The surprising thing is that George Bush has not had a tougher ride on his handling of the US economy. Since his January 20th inauguration, the stock markets have tumbled, dot com companies have dot gone, millions have lost their investments, the lights have gone out in California, petrol and energy prices have soared and massive layoffs have become common.

Maybe expectations were low from a President who makes such solemn pronouncements on the economy as, "More and more of our imports come from overseas" and "We ought to make the pie higher."

Any American leader has limited powers when it comes to fixing the economy, at least in the short term, never mind making the pie higher. It is Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, who has the most crucial lever of control in his hands, the ability to set interest rates.

The debate raging in Wall Street is not over White House economic policy, but whether Greenspan was (a) too quick to raise rates at the height of the Nasdaq boom last year, and (b) too slow to lower them when the economy started skidding.

Mr Bush has done what US presidents are supposed to do - avoided making public comment on fiscal policy rather than be seen to pressurise the independent central bank chairman. However, he and his team have been criticised for talking down the economy. Vice-President Dick Cheney did little to instil confidence in USA Incorporated when he said in December, while Bill Clinton was still president, that "we may well be in the front edge of a recession here". There has been no official recession, though growth has fallen to near zero.

White House officials spinning the first 100 days this week say this was an inspired insight based on information Mr Cheney got about reduced loadings on railroad freight cars (did Alan Grenspan not see it?). Whatever the explanation, it was seen as an effort to shift the blame for the slowdown onto the outgoing administration.

The only prescription offered by Mr Bush for the floundering American economy is massive tax cuts. The former Texas governor made a $1.6 trillion tax cut over 10 years his top economic priority for the first 100 days. He has so far failed to win over Congress. The Senate reduced his tax cut to $1.2 trillion after Bush failed to turn a single vote his way.

The benefit of tax cuts will not be felt until well into next year and could be more contentious then than now. The first 100 days may in fact have laid the ground work for a whopping defeat for Republicans in 2002 Congress elections, especially if voters believe that the rich have got most of the higher pie. This was the main reason a group of Republican centrists teamed up with Democrats in Congress to cut Bush's tax plan and increase spending for education, healthcare and the environment.

These Senators were listening to what voters were saying. Despite 20 road trips by the President to rally support among the public, only one in five people agrees that a tax cut is a priority.

Nevertheless, before George Bush came to Washington few thought Congress would agree to anything like such a big tax reduction, and the new White House occupant can stake his place in history as a tax-cutting President, easing the painful legacy of his father who raised taxes during his presidency despite his famous "read my lips" pledge.

During his first days in office in 1992, President Bill Clinton pushed through a budget aimed at reducing a crippling deficit by raising taxes, mainly on the rich, and set in process a fiscal regime which allowed Mr Bush to inherit a budget surplus estimated at $5.6 trillion. This is what Mr Bush wants to give back.

The danger for Mr Bush is that with the slowing economy and the deflated tech bubble, legislators may conclude as time goes by that the money is no longer there to give back, and that the assumptions behind the surplus predictions are no longer valid.

Even within the administration there were doubts from the beginning. Bush's Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, questioned early on whether tax cuts could head off a slump, and ridiculed the surplus projections on which the tax plan was based.

Mr Bush has not however shown himself to be a right-winger with a craving to abolish big government. His first months in office reveal a conservative who believes in reducing the rate of government expansion rather than closing down sections like the education department, one of three targets of Newt Gingrich's extreme Republican revolutionaries in the mid-1990s.

ON TRADE matters Mr Bush can claim some of the credit for a couple of significant achievements, the resolution of the row over bananas which threatened a trade war between the US and the European Union, and the agreement by 34 nations at the Quebec Summit of the Americas last weekend to set in place a free-trade zone stretching from Canada to Argentina by 2005.

The latter proposal was already well advanced at two previous summits, but without enthusiastic backing from Mr Bush would undoubtedly have faltered. He is an enthusiastic free-trader. As he once said in Rochester, New York, "If the terriers and barriffs are torn down, this economy will grow."

So far Mr Bush has failed to get agreement to conduct fast track negotiations with other nations which the House and Senate may not veto, though it should be said Bill Clinton couldn't win such approval in the last seven years. Without it, the President's ability to take radical trade initiatives will be severely hampered. If he gets it, then he can repeat with some justification what he said in Westminster, California last September, "They have miscalculated me as a leader."