World News

By Jay Chambers

Even before being elected president, Donald Trump was in a sort of a Cold War with former president Barrack Obama. But the time went by, and so did Trump’s Tweets regarding Obama’s behavior, and we now have the means to compare the 44^th and the 45^th presidents of the United States.

Some may think that this comparison is easy to do, but it really is not, because both these presidents have had good and bad moments that place them on equal grounds – so far. But, in order to see which presidency has had a higher impact, it’s time to analyze the actions of these two presidents and see which one of them did a better job at running the country.

Therefore, let’s not waste any time and see how these presidents managed some of the many problems they have been faced with.

Health Care

In terms of health care, two acts are fighting head to head, namely the Affordable Care Act pushed by Obama and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed by Trump.

The Affordable Care Act was instated because Medicare and Medicaid were threatening the budget with their costs. As we know, even if you have insurance, there’s still the chance to get into personal bankruptcy because of the health care costs. This act managed to repel the effects that would have been caused by Medicare – and, in turn, was able to provide everyone with health insurance.

This way, and with the health costs getting lower, preventive health care was now affordable – this meant that people could treat any of their illnesses before them reaching a stage in which they require more expensive care. In Obama’s term, this has made the health care costs rise slower than usual.

On the other hand, Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act meant that people were no longer forced to have health insurance or pay a tax for this – something that was instated by the Affordable Care Act. What this meant is that people with no health issues are able to freely cancel their health care plans, while the sick ones still had to struggle with the costs.

This, of course, meant a rise in the costs of health care. Trump also put an end to the reimbursing of insurers for the customers with low-income – as a result, premiums raised by 20$.

Also, by making short-term insurance cheaper, it became more available to people – however the benefits it offered were not the same as those that Obamacare had.

Furthermore, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act meant that people would lose their employer-based insurance and that the individual policies regarding health care exchanges were actually costlier.

Defense

When it comes to defense, both presidents seem to be spending as much as they can, having higher defense costs than any other previous president. But this is, of course, to be understood since the requirements to keep the United States safe have increased in time.

As we all know, Obama is the one that took down the threat that was Osama bin Laden, in 2011. Also, later that year, the former president had troops withdraw from the Iraq War. We can see here an attempt at diminishing the overseas conflicts that the country had – and this by taking out the most important enemies and by withdrawing troops when the leaders were gone.

Obama has also lessened the war taking place in Afghanistan and has signed a nuclear peace agreement with Iran, in 2015. He also contributed to the reduction of the nuclear warhead stockpile of the United States by 10%.

But since Trump didn’t have many or any noteworthy events so far, it all gets down to numbers, to budget and military spending. For example, in the fiscal year of 2011, the total military spending was at a peak of $855.1 billion. On the other hand, the budget that Trump allocated for the fiscal year of 2018 is of only $574.5 billion for the DoD, with the total military spending rounding up to $827.5 billion – which is still lower than in Obama’s mandate.

It is worth mentioning that right after ending the war in Afghanistan in 2014, the military spending did not reduce as was probably planned – reaching almost $800 billion. It was the main thing that caused national debt and budget deficit.

The Stock Market

While the economy can’t be controlled entirely by the president, he or she can still do some things that could eventually influence it – and the stock market as well.

When it comes to building vs. buying, we can say that more buying was done during Obama’s mandate. The S&P 500 index shows a growth of up to 47.37% of the stock prices during the presidency of Obama, and a growth of only 16.59% during Trump.

And that even despite the fact that, during Trump’s mandate, enormous corporate cuts have been made, which should have boosted the stock prices. Lower taxes basically mean that the after-tax profits of a company would increase without it having to do anything that would influence them.

Of course, as we mentioned before, they have no power over the stock markets, but they can still do things that could influence them – such as the views they have and the actions they do.

The Bottom Line

In the end, we can’t say for sure which one of these had a higher impact. So far, we can’t really compare these two presidencies as Trump didn’t have the time to do so much. We all know that the beginning of his mandate was characterized by doubt, with very few people trusting that he would do a good job – however, after some time, things weren’t bad at all under Trump.

However, we still have to take into account the impact, or the influence, that Obama had during his years as a president. He has done a lot of things, from Obamacare to the stopping of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars – the thing that has earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.

For a better comparison, we’d have to wait some more years and see how Trump will manage his position.