How would Donald Trump rate in a traditional Performance Review?
In the business world one of the most common ways to evaluate someone is through a performance review. I have done many performance reviews over the years and received many as well and I think I can state without exaggeration that we all hate them. Somehow, I doubt Donald Trump has received very many honest performance reviews, but I thought this would be the most appropriate way to assess his performance as president. With that goal in mind, I have prepared a “performance review” as if Donald Trump reported to me, which in a weird way I guess he does.
This review is focused on three topics that should be relevant regardless of political leaning.
I. The economy. Most polls these days suggest that this is the first or second most important factor for people in deciding whom to vote for. It is also the issue that Trump has said should be most important in deciding whether to re-elect him. To make this a fair and balanced review I will focus on the pre-COVID economy, the first three years of the Trump term (2017–2019) compared to the last three years of his predecessor (2014–2016). I will address the economy during COVID in the second focus area.
II. The response to COVID. This is the other top factor (besides the economy) that most people say they will use in deciding whether to re-elect Trump. While no other president in recent times has had to respond to a pandemic of this type, most presidents become known for their response to the unexpected (e.g. 9/11, the stock crash of 2008/9). This topic will be divided into the health response and the economic response to be sure we look at the entire picture.
III. Leadership. This is a pretty standard review topic, particularly for any CEO. I will try to look at it from a business perspective as much as possible with the entire country as his “company”.
I considered looking at other topics as well, but found that most of them are clearly partisan. One example is access to abortion. A fair assessment of Donald Trump would likely conclude that he is doing all he can to make abortions more difficult. Making progress on that factor, therefore, would be viewed positively by some people and negatively by others, making it much harder to assess objectively.
Finally, I have assessed Donald Trump’s performance as Positive, Neutral, or Negative. I will not try to create an action plan for him to work on in the next year. I assume he will come up with one on his own.
To avoid keeping you in suspense much longer the Performance Review ratings are:
I. Economy — NEUTRAL
II. Response to COVID — NEGATIVE (NEGATIVE on health response, NEUTRAL on economic response)
III. Leadership — NEGATIVE
The rationales for the ratings are detailed in the sections below.
I. Economic performance (pre-COVID) — NEUTRAL
In general, I think most people would agree that Donald Trump is significantly better at marketing himself (and the economic performance of his administration) than Joe Biden (or Barack Obama). I must admit I was surprised to find, however, that the US economy did not perform better in Trump’s first three years vs. the Obama/Biden performance in their last three years. I reviewed Donald Trump on five factors:
1. Stock Market — Positive — The stock market (S&P 500) went up 53% in Trump’s first three years vs. an increase of 29% for the last three years of Obama/Biden.
NOTE: The performance of the stock market was almost identical if just 4 total years are compared, 2015–6 vs 2017–8. Almost all of the Trump advantage came in 2019, when the Fed lowered rates three times over fears that the economy was slowing (the Fed had been increasing rates from 2015–2018). Many economists believe that lowering interest rates will make stocks more attractive and cause the stock market to increase.
2. Budget Deficit — Negative — Trump increased the US budget deficit from a $504 Billion yearly average under Biden/Obama to a $809 Billion average in his first three years.
NOTE: That deficit was driven in part by the tax cut he implemented in 2018.
3. GDP Growth — Positive — The economy grew an average of 2.5% each year under Trump vs. 2.3% under Obama.
NOTE: Almost all of the difference came in 2018, the year of the tax cut. Without the one-year impact of the tax cut, the growth in GDP is the same as under Obama.
4. Trade Deficit — Negative — This is not necessarily a statistic that most economists would say is important, but it is something that Trump has said is very important. Improving our trade deficit was the primary reason initially given for the increase in tariffs under the Trump administration. Trump’s trade deficit during his tenure averaged $839 Billion while Obama’s averaged $738 Billion.
5. Job Creation — Negative — During Trump’s tenure the country averaged the creation of 2.2 Million new jobs each year. This is about 20% less than the average of 2.7 Million per year created during the last three years of Obama’s tenure.
NOTE: There is some belief by economists that it may be harder to create jobs as the economy gets closer to full employment (a belief that Trump has said he does not share).
My net assessment is that Trump has largely continued the trajectory that had been established during the Obama administration and therefore this rating is neutral. There are other factors that could be looked at (e.g. income inequality, average incomes), but a quick glance at several other factors suggests that most economic factors have continued the trends that were in place during the Obama years.
II. Response to COVID — NEGATIVE
To assure an objective review of a crisis response, it is important to start with an assessment of the resources available to the CEO at the start of the crisis. By almost any measure, the U.S. is a very rich country with substantial public and private health resources and a very strong economy. While demographically diverse, there is a long history of the country uniting behind its leaders during times of great crisis (e.g., World War II, 9/11). It is also important to realize that this crisis came at a time when Trump had his own team in place. The heads of all the major health agencies had been appointed by Trump and had been operating for multiple years. The country had also faced similar threats from Ebola to SARS in prior administrations so there was significant institutional knowledge in place on how to deal with pandemics. George Bush created the first Pandemic playbook in 2005 which was revised by Barack Obama to, in part, specifically discuss the response to Coronaviruses. Given these strengths it seems reasonable to expect that the U.S. should have been a world leader in the success of its response to COVID.
