Trump’s Executive Orders Add Three New Policy Moves
WASHINGTON D.C. (AP) – President Donald Trump’s first full day in the White House led him to sign in some executive orders.
President Donald Trump has signed a memorandum to leave the proposed Pacific Rim trade pact known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP.) The move is basically a formality, since the agreement had yet to receive required Senate ratification. Trade experts say that approval was unlikely to happen given voters’ anxiety about trade deals and the potential for job losses.
Trump calls the move “a great thing for American workers.”
It remains unclear if Trump would seek individual deals with the 11 other nations in TPP, a group that represents roughly 13.5-percent of the global economy, according to World Bank figures.
Following this memorandum, Trump reinstated a ban on providing federal money to international groups that perform abortions or provide information on the option.
The regulation has been something of a political football, instituted by Republican administrations and rescinded by Democratic ones since 1984.
Most recently, President Obama ended the ban in 2009.
Trump signed it one day after the January 22 anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States, the date which is traditionally when presidents take action on the policy.
The policy also prohibits taxpayer funding for groups that lobby to legalize abortion or promote it as a family planning method.
Trump has also signed a memorandum that freezes hiring for some federal government workers, as a way to reduce payrolls and rein in the size of the federal workforce.
Trump’s directive is fulfilling one of his campaign promises. He did tell reporters that members of the military will be exempted form the hiring freeze.
He has vowed to take on the federal bureaucracy and the action could be the first step in an attempt to curtail government employment.
The memorandum signed by Trump’s is similar to one that President George W. Bush signed at the start of his administration in 2001.
