One thing that is doing well, is the economy. "Doing well" that is, for a certain value of "doing well". It is undeniable that unemployment continues to go down. Usually low unemployment goes hand-in-hand with rising real wages. Employers, competing for a smaller pool of qualified workers, compete with other employers by raising pay rates. But this hasn't happened. Average hourly pay has gone up a paltry 2.7% while cost of living has risen by 2.9% - a net loss in purchasing power. Trump highlights the unemployment numbers (which he described as fake when he was a candidate, insisting the "real" percentage was closer to 40 than the actual number) and the "stock market". (see this blog post about the stock market:
https://tjpolitics.blogspot.com/2018/01/trump-and-stock-market.html )
So, while the owners of many stocks, on paper, have increased their wealth, it's not at all evident that this wealth has translated into better conditions for most Americans.
And it's not at all evident that the good things can even be attributed to Trump. Granted, nothing that he has done so far has caused the economy, as a whole, to tank. But for the most part gains in employment, investment, increased stock value etc, are merely a continuation of the trend that began early in Obama's first term. Whether or not you agree with Obama's policies, or attribute the growth to anything that he did, it's undeniable that all the positive trend that Trump cites are continuations of what had been happening for six - seven years before he was elected.
Since we're talking about the economy, Trump talks a lot about fairness in international trade and imposes tariffs and tears up trade agreements without any clear idea about what trade actually is. Trade is not a zero-sum game where if I win you lose. It's complex and there can be many winners. He seems to think that a trade deficit means that we are literally losing money or that reducing a trade deficit results in a smaller budget deficit, paying down the national debt. His ignorance was on display in his recent imposition of tariffs that had the result of closing overseas markets to American farmers, causing them economic hardship. He suggested that American farmers were patriotic and wouldn't mind taking the hit for the good of the country before approving a $12 billion bailout.
Getting back to corporate tax bailout, it was initially suggested that ordinary Americans would see "raises" in the thousands of dollars, and there was a flood of people talking about their bigger paychecks. More often than not, the math did not add up. Then the story became that the lower corporate taxes would trickle down to the workers as companies used their windfall to give their people raises. A small number of companies appeared to do that, although it was usually one-time bonuses, not raises, while even more companies used the lower tax bill to buy back stock, increasing the value per share and giving top corporate people bigger bonuses.
And finally, the hallmark of Donald Trump, not only as president, but for his entire life: lying. A large number of Trump's economic claims, when checked independently, turn out to outright lies, or at the very least, exaggerations.
Trump claims to have jump started the economy and made life better for all, but at best he has simply avoided bringing the whole thing crashing down.
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