I want Donald J. Trump to be a successful president. I want to see America making good deals in global trade in a world that has long counted on a U.S. presence that helped to secure peace and aided in the prosperity of other nations.

I have wondered a bit about our new president's recurring theme to "Make America Great Again" and started to look at where to begin to make that happen.

Complicating matters for the president is the most recent Congressional Budget Office projection regarding fiscal matters. It projects another $9.4 trillion of borrowing will be required over the next decade to service the nation's growing $20-plus trillion federal debt.

The U.S. has the largest budget and spends more per year than any other nation ranking at the top in national income (averaging $56,000 per person) and exports sold to other nations (averaging $5,000 per person) according to the CIA World Factbook where data from some 223 countries is tracked.

Technical power

Since the end of World War I, the U.S. has consistently been the most technologically powerful economy in the world. U.S. owned and operated firms have long ranked at or near the forefront, especially in computers, pharmaceuticals, and medical, aerospace, and military equipment.

This advantage has slowly narrowed since the 1950s, however.

Based on a comparison of gross domestic product (GDP), the U.S. economy in 2014, having stood as the largest in the world for more than a century, slipped into second place behind China, which has more than tripled the U.S. growth rate for each year of the past four decades.

We do deliver these numbers with a population of 320 million, third largest in the world, behind No. 1 China (population 1.4 billion) and No. 2 India (population 1.3 billion).

Many in poverty

Our nation is not at the top of every list, however. More than a quarter of the world's known prison population is incarcerated in the U.S., far more than any other nation. About one in six Americans, the highest number in over 50 years, live below the poverty line. That is the highest in the developed world.

Shamefully, one in four children in the U.S. lives in poverty. With nearly 47 million public school children, 48.1 percent­­­ — and growing every year — are eligible to receive free or reduced price lunch.

The U.S. ranking among the top 34 developed countries in education performance is only in the middle at 17th in reading and math and 18th in science performance though we spend the most per student every year ($12,000).

Invest in good jobs

It seems to me that a focus on good jobs, especially for the under and unemployed, is the place to start strengthening the nation as the Republican Trump works with Congress, composed this year of a majority of Republicans in the House and Senate. That will take reform and wise new investments in education and training, something we must do far better in the future.

And we can't just print money or borrow our way to prosperity as U.S. public debt is already at 70 percent of our gross domestic product. In the longer term, to achieve a strong American economy it will likely require reductions in the growth of government spending, including changes in so-called entitlement formulas, and increased taxes.

Bully pulpit

The strength of America as the most diverse nation in the world will be well served by a diplomatic "bully pulpit" president advancing equal opportunity and harmony among all of us.

In summary, President Trump and Congress have some enormous mountains to climb that includes a strong global perspective where 95 percent of the "customers" live, some creative thinking on a trained and effective future workforce and a wholesale look at how we can better do it all peacefully in this competitive 21st-century world.

Chuck Slocum is president of The Williston Group, a management consulting firm; he is a former state Republican chair and head of the Minnesota Business Partnership. E-mail him at Chuck@WillistonGroup.com