Trump tracker: How much has the president achieved so far?

Donald Trump came into office promising to change the face of American politics and transfer power "back to the people".

After four weeks in the White House, he said "incredible progress" had been made, having signed some two dozen executive actions and put his signature to several bills.

But he has also been forced to fire his scandal-hit national security adviser and an acting attorney general, who defied his seven-nation travel ban, which later suffered an appeals court defeat.
So what has President Trump achieved so far? In the weeks and months to come, we'll be tracking the progress he makes on his agenda and how it is received by the American public.

What executive actions has Trump taken?

One way President Trump is able to exercise political power is through unilateral executive orders and memoranda, which allow him to bypass the legislative process in Congress in certain policy areas.

I don't think there's ever been a president elected who in this short period of time has done what we've done

President Trump, 16 February

He wasted little time in taking advantage of this, moving to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, cut business regulations and push ahead with the construction of two controversial pipelines.
While it may appear that he has been signing executive actions at an unprecedented rate, he has signed less than President Obama did during the same period in office.

President Trump has used several of these actions to deliver on some of his campaign promises, but they are limited in their power.
While executive orders can be used to change how federal agencies use their resources, they cannot assign those agencies new funds or introduce new laws - both of those powers are held by Congress.
For example, Mr Trump's first executive order was designed to limit the effect of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, but his campaign promise of repealing and replacing it can only be enacted by Congress because it requires new legislation.

How are his approval ratings?

When Mr Trump took the oath of office on 20 January he did so with the lowest approval rating of any incoming president.
He dismissed those polls as "rigged" but the strength of the opposition to him was evident when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets the day after his inauguration.
Most presidents begin their term with strong approval numbers, but President Trump has bucked that trend. While both George W Bush and Barack Obama were enjoying approval numbers around 60% after two months in office, Mr Trump is around the 40% mark.

 

Mr Trump won the election with low approval numbers so it's unsurprising they're still low, but the scandal over his team's contacts with Russia and his controversial travel ban have kept them falling.
Still, Mr Trump's attempts to cut business regulation and his hard line on immigration have impressed many of his supporters - we spoke to some who said he was doing "a fabulous job"
Do his approval numbers matter? Maybe not, for now.
Republicans control both the House and Senate so in theory he can pursue his legislative agenda without worrying about his ratings - as long as he keeps his Republican colleagues on side.
But if his ratings stay low or fall further, expect some dissenting voices to emerge in the party as Republicans start to worry about midterm elections in 2018.

What has been done on healthcare?

Healthcare was always going to be an early test for President Trump after he made it a centrepiece of his election campaign.
President Obama's Affordable Care Act helped more than 20 million previously uninsured Americans to finally get health cover - but Mr Trump said he would "immediately repeal and replace" it.
Republicans eventually unveiled their long-awaited draft healthcare bill at the beginning of March, with House Speaker Paul Ryan describing it as "monumental, exciting conservative reform".
President Trump backed the bill but it received a damning assessment from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan federal agency, which said it would result in 24 million more uninsured Americans by 2026.

The Trump administration said it "strenuously disagreed" with the CBO analysis, but the bill was abandoned on 24 March after it failed to win enough support from Republicans in Congress.
It was an embarrassing episode for President Trump and the Republican Party, who control the presidency and both chambers of the Congress for the first time in 11 years.
Mr Trump did his best to shrug off the defeat, saying his administration would return to "piece together a great healthcare plan" once Obamacare had "exploded".

While Obamacare has had its problems since it was introduced in 2010, it shows few signs of collapsing in the near future and the CBO analysis said its market places were "stable in most areas".
That could change if President Trump and his Republican colleagues move to cut funding for the programs subsidies but that would be a risky strategy ahead of mid-term elections next year, especially as recent polls suggest support for Obamacare is actually growing.

How is the economy faring under Trump?

When Barack Obama became president in 2009, the US was in the midst of its worst recession since the 1930s, with the economy shedding 800,000 jobs in his first month.
But after a few dips later that year, the US economy saw its longest ever period of job creation. In total, 11.3 million jobs were created under President Obama.
Mr Trump has previously dismissed those numbers as "phony" and after his inauguration he described the economy as a "mess".
But when the new monthly report was released in March, showing 235,000 jobs had been added to the workforce in February, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said it was "great news for American workers".

During the campaign, Mr Trump vowed to create 25 million jobs over 10 years and become "the greatest jobs president... ever".
He also accused Mexico and China of stealing millions of jobs and vowed to "bring our jobs home". But research suggests most of the manufacturing jobs that America has shed in recent years have been lost to increased automation at factories, rather than companies moving abroad.
We'll be keeping track of the monthly jobs report to see what progress he makes and we'll also be paying close attention to the manufacturing industry.
In the short term, however, President Trump has cited the stock market as a sign that his policies are already having an effect on the economy, saying there has been a "tremendous surge of optimism in the business world".

The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes all closed at record highs on 15 February in a partial sign at least that investors were encouraged by Mr Trump's planned infrastructure projects, deregulation and tax cuts.
But the president will need to avoid the backlash that followed his ban on immigrants coming into the US from seven mainly Muslim countries if he wants the stock market to continue hitting new highs.
All of the three major indexes fell slightly after Mr Trump's controversial executive order caused protests at airports across the country - and Silicon Valley lashed out at the president as well.

Has Trump moved to cut illegal immigration?

Immigration was President Trump's signature issue during the election campaign and he has signed a number of executive orders designed to fulfil his promises.
One of his first orders declared that the US would build a "physical wall" or similar "impassable physical barrier" - to the delight of all of those Americans who spent 2016 chanting: "Build the wall!"
It remains to be seen how Mr Trump will pay it, although he has repeatedly insisted that the US will recoup the costs from the Mexican government, despite their leaders saying otherwise.
There is already some 650 miles of fencing along the border, but we'll monitor what progress President Trump makes in turning it into what he has called the "Great Wall".

Who is going to pay for Trump's border wall?

Mr Trump used another order on border security to say 10,000 more immigration officers would be hired to track down illegal immigrants. But this will be a long process and newly appointed Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said it was unlikely to happen "within the next couple of years".
The new president's talk of a crackdown on illegal immigrants makes it sound as if they had an easy ride under President Obama, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest the opposite is true.
Between 2009 and 2015, the Obama administration deported more than 2.5 million people - most of whom had been convicted of some form of criminal offence or were recent arrivals - leading some to label President Obama the "deporter-in-chief".

While President Trump is yet to change US immigration laws, he did sign two memos on 20 February that instructed immigration officers to take a much tougher approach towards enforcing existing measures.
The new policy is so broad as to include just about every class of undocumented immigrant - more than 11 million by most estimates.
Press Secretary Spicer said Mr Trump "wanted to take the shackles off" immigration officials but insisted the move would not mean mass deportations.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has launched a series of raids across the country since Mr Trump was elected, but it's still too early to say if deportation arrests have increased.

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