Wednesday was momentous for President Donald J. Trump. House Democrats voted, with zero Republican support, to send the Senate articles of impeachment against Trump. He and Vice Premier Liu He signed a curtain-raising trade pact between America and China. Financial markets rejoiced, as the Dow rocketed through the 29,000 mark and closed at a record-breaking 29,030.
As January 20 concludes the president’s third year in office, he enjoys an enviable record of economic, domestic, and foreign-policy hits:
• Since Election Day 2016, the S&P 500 is up 54 percent. The Dow has climbed 58 percent. The NASDAQ has soared 78 percent.
• Unemployment is at 3.5 percent, the lowest since 1969. Adult-female unemployment is 3.2 percent, approximating levels seen under President Eisenhower. Joblessness for blacks and Hispanics is at or near record lows.
• Year-on-year median wages for November were up 3.6 percent. Those too-often left behind moved more swiftly ahead: manufacturing workers (up 4.0 percent), non-whites (4.3 percent higher), and the bottom 25 percent (4.5 percent richer).
• Median household income is up $5,070 or 8.3 percent.
These triumphs of Trumponomics spring from the president’s other domestic victories:
• The $1.5 trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Act features individual and family tax relief, a business-friendly 21 percent corporate tax rate, and the consequent repatriation of $1 trillion in business profits previously stranded abroad, awaiting lower taxes.
• Trump has junked eight federal rules for every new one concocted.
• ObamaCare’s individual-mandate tax is dead. Health Savings Accounts have expanded. Price transparency soon will let patients compare costs as they do everywhere else.
• Veterans now enjoy wider, faster medical choices, and some 8,000 VA slackers have been fired.
• Free speech at colleges has been protected. Schools that promote anti-Semitism will pay dearly for promoting Jew hatred. And Title IX’s Obama-era assault on campus due process has been scrapped.
• The GOP Senate has confirmed 187 of Trump’s federal-bench nominees, including two Supreme Court justices.
• Trump has signed numerous pro-life measures, partially defunded Planned Parenthood, shielded religious liberty, and stopped Obama’s morally repugnant War on the Little Sisters of the Poor.
• Trump’s reforms have made America energy independent and a net oil exporter for the first time since 1973.
• The Senate adopted the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement on Thursday, one day after Trump signed the U.S.-China deal. He has secured commercial compacts with Japan and South Korea.
• America has abandoned the foolish and costly Paris Global-Warming pact and ditched Obama’s tragicomic Iran-Nuclear deal. Iran’s chief terrorist leader, Qasem Soleimani, breathes no more.
• Trump has modernized America’s military and boosted its morale sky-high. He has persuaded NATO allies to boost collective-defense by $130 billion.
• President Trump declared the Golan Heights part of Israel, recognized Jerusalem as its capital, and moved America’s embassy there.
• Once the size of two New Jerseys, ISIS’ territorial caliphate is now erased. Chased by U.S. GIs and hounded by Conan, an intrepid canine soldier, ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi blew himself to bits.
Conservatives should cheer perhaps 90 percent of what President Trump has achieved while enduring 90 MPH headwinds — courtesy of the Left and the hate-Trump media. Spending has climbed too high and too quickly for most Righties. (In part, Trump has paid Democrats’ ransom for greenlighting vital defense outlays: higher domestic expenditures.) Tariffs are taxes on foreign goods that Americans want. They should be tossed. That said, if this water torture stopped China from swiping American innovations and breaking its agreements, then it’s tough to spurn success.
With few other exceptions, nearly all of what President Trump has done is what conservatives would expect of a GOP president. Many Right-wing dreams have come true. (D.C. school vouchers reauthorized! Net Neutrality incinerated!)
This surely appalls the Left. But even Trump’s fiercest critics — who still insist that he is “unfit to be president” — must admit that he has squeezed at least two terms’ full of wins into just under three years as president of the United States.
Bucknell University’s Michael Malarkey contributed research to this opinion piece.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor, a contributing editor with National Review Online, and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research. Read more opinions from Deroy Murdock — Click Here Now.