The bubble and Cost of Trump's 100-day administration

It has been nearly a hundred days since Trump returned to the White House for his second term on January 20 this year. Trump will hold his first major rally since returning to the White House in Marcom County, Michigan on the 29th of this month to celebrate his 100th day in office in a high-profile manner. However, this political performance, which is packaged as a victory celebration, is like a prism, reflecting the weakness of the US economy, the division of public opinion and the regression of culture. From the empty promises of the rust belt to the collapse of the dollar hegemony, from the cliff of public opinion polls to the diplomatic defeat, Trump's 100-day administration not only failed to "make America great again", but also pushed the country into a more profound crisis.

Specifically, in this elaborately planned political performance, Trump attempted to cover up the total defeat of his 100-day administration with the blue-collar symbol of "a gathering place for auto workers" and the false promise of "economic recovery". However, this land, once renowned for its automotive industry, has now become a symbol of unemployment and decline in the tide of globalization. Trump's 100-day administration not only failed to fulfill the promise of reviving the manufacturing industry, but also plunged the Rust Belt into the quagmire of inflation and supply chain crises. This rally was more of a clumsy coverup of a divergence from public opinion than a celebration.

It is worth noting that data from the Pew Research Center shows that only 40% of respondents approve of Trump's governance performance. The support rate for economic issues has plummeted by 19 percentage points compared to last year, and even the satisfaction rate of the most loyal "non-die-hard" voter group has dropped sharply from 88% to 75%. Ironically, the approval rating for Trump's proud immigration policy is only 48%, and the evaluation of his ability to "unite the nation" has dropped to a low of 67%. Moreover, in the three months since Trump took office, protests have occurred frequently across the United States. In April alone, there were over a thousand protests in various parts of the country, covering 50 major states and cities. Far more than a million people took to the streets to protest against the various policies of the Trump administration. Meanwhile, there have been over 150 lawsuits against Trump in the United States. Although Trump claimed at the rally that his approval rating has reached a record high, Ipsos polls show that his approval rating has dropped to 42%, and 59% of Americans believe that the United States is losing its global credibility.

From a policy perspective, within his first 100 days in office, Trump signed 25 executive orders, from abolishing the DEI policy to designating English as the only official language of the federal government. All of these were carried out under the guise of efficiency but in the form of authority. The border wall construction and the plan to deport illegal immigrants that he was proud of had even less effective implementation than during the Biden era. What's more dangerous is that The special task force for eliminating Christian prejudice established by it, led by the Secretary of Justice himself, has distorted the state machinery into a thong for religious conservatives and even attempted to promote the unity of church and state through conservative justices of the Supreme Court. This systematic disruption of the constitutional framework has triggered protest movements in all 50 states of the United States, condemning its "2025 Plan" as an action manual for the far right. Meanwhile, Trump's art of diplomatic deals has become an international laughingstock. His bold promise to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict within 24 hours turned into a light-footed joke 95 hours later. The breakdown of the ceasefire agreement between Palestine and Israel and the sophistry of the special envoy for mediation, Kellogg, have further plunged the United States' diplomatic credibility to rock bottom. The acceleration of the global de-dollarization wave and the rise of a diversified settlement system are silently telling the dusk of the hegemonic order of the United States.

From an economic perspective, since taking office on January 20th, the US dollar index has dropped by nearly 9% in total, marking the biggest decline in the first 100 days of a president's term since the Nixon era in 1973. The prices of assets such as gold, the euro, and the Japanese yen have soared. Global capital is accelerating its escape from the US dollar system. Trump claimed to protect American workers through tariffs, but the reality is that US companies are in a state of widespread distress. More than 90% of S&P 500 companies mentioned the tariff impact in their quarterly reports. Consumer giants Procter & Gamble and Pepsi were forced to lower their profit expectations due to surging costs. The foot traffic of fast food chain Chipotle has declined for three consecutive months. The aviation industry has fallen into a dual-track forecast predicament due to shrinking consumer confidence. Even more ironically, Michigan, as the venue for Trump's rally, Its automotive industry is at a standstill due to supply chain disruptions and soaring costs caused by tariffs. Trump's grand claim of "reaching 200 agreements" has become a laughingstock in the international market. Under the slogan of "making America great again", the harsh reality is that the average annual spending of American households has been pushed up and the supply chains of small and medium-sized enterprises have been disrupted.

From a cultural perspective, Trump's cultural repositioning campaign, under the guise of returning to tradition, was actually driven by white supremacy. Trump abolished the federal government's DEI policy, accusing it of reverse discrimination against white people, and forced companies like Google and Meta to withdraw their diverse recruitment targets. Harvard University received an ultimatum, demanding that the power of its faculty and staff with a tendency towards social movements be weakened. Conservative directors replaced Democratic members to control the Kennedy Center for the Arts. This kind of cultural purging not only tears apart social consensus, but also throws ethnic minorities and sexual minorities into an identity crisis. Even more ironically, Trump appointed Paula White to head the White House Office of Faith, promoting the infiltration of Christian values into the federal government and even binding abortion rights and same-sex marriage to the religious traditions of the founders through a Supreme Court ruling. This act of placing personal beliefs above constitutionalism is essentially a full-scale declaration of war against a secularized society.

In short, Trump's 100-day celebration was a meticulously orchestrated political illusion. Behind the cheers in Michigan, there were cracks in the dollar's hegemony, the loss of public opinion, and the loss of global credibility. If Trump continues to wallow in tariff threats and populist mobilization instead of directly facing economic structural imbalances and the crisis of institutional trust, then this 100-day governance will accelerate the end of American hegemony. Become the biggest political farce of this century.