This review of Trump’s response to COVID is focused on two correlated objectives: 1. minimizing the health impact and 2. minimizing the economic impact.
Response to the health crisis — NEGATIVE
On the positive side, Trump did several things well:
- Introduced a travel ban with China earlier (January 31st) than most other countries. A travel ban with Europe was announced on March 11th, followed by a ban on Britain on March 17th
- Declared a National emergency on March 13th and introduced a national shut down on March 17th
- Organized a significant national effort with the private sector to ultimately build over 100,000 ventilators
- On April 3rd announced a voluntary recommendation for people to wear masks
- Organized a national effort to get a vaccine available for widespread usage in an unexpectedly short period of time.
On the negative side, Trump did (and continues to do) several things poorly:
- Executed the travel bans in a disorganized way. Over 40,000 people flew directly from China to the U.S. after the ban went into effect. There was no coordinated response before or after any of the travel bans to quarantine, test or track travelers.
- On April 16th Trump pushed all responsibility for testing, tracing, PPE procurement, and reopening to states (with CDC guidelines on when to reopen). States were not set up with the infrastructure or resources to build and manage a testing program. The push for state-run testing continues to be a challenge for the country to this day.
- On April 18th, after weeks of mixed messaging, Trump began actively encouraging people to ignore state/government shutdowns (and CDC guidance) with a series of “Liberate ___” tweets. This push to reopen (and stop efforts to restrict consumers to slow the spread of COVID) continues to this day.
- While announcing the mask recommendation on April 3rd Trump stated that he would not wear one. This began a long-term fight with his own administration regarding the wearing of masks that continues to this day.
From a health perspective, given the strong position that Trump started in, it is an easy call to say that the Trump-led health response has been negative. Even if you hold Trump blameless in his original response and think that the U.S. could not be expected to respond better for the first wave of the virus (an assumption that many health experts would reject), it is fair to say that the inability of the U.S. to follow the success of almost every other major country in reducing the incidence of the virus to very low levels over the summer is clearly due to Trump’s mismanagement of the crisis. This failure was primarily due to poor testing, poor adherence to masks, and an unwillingness to put more restrictions in place to improve social distancing. The impact of this failure has been close to 20,000 excess deaths (vs. Canada/Western Europe) per month since June 1st. To put this into perspective, this is the same impact as 9/11 occurring every 5 days since June 1st , and it still continues.
Response to the economic crisis — NEUTRAL
Given his singular focus on the economy, it is perhaps not surprising that this is one area where Trump made a positive impact. The single biggest positive move was working with Congress in late March to pass the $2+ Trillion CARES act. Trump deserves significant credit for this, because the Republican party would likely not have approved it without his pressure. He has also been helped by tremendous support from the Fed to keep the economy from collapsing.
The reason for the neutral assessment is twofold. First was the decision of Trump not to push Republicans in Congress for a second aid program in August when the first aid program ran out. Second, and most importantly, is directly related to the poor handling of the health crisis. The failure of the U.S. to drop the virus rate over the summer (for all the reasons stated above) is the single biggest factor that has stopped the economy from recovering quickly.
Overall COVID response rating — NEGATIVE
On balance the net Negative rating is based on the poor health response which resulted in over 60,000 incremental American deaths (a number which continues to grow each week) and the fact that the economy is still underperforming and does not appear to be quickly recovering.
III. Leadership — NEGATIVE
Assessing Donald Trump’s Leadership skills in a fair and balanced way is difficult because his appeal is so polarized. Having already assessed his performance on the economy and on COVID, I am going to focus this review less on his results and more on the approach he is using to govern. I recognize that being the president of the US is not the same as being a CEO and that they can require different approaches, but there are some clear shared competencies. For this exercise I will try to evaluate Donald Trump’s Leadership using five commonly accepted business leadership competencies.
1. Vision/Strategy — POSITIVE: Ignoring whether you agree with his vision or not, Donald Trump has been successful at communicating and following a relatively clear vision. He has been very clear about his desire to build the American economy (through tariffs and trade deals, deregulation, and tax cuts), reduce/eliminate immigration, make courts more conservative, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and implement a more isolationist America First foreign policy. I think it is fair to say that he has not been successful in executing all of his vision, but that has been a challenge for many presidents.
2. Leading Change/Innovation — NEUTRAL: Donald Trump has been very innovative in making change happen, particularly when he is unable to get congressional support. His willingness to declare states of emergency and use presidential decrees (particularly to redirect government spending) is unprecedented. He is also a very strong communicator of what he wants. Through the use of twitter, speeches and interviews, Donald Trump has dominated the media in a way that no other president has been able to do.
