Donald Trump of today very different from man who was inaugurated

US partial reversal on climate change reveals how Donald Trump of September changed from the man who took office.

Donald Trump has changed since his inauguration. Picture: AFP.

The US partial reversal on climate change is merely a surface indicator of a much more fundamental American change. So let me introduce you to the President Trump of September 2017. He is a very different President to the one who took office in January.

In recent weeks Wall Street has sensed the Trump change and we have seen a stronger share market. I fear that the change in the Presidential administration will be masked in the weeks and months ahead by the ramifications of the Korean conflict, which is now moving to the province of the American Pentagon.

President Obama, by putting the North Korean problem in the too hard basket, left his successor with no easy options.

When the 45th President was sworn in last January he surrounded himself with people who had very limited experience in the business of governing, let alone governing the world’s largest economy. And while Trump himself was a brilliant marketer he also had no experience in the business of government. He planned to “drain the swamp” but he did not have around him sufficient people of the calibre to do it. With John Kelly now chief of staff, the Trump team looks a lot better. The January 2017 Trump administration reminds me of Gough Whitlam’s government in the 1970s. When Whitlam took office in 1972 his first administration contained people who should not have been cabinet ministers. One by one they were weeded out and by the time Whitlam was replaced in 1975 he had an excellent ministry. Many of those people took key roles in the successful Hawke ministry that came to power eight years later and hit the ground running. In the US, the Trump administration announced at the weekend that it was prepared to engage in climate discussions. That’s a big policy change from January but Trump found a climate switch was essential if he wanted his broader agenda to return to the table. Last week when he began talking with the Democrats, he could see climate might be an obstacle.

Trump has a very difficult problem in so many areas of his agenda — his Republican party is split so that makes him a very wounded President. But armed with a more experienced administration, Trump has started on this bipartisan discussion — a process that has few precedents in recent US history. Last week some 35 members of the Congress from both sides met to discuss tax reductions, infrastructure, bringing home the trillions of dollars held by American companies off- shore, refugees and even health care,

In his address to the bipartisan group, President Trump said that Republicans and Democrats should be able to work together for the people on a program that was “pro-jobs, pro-family and pro-US”. Our mob in Canberra is light years away from thinking about working together for families and the nation.

Trump put on the table his broad original plan — the largest tax cuts in US history for the middle class plus lowering the US company tax rate from the current 35 per cent to a level that is competitive with the China rate of 15 per cent.

And he wants to bring back ”quickly” the trillions of dollars held by US companies overseas to enable a massive investment in infrastructure such roads bridges airports railways etc.

And addressing the Democrats, he announced that he had discovered it’s “amazing how little our differences are”.

Maybe it will come to nothing. But I think the success possibility is reasonable mainly because too much work has been done in advance of bringing Donald Trump into the room.

Those experienced in such matters don’t bring the leader into the room until initial progress has been made. The Democrats and Republicans are involved in what is called a “problem solvers’ caucus” which invited President Trump. And later he also dined with leading Democrats.

When President Trump came to office we saw a surge on Wall Street and a rise in the US dollar in anticipation of massive dollars coming back to the US and funding infrastructure and corporate investment.

It did not happen and the dollar fell. The news and commentary that comes out of the US is nearly all anti Trump and the commentators have had a wonderful time given the chaos that has derailed the Trump administration.

But anyone who can bring both parties together to discuss an agenda that is basically the Trump agenda needs to be taken seriously. While today’s Trump looks different to the January Trump, there is still a long way to go.