While President Donald Trump announced a major infrastructure plan, spanning U.S. highways, bridges, dams, railroad tracks and major export shipping ports, etc., it was to be launched in the early part of 2019. After Trump’s successful major tax cut initiative and reversing impediments to rapid re-manufacturing expansion, infrastructural rebuilding seems now prepared for a send-off during the second half of President Trump’s four-year term.

However, with the Democrats solidly up-ending the GOP’s hold of the lower House of Congress, the latter is in a position to stymie a huge, expensive national infrastructure program. In the victory announcement, the Democrats made it quite clear that Trump’s “Mexican wall” is out of the question. That issue, of course, is the sticking point in the budget discussions and the partial government shutdown.

Since the House of Representatives controls the purse strings of legislation, even if decisively brought to the floor by the Senate, it’s not a safe bet that an all-encompassing infrastructure program will emerge in Trump’s last two years of his first term.

This would be a huge setback for the GOP. Historically, the two previous infrastructure programs were handily signed into law. The first was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s successful attempt in the 1930s to modernize America’s overall infrastructural approach and help end the Great Depression. Both the Senate and House of Representatives supported the legislation due to its urgency.

The other major infrastructural success occurred in the 1950s under President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s two terms as potential war clouds with the Soviet Union started showing up. This obvious need to forestall the necessities of a last-minute urgency, if such unlikely event occurred, made a two-front approach an easy call, which sailed through both houses of Congress with surprising speed and heavy two-party majorities.

The potential urgency of President Trump’s infrastructure approach has no such unified patriotic backing, which will make this “jewel in his economic success crown” a long shot at best.

U.S. Oil Exports Could Wipe Out Trade Deficits

When President Barack Obama was forced to lift the restriction on global oil exports to get the GOP-dominated House to approve his final expenditure request in late 2016, the deal was made to satisfy both political parties.

Little did President Obama realize he was opening a door that has made the United States not only the world’s largest oil producer but eventually the No. 1 exporter of oil and natural gas. Once-dominant Saudi Arabia is now in third place behind Russia’s oil pipelines to much of Eastern Europe and the once-Soviet-held East Germany.

The result is the tripling of U.S. oil production through hydraulic fracking — from 3 million barrels a day to 10 million barrels daily, with six U.S. Gulf of Mexico ports and six natural gas conversion sites. It will establish the United States as the world’s energy king.

In an incredibly short period, this huge expansion of unexpected energy domination also has potentially opened the door to East Asia without having to cater to OPEC’s restrictions, while Venezuela’s once-powerful oil capacity is caught in the shambles of internal disintegration.

But America’s world oil position, as well as its manufacturing/technology comeback, also indicates a rapid shrinkage of the U.S. trade deficit. Additionally, President Donald Trump is aggressively pressing U.S. conglomerates to stop moving their production entities to much-lower-cost foreign countries and keeping their profits in foreign banks.

While these pressure moves are getting little publicity, future success in such U.S. export acceleration could easily erase decades of trade deficits. It could even move the country into a steadily growing export-plus column. If this is accomplished during the second half of Trump’s presidency, it will not only erase the huge American trade deficit but stop the runaway U.S. debt, which has now reached to more than $22 trillion. 

Such eventual success would move the U.S. economy to the world’s unassailable No. 1 position.

Solar Power Usage Grows

While the United States has recently become the world’s leading producer/exporter of oil and natural gas, it also has jumped on the solar power bandwagon in its rapid energy usage expansion, exceeding both Russia and Saudi Arabia in overall energy leadership.

This renewable energy source was first used commercially more than 100 years ago. It is now growing at the fastest pace ever. Solar power provides a sustainable, environmentally sound and desperately needed source of energy — for industrial nations as well as third-world countries. It is expected to become the world’s biggest source of electricity by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency.

It becomes readily apparent when one views Southern California and similar sunshine-blessed geographic areas throughout the world. In the last few years, solar panel development is accelerating and is actively servicing electrical appliances, air conditioning, lighting and water heaters. This steadily increasing usage is providing cost-efficiency in air conditioning 24 hours a day, overcoming the higher costs generated during the daily hottest periods when demand is highest.

Two basic types of solar system designs can be used in homes and businesses:

1. Passive solar energy uses external materials to optimize sun exposure and disperse light within the structure. It requires building expansions that maximize electrical usage without much additional external complexity.

2. Active solar power is much more common, requiring only solar panels on a roof to capture sunlight to generate power. It also uses the sun’s radiation to heat water, thereby reducing costs all types of water heating, such as swimming pools, on a permanent basis. Active solar power is currently the most common and desirable in this ongoing consumer usage.

As early as 2008, there were already 524,000 shipments annually in the use of photovoltaic cells and solar energy system components. Ten years later, the numbers have increased exponentially; these numbers are expected to more than double in the current decade.

Even Americans dwelling in New England and the northern segment of the major states touching the Canadian border have become increasingly solar panel-affiliated. This energy revolution is expanding daily, as its usage is actively publicized by the increased number of companies involved in all phases of expanding solar panels.