‍For the US, the first year under the Trump administration has been full of big economic stories – the stock market has been hitting record highs, unemployment rates sank to 4.1 percent, GDP grew at over three percent in both the second and third quarter thanks to expanded corporate spending, historic tax cuts have been signed into legislation and are expected to spur companies’ investment, and the Federal Reserve proceeded with three rate hikes.

However, Trump’s opponents and many analysts insist the good performance is not the result of the President’s policy making.

“The US economy has done very well, but I think it would have done well under any candidate, since a lot of things the happened economically are staged two or three years behind you,” said Current Affairs Commentator Einar Tangen.

Tangen also noted that the policies, including tax cuts, will hardly add to the President’s popularity if they don’t deliver noticeable effects to average Americans. It means that selling the record high stock market does not help.

Besides ballooning the US federal deficit, the tax cuts might also risk overheating the already recovering US economy.

“Internally, adding more money [from the tax cut] is going to put more pressure on yield, and outside, it could lead to a trade war. You could see a real sharp shock if US exports are threatened,” said Tangen.

Donald Trump is from the business arena, which makes him comfortable with one-on-one money talk, but easily tired by multilateral negotiations, especially those the US has to contribute more to. 

On the international stage, Trump signed an order to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations as soon as he was sworn in, and announced the US’ withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement this June. He also threatened to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

As much as Trump wants to cut the US trade deficit with other countries, it still steadily widened in 2017, not to mention that the tax cuts could further boost domestic demand and increase country’s imports in coming years.

(Jessica Stone also contributed to the story)