Donald Trump’s First-Week Actions Are Mostly Symbolic

President Donald Trump’s first week in office has looked like a whirl of perpetual action, driven by a bundle of executive orders and memorandums imprinted with his definitive signature and promoted by his singular megaphone.

But while the president’s actions were numerous – a dozen since his inauguration Jan. 20 – experts say much of what Trump produced was symbolic, and will take time and money to foster substantive change.

Trump has moved on health care, energy, trade and immigration, largely reversing the policy postures taken by President Barack Obama’s administration. Images beamed out of the Oval Office of Trump at his desk – pen in hand, senior staff dutifully behind him – as he held up large sheafs of paper to demonstrate to the world the magnitude of the rapid-fire strokes.

The measures clearly identified his priorities and sent a signal to the country about the drastic shifts he’s pursuing. But taken together, these actions were more about planting a flag for his supporters to celebrate and for his adversaries to see.

The truth is, like most things in Washington, sweeping change usually moves at the speed of a snail.

Here’s an evaluation of why Trump’s four most seemingly significant moves will take time and legislative muscle to bear fruit.

Obamacare

Trump’s order taking aim at the Affordable Care Act was his first, squeezed between last Friday’s inaugural parade that ran into a winter dusk and the evening balls where he danced to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”

But even the title of the order – “MINIMIZING THE ECONOMIC BURDEN OF THE PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT PENDING REPEAL” – spoke to its limits. The new president can’t crush Obamacare with one simple swoop of a pen.

“It’s basically an announcement of an intention, and it is far more symbolic than it is likely to have policy effects,” Sam Halabi, an associate professor of law at the University of Missouri, told a medical trade outlet.

In the order, Trump empowered his incoming secretary of health and human services to ease the fiscal burden of the law on states by granting exemptions to portions of it, like the controversial individual mandate. But many experts believe that the health and human services secretary already holds that power.

Because Trump has said he wants to replace Obama’s health care law as he simultaneously repeals it, it will be up to Republicans in Congress to draft language that provides alternative health care access. And as evidenced by the last system overhaul, dismantling the current byzantine set of regulations in place will take months, if not longer.

So until there is legislative movement, the Obamacare order is simply a sign of intent.

“The order does nothing substantive, grants no power or authority,” tweeted Topher Spiro, vice president for health policy at the liberal Center for American Progress.

Trans-Pacific Partnership

Trump heralded his formal withdrawal from the 12-nation trade pact known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a “great thing for the American worker.”

But in reality, it was already dead, since Congress never ratified it during Obama’s tenure.

“President Trump will notice that thanks to largely Democratic and steadfast opposition to enacting a job-killing trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership never became law in the United States,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said.

Trump’s memorandum ordered his trade representative to signal formal withdrawal from negotiations from the pact that had already languished in Congress, and served as a largely symbolic stroke of breaking with the bipartisan free-trade policy that’s been embraced by presidents for decades.

Trump has said he wants to pursue bilateral deals in order to attain clearer terms and straightforward negotiating partnerships. But in doing so, he’ll likely need Democratic support, scrambling traditional partisan alliances on an issue bound to present challenges to the new administration.

The more meaningful deal to watch is whether Trump retools or scraps the North American Trade Agreement, which the U.S. has been a part of for 23 years.

The Keystone/Dakota Pipelines

On Tuesday, the president signed a pair of memorandums respectively inviting TransCanada to resubmit its application for construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and directing the secretary of the Army to move forward with approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline in a timely manner.

The moves make both of the projects – which were stymied by the Obama administration and environmental activists – much more likely.

And yet the Dakota Access Pipeline still faces review from the Army Corps of Engineers, which is in the midst of an environmental impact study.

The Natural Resources Defense Council’s Sharon Buccino told Vox the corps still has the discretion to move as fast or as slow as it wants on the Dakota pipeline’s route approval. And if it OKs the pipeline’s planned route, the decision is almost certain to wind up in court.

TransCanada, meanwhile, wasted no time in submitting a new application for the 1,180-mile Keystone pipeline on Thursday. But as The Wall Street Journal noted, in addition to a Trump State Department review, the project also will need the state of Nebraska to review the plan, a process that will take months.

Immigration

Trump started the engines on his signature campaign promise Wednesday by issuing orders calling for the “immediate construction of a physical wall” on the Mexican border as well as enhanced immigration enforcement tactics.

But the harsh realities of erecting a wall hit the Republican administration Thursday when it floated a plan to slap a 20 percent tax on Mexican imports, before backtracking and characterizing it as just one of many options on the table.

Meanwhile, congressional leaders suggested funding much of the roughly $10 billion to $20 billion project through a supplemental appropriation bill that could spark a Democratic filibuster. And during a GOP retreat in Philadelphia on Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan declined to say whether the costs of the wall would be offset by spending cuts elsewhere in the budget, a potential sticking point for fiscal hawks in the GOP.

The payment method is just one of the challenges facing the Trump administration. How far the wall will stretch, how high it will reach and when construction will commence are all questions to which there are no concrete answers at this point.