ABC News(WASHINGTON) — After Donald Trump is inaugurated on Friday as the 45th president of the United States, he will immediately face the first test of his presidency: His accomplishments in the first 100 days in the White House.
Back in October, when Trump was still trailing Hillary Clinton in the polls, the then-GOP nominee released his plans for the first 100 days. Titled “Donald Trump’s contract with the American voter,” the plan included a constitutional amendment imposing congressional term limits, withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and canceling every executive action from President Barack Obama he deemed unconstitutional.
Logistically, it is nearly impossible for Trump to accomplish all of these objectives within the first three months, but he definitely intends to shake up the status quo in Washington and roll back Obama administration policies.
Here’s a look at a few of the big issues to watch in the early days of the new administration:
OBAMACARE
Trump has often stated his desire to repeal Obamacare. In the plan for his first 100 days he laid out this past October, he proposed fully repealing the law and replacing it with health savings accounts.
Trump and the Republican Congress are in sync on this issue: On Jan. 12, the Senate passed a measure allowing laws to go through with a 51-vote majority, rather than the 60-vote majority usually required. Since the Republicans do not have a 60-vote majority, this measure makes it easier legislatively to repeal Obamacare.
While the law as a whole might be repealed within the first 100 days, it remains less clear how long parts of the law will remain intact, and what the replacement will be. Trump recently told the Washington Post he wanted the replacement law to include universal coverage but did not reveal any specifics of the plan.
A total repeal could also have detrimental implications for midterm elections. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 18 million people could lose insurance if the law were repealed. According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 47 percent of Americans oppose a repeal of the law, while 46 percent support it.
BORDER SECURITY
The president-elect has said border security is one of his first orders of business and that he will sign an executive order on the matter on his “first day.”
“My country we will get from my first day in office on very secure borders,” Trump said in a joint interview with The Times of London and Germany’s Bild. “One of my first decrees, which I will sign on the first day — so on Monday, not Friday or Saturday, since I do not want to make it between the whole festivities, this decree will turn around safeguarding our borders.”
The details of a particular order to secure the nation’s border are not known, but Trump did make clear time and again on the campaign trail that securing the nation’s southern border with Mexico is a centerpiece of his agenda.
But before any wall can go up, it will have to go through Congress for approval and appropriations, which will slow the process.
House Republicans and Trump’s transition team are considering whether to tie funding for the wall to a broader government-funding measure in April, which could make it difficult for Democrats to oppose appropriating money for the wall, according to a source familiar with the discussions.
TRADE
Trump has pledged to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), calling it “a potential disaster for our country” and said he will issue a notification of intent to withdraw early in his presidency.
“Instead, we will negotiate fair, bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back onto American shores,” Trump said in a YouTube video announcing his early priorities.
The TPP, a proposed trade agreement championed by Obama and aimed at promoting investment and trade links between 12 countries on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, was a rare instance of agreement on the campaign trail, with both Trump and Clinton rejecting the deal as candidates.
As for Obama warning the United Kingdom ahead of the Brexit vote that they would go “back of the queue” in any trade deal with the United States if they voted to split from the European Union, that is now null and void as well.
Trump has called Brexit a “great thing” and has said he’ll make a bilateral agreement with Britain a priority, saying such an agreement will be reached “very fast” once he gets in the Oval Office.
“We will work very hard to get that fast and reasonable — good for both sides,” Trump said in the joint interview with The Times of London and Bild.
ENERGY
Trump has also pledged to roll back “job-killing” energy regulations and has declared himself a friend of the “clean coal” industry.
“On energy, I will cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy, including shale energy and clean coal, creating many millions of high-paying jobs,” the president-elect has said.
What’s unclear is what restrictions the president-elect would mean to target.
Jonathan Adler, the director of the Center for Business Law and Regulation at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, said many of the rules governing the energy industry may be challenging to scrap in the first 100 days.
“The administration will have to either a) get Congress to enact legislation to eliminate these restrictions or b) go through a lengthy administrative process to undo the regulations,” Adler said, adding that whatever process the agencies in question went through to adopt the regulations will likely have to be used to undo them as well.
INFRASTRUCTURE
Included in Trump’s blueprint for his 100-day plan is the passage of the “American Energy and Infrastructure Act.” The legislation is described as a $1 trillion infrastructure investment over the next decade through public-private partnerships and private investments through tax incentives.
In remarks at the U.S. Conference of Mayors earlier this week, Vice President-elect Mike Pence told the country’s mayors an infrastructure bill would be a priority for his and Trump’s administration.
“Tell them we are going to do an infrastructure bill and it’s gonna be big!” Pence told the group of mayors on behalf of the president-elect.
This initiative could also be one of the few that manages to retain bipartisan support. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer told ABC News’ Jon Karl and Rick Klein that the $1 trillion measure “sounds good to me.”
“We’re not going to oppose something simply because it has the name Trump on it, but we will certainly not sacrifice our principles just to get something done,” Schumer said.
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