Financial crises happen when you least expect them, including soon after a new president takes office. Containing a crisis can require quick decision making and action before the new administration has accrued significant experience.

International finance is likely to present the administration with some of its most difficult challenges in its first year. Indeed, some of the new administration’s policies are likely to increase the possibility of international financial instability. The most pressing international economic trial facing the new American president may well be reducing this danger, and preparing to confront it should a new financial crisis hit.

President Trump would be wise to remember the Teapot Dome scandal of 95 years ago

The problem with an isolationist interpretation of “America First” is that America is not isolated. Global withdrawal means cutting the bonds of mutual interest. From its beginnings, the U.S. has been a commercial nation, and it has been the political and economic center of the global order for the last 70 years. Making America great again requires global leadership, and leadership is interactive. China is not an obstacle to American leadership, but China policy is its greatest challenge.

Early in President Reagan’s 1st year in office, March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate the president. Through the Miller Center's Reagan Oral History Project, members of his administration remember the day.

On Monday, the Miller Center will release a new set of First Year Project essays suggesting how the new president might address the global economy. Some of the leading economic policy minds in the country—including noted GOP economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who examines one of the critical issues in this article—lay out an agenda on some of our thorniest policy challenges.