Trump faced with rash of challenging issues after inauguration

U.S. President Donald Trump began his first days in office after Friday's inauguration, but he has to tackle a number of issues that experts say will be especially challenging.

Those issues range from boosting jobs to foreign policy to fixing the nation's broken immigration system.

"Much of Trump's agenda in the first 100 days will be focused on his campaign promises. That'll include a greater emphasis on keeping jobs and jobs growth as well as infrastructure spending, energy production, and cutting government regulation," Dan Mahaffee, an analyst with the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, told Xinhua.

Indeed, in recent weeks before Trump even took office, he threatened a few U.S. manufacturers with stiff border taxes if they build factories in neighboring Mexico. In response, a few companies canceled plans to construct those facilities overseas, in favor of some expansion within the United States.

Brookings Institution senior fellow Darrell West told Xinhua that Trump wants U.S. companies to keep their jobs in the country and not send them abroad, by threatening to impose a border tax on companies that ship jobs overseas. But House Speaker Paul Ryanis opposed to that.

Going down a long laundry list, West said the new president's domestic priorities will be "tax cuts, deregulation and repealing Obamacare." Obamacare is former President Barack Obama's controversial healthcare overhaul.

To deliver one of his major campaign promises, Trump already signed an executive order to freeze the Obamacare right after Friday's inauguration.

Foreign policy will prioritize a reset with Russia, as well as brokering a different deal with Mexico on trade, West said.

"On foreign policy, he wants to renegotiate NAFTA and have a closer relationship with Russia," he said of the North American Free Trade Agreement, a trade deal with neighboring Mexico and Canada, which Trump has blasted as bringing economic benefits to Mexico and leaving U.S. workers out in the cold.

West was also referring to current chilly ties with Moscow.

"The latter effort will put him in direct conflict with members of his own party who want to be tough on (Russian President Vladimir) Putin," West said.

Trump also during his campaign vowed to build a wall on the border with Mexico to keep millions of illegal migrants out of the United States, as he has said too much illegal labor pushes wages down for working class Americans.

But this could take a while to do, and Trump needs Congressional appropriations to build such a wall, West pointed out.

A Gallup poll released Friday said that as Trump becomes the 45th U.S. president, he faces a nation without one dominant problem. Experts said that will require that the White House should juggle a number of issues at the same time.

Between 8 percent and 11 percent of Americans, when asked to name the nation's most important problem, mention a cluster of issues, including the economy, dissatisfaction with government, race relations, healthcare, unemployment and election reform, Gallup found.

The economy was the dominant problem as Obama took office in 2009, with 57 percent of Americans putting that issue at the top of their list of concerns.

Economic concerns also dominated the list in 1981 for former President Ronald Reagan, when 70 percent said inflation and cost of living was the key issue. In August 1974, when former president Gerald Ford took office, 77 percent named inflation and cost of living as the nation's no. 1 problem.

While Trump's campaign mantra has been to "make America great again," there isn't one key issue he must address to make that happen. And with 26 percent of Americans satisfied with the direction of the country, Trump's ability to fulfill his campaign slogan seems especially challenging, Gallup found.

source: Xinhua