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Campaign rhetoric and political positions
Main article: Political positions of Donald Trump
Further information: 2016 United States presidential debates
See also: Foreign policy of Donald Trump (2015–2016) and Trumpism
Trump's political positions and rhetoric were right-wing populist.[178][179][180] Politico described them as "eclectic, improvisational and often contradictory", quoting a health care policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute as saying that his political positions were "a total random assortment of whatever plays publicly."[181] NBC News counted "141 distinct shifts on 23 major issues" during his campaign.[182]
Trump's campaign platform emphasized renegotiating U.S.–China relations and free trade agreements such as NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, strongly enforcing immigration laws, and building a new wall along the U.S.–Mexico border. Other campaign positions included pursuing energy independence while opposing climate change regulations such as the Clean Power Plan and the Paris Agreement, modernizing and expediting services for veterans, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, abolishing Common Core education standards, investing in infrastructure, simplifying the tax code while reducing taxes for all economic classes, and imposing tariffs on imports by companies that offshore jobs. 