While the White House has pulled out all the stops – eager to tout its accomplishments – in hyping the 100-day marker of Donald Trump’s presidency, which falls on Saturday, the president has characteristically
declared it an “artificial barrier” and a ridiculous standard with little meaning in the scheme of things. Not so fast!
Ever since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, during which 15 major pieces of legislation were passed by Congress in his first 100 days – designed to shore up the broken-down financial system and infrastructure, curtail unemployment, provide relief for the urban needy and rural farmers, all while putting the country back on the path to growth and prosperity by minimising the lingering effects of the Great Depression – successive presidents have been measured against this unrealistic benchmark.
The cupboard is mostly bare for Trump domestically. There has been no major legislative achievement to his credit, given an ideologically divided Republican congressional majority and notwithstanding a raft of executive orders, among which torpedoing the
Trans-Pacific Partnership was the most salient for Asia.
Foreign policy has been more of a mixed bag for the “America first” president, with some notable successes in reassuring allies and working with China.
Thus, in interacting with foreign leaders at the White House and at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida,
Trump has demonstrated an intuitive grasp of statesmanship, his signature “art of the deal” persona on display. While British leader Theresa May may have been
the first to deplane and Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe’s visit the most dramatic – featuring an impromptu, round-table
terrace huddle that was triggered by a new North Korean intermediate-range missile launch, interrupting a tranquil golfing weekend – the
summit with Chinese President
Xi Jinping (
習近平 ) was undoubtedly the most consequential, not least owing to the serendipitous demonstration of US resolve to act when an internationally recognised norm has been crossed, that is,
retaliation for the use of chemical weapons against civilians by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Still, this first Sino-American summit in the Florida sunshine was neither overshadowed by the Syrian strike nor undercut by Trump’s signature unpredictability. Although shorter in duration than Abe’s golf weekend, the human bonding was unmistakable from the two leaders’ body language, amiably ambling and conversing on Mar-a-Lago’s front lawn, seemingly without a care in the world.
