Yes in key structural areas (efficiency, regulation, accountability, border, energy); mixed or negative on spending/deficits and rhetoric-driven polarization. "Improving the US government" is not a vibe or approval-rating contest—it means measurable changes in size, scope, competence, waste, rule of law, and results for citizens. Trump’s record (first term + early second-term direction) shows disruption of bloated status quo more than expansion of it. Outcomes vary by metric.
Concrete Improvements and Evidence
•Deregulation and bureaucracy: First term cut regulatory output sharply (Federal Register pages and economically significant rules fell vs. Obama/Biden trends; see OIRA and George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center data). Agencies faced stricter cost-benefit scrutiny. Schedule F (revived) aims to reclassify policy-influencing civil servants for accountability instead of near-permanent tenure—addressing a real principal-agent problem where the permanent bureaucracy often outlasts and resists elected presidents. DOGE-style efforts (Musk/Ramaswamy influence) target waste, duplication, and improper payments; improper payments alone run $100B+/year across Medicare, unemployment, etc. (GAO/CBO figures). This is the opposite of the progressive default of adding agencies and rules.
•Border and sovereignty: Catch-and-release, parole abuse, and gotaways exploded 2021–2024 (CBP data: encounters multi-year highs, fentanyl deaths). Trump’s first-term Remain in Mexico, wall funding, and asylum restrictions cut illegal crossings; second-term mass deportation/enforcement focus reverses the Biden open-border experiment that strained cities, wages at the low end, and trust in institutions. Government that cannot control entry fails a core function.
•Energy and permitting: Achieved net exporter status, opened ANWR/federal lands, and withdrew from Paris constraints. This lowered energy costs and reduced leverage by adversaries—directly counter to administrations that treated domestic production as a climate sin. Faster permitting for infrastructure is a government competence win.
•Courts and constitutionalism: Three Supreme Court justices and many circuit judges shifted the judiciary toward originalism/textualism. This constrains administrative state overreach (see West Virginia v. EPA, Chevron deference’s decline). Criminal justice: First Step Act was bipartisan sentencing/prison reform.
•Foreign policy leverage: No new wars, Abraham Accords, pressure on NATO spending, and maximum-pressure campaigns. Abraham Accords normalized Israel-Arab ties without the endless process-worship of prior frameworks. Government that avoids forever wars and extracts burden-sharing improves strategic position.
•Pre-COVID economy as proxy: Tight labor market, real wage gains for lower quintiles, Opportunity Zones. Tax reform (TCJA) lowered corporate rates and simplified some brackets; growth and unemployment data (BLS) were strong until the pandemic. Government policy that expands the tax base and employment is functional.
These are not vibes: they show up in pages of rules, barrel production, encounter stats, judicial output, and fiscal multipliers.
Clear Shortcomings and Trade-offs
•Spending and debt: First-term deficits rose pre-COVID (tax cuts + spending deals + interest); COVID packages exploded them further. Debt/GDP worsened. Second-term promises of efficiency collide with entitlement growth, defense needs, and political reality—Trump has not been a small-government austerity president. Entitlements and interest are the drivers; neither party has fixed them.
•Execution and norms: Chaos, high turnover, and norm-breaking (tariffs by emergency declaration, pressure on Fed, Jan 6 aftermath) impose costs on institutional trust and predictability. Some appointees were weak. Trade wars produced concentrated gains (steel) and diffuse costs (agriculture, input prices). Rhetoric that treats opponents as existential enemies raises temperature without always delivering proportional policy wins.
•Not a full “drain”: Swamp incentives (lobbying, revolving door, contractor state) persist. COVID-era fraud was bipartisan failure of controls. Industrial policy impulses (tariffs, chips-style deals) can recreate the picking-winners problem.
Context vs. Alternatives
Biden-Harris expanded regulation, student-debt attempts later curtailed by courts, green subsidies with heavy industrial policy, and the border surge—measurable growth in scope and transfers, not competence. “Improving” relative to that baseline is straightforward on borders, energy, and admin-state limits. Relative to a hypothetical competent limited-government administration, Trump is more nationalist-populist than libertarian: he accepts large government if it serves sovereignty, manufacturing, and deal-making. Permanent Washington (agencies, NGOs, contractors, media) hates the disruption precisely because it threatens budgets and autonomy—that resistance is evidence of stakes, not proof of failure.
Metrics > narrative. Track Federal Register, CBP year-to-date, energy production (EIA), improper payments (GAO), real median wages (Census/BLS), and judicial deference doctrines. Early second-term executive actions on day one priorities will tell more than cable news. If waste, illegal migration, and regulatory accumulation fall while core functions (defense, courts, borders) hold, that is improvement regardless of style.