Making sense of Trump's 1st 100 days, with the help of 9 simple charts

Mike Bebernes

Reporter

YAHOO FINANCE

Tue, April 29, 2025

The first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second presidential term have been — to put it mildly — eventful.

Every president takes office with an ambitious list of ways that he will do things differently than the last guy, but no one in modern history has done so much, so rapidly, as Trump during the first three-plus months of his return to the White House.

We’ve seen the world’s richest man assume unprecedented power over how the government works, slashing the federal workforce and shuttering some agencies completely along the way. We’ve seen the global economic outlook turn on its head based on a single press conference. We’ve seen a stunning immigration crackdown that has pushed beyond the limits of what the law says the government can do. We’ve seen the administration locked in a perpetual battle with the courts that has brought the country to the edge of or — according to some experts — fully into a constitutional crisis.

Over the decades, a president’s first 100 days have become something of an unofficial mile marker for assessing a new administration’s progress. Has it passed any major legislation? Has the momentum from the campaign carried over into the new term? What does the public think of the job he’s done so far?

Trump has transformed the country so dramatically since January 20 that his 100th day presents an opportunity to check in not just on how his administration is faring, but on how America — as a nation — is doing.

Reshaping the government

Trump campaigned for a second term on a promise to dramatically reshape the federal government. He pledged to cut waste, roll back what he saw as the left wing “woke” agenda and conquer the “Deep State” of federal workers bent on undermining his administration.

One of the most important tools Trump has used in pursuit of that goal is executive orders. All modern presidents start their terms by issuing a flurry of orders to reverse policies of their predecessors and lay the groundwork for their administrations. But Trump has done it at a pace that’s never been seen before. In his first 100 days, he has signed 142 orders that have done everything from create the legal foundation for his deportation operation to declaring a national energy emergency to renaming the Gulf of Mexico.

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Many of his early orders, like his attempt to revoke birthright citizenship, have tried to do things that go beyond the established scope of presidential power. As a result, his administration has faced a cascade of lawsuits and more than 100 rulings that have blocked his orders from going into effect, at least temporarily.

On his first day in office, Trump signed an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. DOGE quickly went to work on a sweeping overhaul of the federal government with the goal of eliminating $2 trillion in federal spending. Musk and his team effectively shut down existing agencies like USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while moving to drastically reduce the size of the federal workforce — either through a series of voluntary buyouts or direct firings.

On its website, DOGE claims to have saved the government $160 billion, but its itemized list of cuts adds up to less than half of that total and there have been a number of reports that have found errors in DOGE’s data. While the actual savings — or potential costs — of Musk’s cuts are unclear, he has undoubtedly altered the size of the federal government and its role at home and abroad.

Economic upheaval

Voters’ discontent over the economy, specifically stubbornly persistent inflation, under Democratic leadership likely fueled Trump’s victory in November more than any other issue.

Throughout the campaign, Trump insisted that the best way to revive the U.S. economy and bring prices down was through a new regime of tariffs on foreign imports — even though experts almost universally agree that tariffs inevitably drive prices up. Earlier this month, he unveiled a sweeping set of tariffs on nearly every country in the world, with especially high rates applied to China.

That announcement sent the stock market into a nose dive. The universal tariffs were later put on pause, helping the market recover some of what it had lost. But Trump has continued to ratchet up tariff rates on China, all the way to 145% as of Monday. Though the administration says it is currently negotiating new trade deals that could eventually allow tariffs to be lifted, the lack of any real certainty about what happens next and the prospects of a lengthy trade war between the world’s two biggest economies has left investors wary.

The full effect of Trump’s tariffs has not been seen in prices in the U.S. as of yet, but experts’ warnings about a “supply shock” that could be around the corner have soured the general public’s view of where the economy is heading — and how Trump is handling it.

Trump and his allies have conceded that the country may have to endure some “short term pain” because of the tariffs, but the president is steadfast in his belief that America will ultimately be better off in the long run. Most Americans aren’t convinced. A majority now expect the U.S. to enter a recession and concerns about unpredictability after weeks of economic whiplash have increased.

Immigration crackdown

Trump’s signature issue since he launched his first successful presidential campaign nearly 10 years ago has been immigration. During his first term, he implemented a series of deeply controversial policies, including a de facto Muslim ban and family separation, as part of his aggressive strategy to combat illegal immigration.

He has gone even further in the early stages of his second term. Using a centuries-old law designed to protect the U.S. from foreign threats during wartime, Trump’s administration has defied the longstanding due process requirements for deportations to send hundreds of alleged gang members to a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador. It has also failed to bring one man back despite being ordered to do so by the Supreme Court.

There have also been numerous cases of legal immigrants having their visas revoked without warning, including some who have lost their immigration status and been detained by immigration enforcement reportedly because of their political views. Foreign travelers, and even some U.S. citizens, report enduring harsh treatment at the hands of immigration authorities.

These incidents, particularly the case of Salvadorian migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, have understandably consumed the public conversation around immigration. At the same time, very little attention is being paid to what’s happening at the border itself. Over the past few months, the number of reported illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border have plummeted to unprecedented levels. In the month before Trump took office, Customs and Border Protection reported 96,000 migrant encounters at the southern border. By February, that figure had dropped to under 12,000 and remained there through March. Last month, New York Times reporters who had traveled to a once-bustling border town put it simply: “The migrants are gone.”

Public support dropping

Trump has repeatedly asserted that he has a broad mandate from the public to carry out his policies and overhaul how the government works. But public polling has never backed that claim. He did secure the Electoral College by a comfortable margin while winning the popular vote in 2024, but Americans were basically split down the middle in whether they viewed him favorably or unfavorably when he was sworn in earlier this year.

Those numbers have only gotten worse for him over time. Recent polls show that strong majorities of Americans oppose many of his signature policies, particularly when it comes to the economy and how he has dismantled parts of the federal government. He now holds the lowest approval rating of any modern president after their first 100 days, and 55% of Americans view him unfavorably, compared to 45% who view him favorably.

The global Trump effect

Trump’s first 100 days haven’t just changed dynamics here in the U.S. The world’s relationship with America is also wildly different than it was just a few months ago. Between the economic upheaval caused by his tariffs, his adversarial approach to longstanding allies and his stated desire to seize places like Greenland and Canada, Trump has caused international opinions of the U.S. to dip considerably. Foreign travel into America has also dropped substantially over the past few months, to levels that pose a real risk to the U.S. tourism industry.

Anti-Trump sentiment abroad is also causing political upheaval within other countries. Frustration with Trump’s tariffs in Australia has turned what looked to be a rout by the country’s center-right party in their impending election into essentially a tossup.

The most dramatic shift has happened in Canada, the nation that Trump has persistently insisted should become part of the United States. Just a few months ago, Canada’s Liberal Party under then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appeared to be headed for an absolute thumping at the hands of their conservative opposition. But the dissatisfaction with Trump and the view that the Conservative Party wouldn’t stand up to him caused Canadian sentiment to flip entirely in just a few short weeks, helping the Liberals cruise to a comfortable win in Monday’s election.