Gregory Korte

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — President Trump signed three presidential directives Monday, withdrawing U.S. support for a Pacific trade deal, imposing a hiring freeze in civilian agencies, and restoring and expanding the so-called Mexico City policy that prohibits U.S. aid from supporting international groups that promote abortion.

Along with an executive order signed Friday on Obamacare and another White House memo freezing unpublished Obama-era regulations, Trump's first-week executive actions signal a U-turn from signature Obama administration policies. But they also show a determination to put his own stamp on the executive branch, and assert a muscular presidential role in trade policy.

"Everybody knows what I'm about to do," Trump said before withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal signed by the Obama administration but not ratified by the Senate. "We’ve been talking about this for a long time. A great thing for the American worker, what we just did."

After meeting with union leaders later in the day, Trump called it "a very powerful document" and promised an end to multi-nation trade pacts. "We're going to have trade but we're going to have it one-on-one, and if somebody misbehaves, we're going to send them a letter of termination, 30 days, and they'll either straighten it out or we're gone," he said. "Not one of these deals where we can't get out of them. It's a disaster."

The Mexico City policy, referred to as the "global gag rule" by abortion rights groups, was first adopted by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 and has been subject to presidential ping-pong ever since. Democratic presidents repeal it as one of their first acts in office; Republicans reinstate it.

In restoring the Mexico City policy, Trump reinstated Reagan-Bush language that "taxpayer funds appropriated pursuant to the Foreign Assistance Act should not be given to foreign nongovernmental organizations that perform abortions or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations."

But Trump also went a step further, applying the ban to "global health assistance furnished by all departments or agencies" — not just family planning programs by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. And he included new language banning the use of taxpayer funds to support organizations that participate in "coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization."

"There's one big, big thing that this does," said Jen Kates, a vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which takes no position on the policy. "Bush made it clear that the policy didn't apply to non-family planning money. So this is a big expansion of the restriction."

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the policy should not have come as a surprise.

"The president has made it no secret that he's a pro-life president," Spicer said. "He wants to stand up for all American's including the unborn and I think the reinstatement of this policy is not just something that echoes that value but respects taxpayer funding as well."

The federal hiring freeze is in line with a similar freeze by Reagan on his first day. Trump made exceptions for military, national security and public safety positions, as well as others deemed "otherwise necessary" by the Office of Personnel Management.

"Control over the administrative state is key to presidential power," said Andrew Rudalevige, a Bowdoin College professor who studies presidential power. "It’s important for president to get an early grasp on what they control."

None of the directives were executive orders, but rather presidential memoranda. Sometimes known as "executive orders by another name," presidential memoranda became President Obama's executive power tool of choice, signing more of them than any president in history even as he tempered use of executive orders.

Trump already signed his first executive order on Friday, directing agencies to allow more flexibility to states, companies and consumers in carrying out the Affordable Care Act while the Republican-controlled Congress works to repeal it.

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