The primary negative is that Trump has not found a way to sell his change ideas to Congress (in spite of a Republican run House and Senate for his first two years) or to most of the population of the country. Trump is the only president in the last 75 years to have more than 50% of the country disapprove of his performance for almost his entire time in office(1). Had he been able to get more of the country to approve of his vision, this rating would have been positive.
3. People Management — NEGATIVE: Donald Trump has had unprecedented turnover in his first three years. (81% of his cabinet turned over in his first 3 years vs. 38% of Obama’s cabinet in 4 years.) He has also stopped asking for congressional approval for many official roles and is relying on acting leaders. On average the government’s key agencies have been run by an acting head about 35% of Trump’s tenure(2), even with a Republican Senate for his entire term (the Senate is the approval body for new department heads). Obama averaged about 10% and George W. Busch and Bill Clinton averaged about 5% use of acting heads. This has undoubtedly affected the ability of most government agencies to develop plans and execute well.
Eight people in Trump’s administration have been indicted, compared to an average of 1 person each for the entire terms of Carter, Clinton, and Obama.
Donald Trump regularly states that people that work for him do not know what they are talking about. One obvious example is his Covid response regarding masks. He says his team (led by his hire) thinks masks are critical, but he won’t wear them. Over time he repeatedly shows his disdain for the mask recommendation that his team gives by never wearing a mask or asking attendees at his rallies to wear masks. This is horrible leadership. Either replace the team (as he did with the Justice department) or shut them down and give reasons why he is doing what he is doing. If he wants the US to follow the Sweden model and wait for herd immunity he should just say so and get a team that supports that approach. Constantly contradicting your own leaders is bad management and only creates confusion across the country.
By most accounts, based on public interviews with current and former members of his team, he is very hard to work for, demands full loyalty, and is not receptive to negative feedback. All of these traits lead to a leadership team that is not as strong and independent as any reviewer of performance would like.
4. Professionalism/Serves as a role model — NEGATIVE: Donald Trump does not speak the truth when it is not convenient. (He is currently averaging over 5000 proven lies every year.(3))
He regularly attacks anyone that disagrees with him in very disparaging ways. He regularly calls people names in an attempt to demean them. (Democrats: Sleepy Joe Biden, Pocahontas Elizabeth Warren, Crooked Hillary; Republicans: Lyin’ Ted Cruz, Little Marco Rubio; and people that have worked for him: Mr. Magoo Jeff sessions, Wacky Omarosa, Sloppy Steve Bannon.) He threatens them directly with lawsuits and government actions, and encourages his fan base to attack others (which they have done in over 50 documented cases). He does this with individuals, groups of people, and entire countries. This is not a good approach for the leader of the free world (and does not come close to representing what most parents would want their children to emulate).
5. Strengthens the organization — NEGATIVE: For this section I am referring to whether or not he is strengthening the American political system. This is, for me, the most important topic for his presidency. Whether he believes it or not, Donald Trump’s actions strongly suggest that he thinks he should be the unchallenged leader of America, for as long as he wants and that he does not care if he damages the unique democratic system that has been the foundation of our enduring power over time. In the last four years, he has done three things that make the American Democratic system weaker:
1) Attacked our elections — Trump has claimed that millions of illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 election, that mail-in ballots are fraudulent, and has suggested that people should vote twice (in person and in the mail). He has also stated that he might not abide by the results of the election. This has not been done by other presidents and is not good for the future of America.
2) Attacked the press — Every president has issues with the press, for good reason. Over time a free press has been one of the most effective checks and balances on every president. Donald Trump has attacked the press from day one and makes disparaging comments almost every day. From the constant “fake news” comments to his very personal attacks on the owners of any press outlet that does not agree with him (From the Washington Post to Fox News), Donald Trump tries to reduce the people’s trust in the press. (And he has succeeded. The percentage of adults that view the press as trustworthy has dropped from 61% to 51% in the last four years.(4)) This is not good for the future of America.
3) Attacked all government checks and balances — Again every president gets frustrated with the other branches of government. In just three years Trump has attacked the Judiciary, Congress, whistle blowers, independent auditors, the leaders of the FBI, the leaders of the justice department…and the list goes on. This is not good for the future of America.
Final Summary
In conclusion, Donald Trump has not been a good president on the factors that matter to most Americans. His performance on the economy, upon closer inspection, has not been noteworthy and has been more than offset by poor leadership and poor response to the issue of our time, COVID. If this were a public business (not owned by the CEO) Donald Trump would be fired. We will find out in November if the American public agrees with this assessment.
Notes:
(1)https://forensicnews.net/2020/01/27/tracking-turnover-in-the-trump-administration-year-three/
(2)https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
(3)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Donald_Trump
(4)https://morningconsult.com/2020/04/22/media-credibility-cable-news-poll/
