President Donald Trump asked supporters at his Orlando, Florida 2020 campaign kickoff rally last month whether he should retain his “Make America Great Again” slogan or go with a new one: “Keep America Great.”
A better one might be “Promises Made, Promises Kept.” Trump listed a number of specific commitments during his 2016 campaign in what he called his “Contract With The American Voter.”
The Washington Post reported that despite a defiant Congress, those promises Trump fulfilled during his first 2-and-a-half years in office are:
- Withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership
- Lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward
- Impose a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government
- Begin the process of correcting the leftward tilt of the federal court system — especially the Ninth Judicial Circuit and the Supreme Court
- Expand vocational and technical education
- Direct the secretary of commerce and U.S. trade representative to use every tool under American and international law to end foreign trading abuses immediately
- Announce the U.S. intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205
- Increase resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars
- Allow trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas to be brought back at a 10 percent tax rate
- Require that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated
- Lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas, and clean coal
- Establish tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free
- Expand military investment
And through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the Trump administration increased net income of employees across the board, reduced unemployment rates for minorities at the lowest levels ever recorded, and brought back jobs from overseas — a feat that Trump’s predecessor mockingly claimed would require a “magic wand.”
Although the list is impressive, there was one promise that so far has eluded him. It’s a vow that served as the centerpiece of his 2016 campaign announcement: to “Fund the construction of a wall on our southern border.”
But that promise has now been kept — though not in the manner in which it was envisioned. Trump got his wall — and Mexico is paying for it.
And the wall even has a name. It’s called the Estados Unidos Mexicanos — United Mexican States.
When Congress ignored the president’s repeated requests to fund a “big, beautiful wall” at the southern border, he turned to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Trump made the U.S.’s problem Mexico’s problem, and asked for Mexico’s help.
And to place it all the more into center-stage focus, Trump hung the promise of imposing crippling blanket tariffs on Mexican-made goods over the Mexican leader’s head if he didn’t give what Trump was asking for.
And we’re now seeing real fruits of that agreement.
Mexico deported 21,912 illegal immigrants to their country of origin during the month of June, according to Mexico News Today. In addition, Mexico detained an average of more than 1,000 immigrants per day during the first 42 days of the U.S.-Mexican agreement.
“The daily detention rate is 88% higher than that recorded between January and May when there was an average of 547 arrests per day,” the publication reported.
The Washington Post observed that the agreement wasn’t without its problems, however — especially for the Mexican president. It “prompted many Mexican public intellectuals to deride López Obrador as a puppet of the U.S. president.”
Newsmax TV host John Cardillo was ecstatic, and reported the news to his Twitter followers Tuesday.
“Mexico stopped 43,000 undocumented migrants in 42 days reducing illegal US border crossings by 36 percent, he observed. Cardillo concluded, “Well look at that; sanctions work.”
Or more specifically, the threat of sanctions worked.
Is it as effective as an imposing, 30-foot tall physical barrier? Probably not, but it eases the crisis until Congress finally commits to funding a wall. And it’s arguably another case of a promise made, a promise kept — at least by its results, if not by its methodology.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to BizPac Review and Liberty Unyielding. He’s also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter, who can often be found honing his skills at the range. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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