First hundred hours

The new administration in Washington completed its first hundred hours in office, and the hundred hours were a compressed version of the agenda that the campaign had promised for the previous year. The pardons were issued, the executive orders were signed, the withdrawal from the international agreements was announced, and the tariff threats were made, all within the first days, and the coverage struggled to keep pace with the documents. The speed was the message, and the message was that the new administration intended to govern as it had campaigned, and the speed has costs that the momentum cannot see.

The executive orders of the first days were the most efficient part of the agenda, because an order requires no debate, no vote and no delay. The directives covered the border, the energy policy, the federal workforce and the regulatory agenda, and each one was written to be reversed only with difficulty, which is the design feature of the instrument: an order that takes effect immediately and that the next administration must spend months unwinding. The legal challenges arrived within hours of the signatures, and the courts will spend the spring deciding which of the orders are lawful and which exceed the authority that the presidency actually holds. The orders were the opening move, and the litigation will be the game.

The withdrawal from the international agreements was the part of the agenda that the rest of the world noticed first. The announcements covered the climate accord and the health organization, and the notifications were drafted, the diplomats noted, with the efficiency that the campaign had promised and the resignation that the agreements’ defenders had expected. The consequences will arrive slowly, because the international system does not respond to notifications with speed, and the slow arrival is the reason the coverage has moved on; the countries that will fill the vacated roles have already begun their calculations, and the calculations are the story that the year will tell.

The tariff threats were the part of the agenda that the markets priced first. The statements about the levies on the major trading partners, issued with the dates attached, sent the currencies and the futures moving within the hour, and the trading desks spent the week modelling the outcomes that the threats had made more likely. The threats are the beginning of a negotiation, and the negotiation will be conducted in the language that the administration has chosen, which is the language of pressure; the partners will respond in the same language, and the tariff war, if it comes, will be the first economic test of the new doctrine.

The first hundred hours were, in sum, an argument about time. The administration that moved this fast was telling the country, and the world, that the previous pace of government was the problem, and that the new pace would be set by the White House rather than by the machinery of Washington. The argument has a cost: the orders that are drafted in haste are drafted with less care, the threats that are made without consultation are harder to walk back, and the allies that are told rather than asked will remember the telling. The hundred hours established the tone; the hundred days will establish the record, and the record will be judged by the standard that the speed itself has set, which is a standard that even the fastest government will struggle to meet every day.