Though the US did drop their total debt in 2017 by almost $1B at the time.

That was only because no budget was passed in April 2017 and the US government went into a partial shutdown. Thus the government couldn't take on new debt. As soon as a new budget was passed in 2017, the debt made a big jump by several tens of billions in a single day.

Since we're now past hypotheticals though, that won't happen at all.

True, true. Though, in my opinion Trump wasn't that successful on this part either. Trade deficit with China is as high as under Obama, trade deficit with Mexico almost doubled in 4 years and the overall trade deficit is the highest in like 17 years. You have car factory after car factory closing down in Canada and the US, while in Mexico they keep everything open and they increase their workers pay to circumvent tariffs.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/Japan-auto-companies-triple-Mexican-pay-rather-than-move-to-US