Jerusalem is objectively the seat of all the institutions of Israel, it is its capital and not recognizing it is a total or partial disavowal of the legitimacy of the Jewish state. Well: even after moving the embassy to Jerusalem, no "Armageddon" has broken out. Indeed, new peace agreements have been reached. This means that the president has made the right calculation of risks and rewards, with great foresight.
The fifth valid reason for considering the Trump administration as a good presidency may make many turn up their noses, but it must be remembered: the withdrawal of the United States from UNESCO. A decision that is closely linked to the Middle East question and on which the United States has been silent for too long: UNESCO considers places sacred to Judaism and Christianity as exclusively Islamic sites. The tomb of the patriarchs of Hebron has been designated by UNESCO as a "Palestinian World Heritage Site". Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who are buried there, are fathers of the Palestinian state, according to the UN agency. According to UNESCO, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is also exclusively Palestinian and Islamic, which in the official UN wording is only "esplanade of the Al Aqsa mosque", therefore only its Muslim past is recognized, not the biblical one, not the second Temple where Jesus also preached. For the US, staying in Unesco and continuing to fund it was only a self-destructive choice, only an anti-diplomat like Trump could put an end to the misunderstanding.
Worse still, another UN agency, the World Health Organization, slavishly followed the indications and information provided by the Beijing regime on the new pandemic that was spreading from Wuhan. If China's silences are objectively Beijing's worst fault towards the rest of the world, the WHO is to be considered at least complicit in having endorsed that silence. Like the decision to declare, again on January 14, that the new disease is not transmitted between humans. Trump, having received the colossal damage, has decided to cut off funding to the WHO, especially considering that the US contributes financially to its maintenance to a much greater extent than China.
The US, with Trump, has also withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, getting insults from governments around the world. So much so that the first measure announced by Biden, even before taking office in the White House, is to bring the US back to Paris. But the Paris Accords are a vehicle for degrowth, not growth. Far from stimulating an evolution of green technologies, imposing quotas for the limits of greenhouse gas emissions, suggesting the introduction of new taxes and prescribing restrictive regulations, they encourage the revised and corrected re-edition of the old economic planning.
The United States, incidentally, right under the Trump administration, has shown that it does not need bound international agreements like those signed in Paris. Even without suffering economic recessions or asphyxiated growths, the US has significantly reduced CO2 emissions over the last four years, even net of the forced stop caused by the pandemic.
Trump has been accused by most international observers of having turned his back on the free world, of being friends with dictators and, along the lines of Russiagate (which ended up in nothing), of being a Putin man. But: he was the president most loved by the Poles, especially after he made the apology for their struggle for freedom at the foot of the monument of the Warsaw Uprising. A "Putin man" would not even have touched Warsaw. He restored the special relationship with the United Kingdom, which had been cracked by Obama for factional reasons. In a difficult transition period following the Brexit vote, Trump's US has never abandoned its traditional ally. In international causes, Trump has supported with concrete actions (and not just words) the democrats of Venezuela harshly repressed by Maduro, the leader of the governments that have disowned Maduro's dictatorship and recognized Juan Guaidó's president. He was also one of the few Western leaders, along with Boris Johnson, to defend Hong Kong's autonomy, putting pressure on China and imposing new sanctions. One of Trump's workhorses, in all international fora, was the defense of freedom of religion, the first of freedoms, the origin of all others. And it was a serious and concrete defense, as demonstrated by the sanctions on Turkey to obtain the release of an unjustly imprisoned Protestant pastor and the reports on the continuing persecutions in China, even against Muslims (something about which Muslim countries themselves, hypocritically, are silent ).
All Republican presidents are pro-life , all have approved the Mexico City Policy (do not fund the promotion of abortion abroad). But Trump has also added a personal militancy in defense of the life of the unborn child, the first US president to personally participate in the March for Life . And he encouraged states to introduce increasingly active laws in defense of the fetus.
Even in times of pandemics, when the whole world was locking up citizens and forcing businesses to lock out, Trump did everything in his power to reopen as soon as possible. And it did not censor the states that have decided to free their citizens, trusting their responsibility. This served to reduce the period of crisis to a minimum: by September, unemployment levels, which had shot up to 18 percent in April, had fallen to percentages close to the pre-crisis level, the average 6 percent and even lower in some states. Accused of "denial" by the press of the whole free world, however, he managed to be the first to introduce the vaccine all over the world, favoring a record spread with a carefully planned operation. Currently, after Israel and the United Kingdom, the US is first in the world for the percentage of the population already vaccinated.
Last but not least, he openly challenged all the clichés of political correctness , including the defense of statues and monuments from the American past. This is no small thing: he was the last president who opposed a real cultural revolution (in the Maoist sense) that aims to erase the culture of the West's past. It could be remembered as our last cultural bulwark, hoping that sooner or later a worthy successor will emerge on the political scene.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/i-15-motivi-che-fanno-della-presidenza-trump-una-presidenza-di-successo/ on Wed, 20 Jan 2021 05:02:00 +0000.