Let's be real: President Trump's State of the Union speech isn't going to reshape the Washington agenda. These addresses rarely do. And the likelihood is diminished even further when it's delivered by a president whose daily, working persona bares such a vanishing resemblance to the one who turns up occasionally, on nights like Tuesday, to read words off of a teleprompter. 

With that caveat, some notes on President Trump’s first official State of the Union:

1. Not building a bridge to an infrastructure package

   Trump called for lawmakers to "produce a bill that generates at least $1.5 trillion for the new infrastructure investment we need." That's a leap from the $1 trillion investment Trump called for in his first address to a joint session of Congress last year..."
   "...In a note to clients after the speech, Evercore ISI’s Terry Haines writes, "We remain of the view that successful infrastructure legislation is only 20 per cent likely: it is no closer to policy agreement or potential bipartisanship than before.""

2. Softer on trade.

   "...The president avoided any potentially market-rattling pronouncements on the trade front, following the softer tone he’s struck so far this year. Indeed, here were the 78 words he dedicated to the subject in total:
   "America has also finally turned the page on decades of unfair trade deals that sacrificed our prosperity and shipped away our companies, our jobs, and our nation's wealth. The era of economic surrender is over. From now on, we expect trading relationships to be fair and to be reciprocal. We will work to fix bad trade deals and negotiate new ones. And we will protect American workers and American intellectual property, through strong enforcement of our trade rules..."
   "...Still, The Post's David Lynch read a message to China between the lines — and Trump called the nation out later in the speech as challenging "our interests, our economy and our values."... "

3. Misleading on the tax cut.

    "...Trump made a number of inaccurate or questionable assertions about his signature legislative achievement. For example, he repeated the falsehood that the package represents "the biggest tax cuts and reform in American history." It isn't.
   And he described it as "providing tremendous relief for the middle class and small businesses." As Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler points out, that’s at best misleading, since "most of the benefits in the tax bill flow to corporations and the wealthy, according to numerous independent analysts"…"

4. Investing too much in a roaring market.

   "...The president, per his habit, touted the stock market's gains under his leadership. "The stock market has smashed one record after another, gaining $8 trillion in value in just this short period of time," he said. "That is great news for Americans' 401k, retirement, pension, and college savings accounts."
   One danger in bragging about a rising stock market is that it can move in both directions, as it has demonstrated this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Tuesday fell 363 points, its worst day since August. And the index has posted two days in a row of triple-digit declines as stocks have seen their worst back-to-back slides since May. Some market watchers say the pullback represents healthy break from the pace of recent gains. Already in January, the S&P 500 notched 14 record closes, its most since June 1955, according to LPL Financial. Goldman Sachs, for one, is predicting a 10 to 20 percent drop in share prices in the coming months, though not necessarily for long..."

The authors of the article: Tory Newmyer.
This article was originally published in The Washington Post.