President of the United States, serving a second term from January 2025. In his first term (2017-2021) he imposed tariffs using statutes that allowed limited levies and promised a 2:1 ratio of regulations cut to new ones introduced.
As a 38-year-old property dealer, Trump thought he should be in charge of America's nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union. "It would take an hour and a half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles," he said. "I think I know most of it anyway."
In 1984 GQ magazine featured Trump on its cover beneath the headline "SUCCESS—How Sweet It Is". That led to a book, "The Art of the Deal", then a television series, "The Apprentice". At the White House Correspondents' dinner in 2011, President Barack Obama showed a mock-up of what Trump might do to the building if he ever became president, featuring extra storeys, gilded columns and a casino. Trump, who was in attendance, looked furious; many commentators date his resolve to seek the presidency from that evening.
New Jersey has been unkind to Trump. The Trump Taj Mahal and other hotel-casinos he opened in Atlantic City during the 1980s failed by the early 2000s. His American football team, the New Jersey Generals, played two seasons before its upstart league collapsed. When he won the White House in 2016, Hillary Clinton beat him in the state by 14 percentage points; in 2020 Joe Biden beat him by even more. In November 2024, however, he came within six points of upsetting Kamala Harris. He owns a golf club west of Newark.
Since January 20th 2025 Trump has posted an average of 4,149 words a week on Truth Social and X, nearly a newspaper op-ed every day. His predecessors Barack Obama, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden each averaged 400-600 words a week. In his first term he managed only 686 words a week; his output rose sharply in 2019 when he extended his posting hours from roughly midnight to 2am. At his current pace his total presidential output will surpass Marcel Proust's 1.3m-word "Remembrance of Things Past" in early 2028.
His second-term posts are less emotional than those of his first term, partly because he no longer faces the investigations and lawsuits that once triggered his online ire. Compared with his first 100 days in 2017, he writes less about jobs and the economy and more about the scope of his own power and about himself.
Trump's trade policy is guided by adviser Peter Navarro. His chief trade envoy, Jamieson Greer, has said that an America First administration sees "value in uncertainty" and that Trump is "a man in a hurry" with a "bias for action". Trump has raised America's average effective tariff on goods from 2.5% to about 20%, the highest since the Great Depression. In his second term he has invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs—the first president to use IEEPA for that purpose. For Canada and Mexico he declared an emergency over fentanyl smuggling and illegal immigration. For "reciprocal" tariffs on all countries he declared that trade deficits themselves constituted an emergency.
Trump demanded a "golden share" in US Steel—a term with a long history in the West but especially well known these days for the legal stakes that certain Chinese entrepreneurial firms have offered to the state.
On April 2nd 2025 he announced his widest-ranging tariffs, which he branded "Liberation Day". He paused them 90 days later after markets tumbled: stocks, bonds and the dollar all fell. On April 29th he eased the 25% tariffs on cars and parts. America's GDP contracted at an annualised rate of 0.3% in the first quarter of 2025. Some 40,000 factory jobs have been lost since Liberation Day. One year after Liberation Day, manufacturers had shed around 100,000 jobs since Trump took office, while the rest of the economy had gained 300,000. Monthly measures of economic-policy uncertainty hit record highs, beating those set during the early months of the covid-19 pandemic. Only 9% of Ohio manufacturers surveyed by MAGNET, a pro-manufacturing non-profit, are reshoring—up from 4% five years ago but hardly a renaissance. The stopgap 10% universal tariffs that Trump instituted after the Supreme Court loss expire in July 2026 and cannot be renewed without an act of Congress; the administration plans to replace them with a patchwork of country- and sector-specific tariffs on firmer legal footing. He claims countries are "lining up" for deals, but negotiations have been slow. On Wall Street he has earned the nickname TACO—Trump Always Chickens Out—for repeatedly backing away from his own threats. Officials promised "90 deals in 90 days" by July 9th, but by early July only two narrow agreements—with Britain in May and Vietnam in July—had materialised. Even these deals left in place much higher trade barriers than existed at the start of the year. Most trading partners, aside from China, have adopted a strategy of Diplomacy Over Visible Escalation: Canada dropped its plan to tax American tech firms after a furious response; the EU removed bourbon from its retaliation list after Trump threatened 200% tariffs on French wine. In May 2025 he agreed a 90-day trade truce with China, slashing "reciprocal" tariffs from 125% to 10% and more than halving a separate 120% tariff on de minimis e-commerce packages. A 20% levy on China over fentanyl remained. Trump claimed China "was being hurt very badly", but the deal was widely seen in China as an American capitulation after tanking markets. On October 30th 2025 Trump met Xi Jinping at a South Korean airbase—their first meeting in six years—and finalised a framework deal. Both sides agreed to delay new rare-earth export controls and reciprocal tariffs for a year, and America halved the fentanyl tariff. The deal left in place a 47% tariff rate on Chinese goods. Trump said he and Xi discussed Ukraine at length and that he did not discuss Taiwan. He suggested the deal could be renegotiated annually.
On May 28th 2025 the United States Court of International Trade ruled that Trump lacked the authority to impose his reciprocal tariffs under IEEPA, and separately struck down the fentanyl tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico. The court invoked the "major-questions doctrine", holding that IEEPA does not mention tariffs and cannot authorise anything as "unbounded" as global levies. The administration retains the option of imposing tariffs under the 1974 Trade Act, which permits levies of up to 15% for 150 days in response to balance-of-payments crises. On August 29th a federal appeals court ruled 7-4 that Trump cannot use IEEPA to set tariffs; on September 3rd he asked the Supreme Court to reverse the ruling. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against Trump, holding that "IEEPA does not authorise the President to impose tariffs." The Liberation Day tariffs are now history, though the president retains ample authority under other statutes to rebuild the tariff wall.
The steepest tariffs Trump has implemented are on products rather than countries: 50% on aluminium and steel, 25% on cars. These rest on section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which lets America restrict imports it deems a threat to national security. In mid-2025 he pledged a 50% tariff on copper from August 1st, announced forthcoming tariffs on electronics, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, and said pharma levies could eventually hit 200%. Sectoral tariffs are generally higher than country-level ones because the administration expects them to induce reshoring in strategic sectors. They are also harder to negotiate down, since America's counterparty is less obvious for tariffs on, say, copper than those on a specific country. On July 14th 2025 he threatened "secondary tariffs" of 100% on countries doing business with Russia, should it fail to reach a peace agreement with Ukraine in 50 days.
Trump appointed Andrew Ferguson as chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Gail Slater as head of the DoJ's antitrust division, and Brendan Carr as boss of the Federal Communications Commission. Neither Ferguson nor Slater has shown interest in halting antitrust cases against big tech begun under the Biden administration. Since Trump's inauguration, the combined value of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and Nvidia fell sharply.
In March 2025 Trump fired Rebecca Slaughter, an FTC commissioner whose service he said was "inconsistent with the administration's priorities". By 90-year-old precedent—Humphrey's Executor v United States (1935), in which the Supreme Court ruled that Franklin Roosevelt's firing of an FTC commissioner had been illegal—the dismissal ought to have been unlawful. On December 8th 2025 the Supreme Court heard arguments in Trump v Slaughter, a case widely expected to overturn Humphrey's Executor and cement presidential control over the FTC and, by extension, some two dozen other independent agencies. Ferguson, the new chairman, has taken to referring to his body as the "Trump-Vance FTC". Trump has also summarily fired the heads of the National Labour Relations Board and Consumer Product Safety Commission, the president and half the board of the Kennedy Centre, and even the Librarian of Congress.
On August 25th 2025 Trump attempted to fire Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor, over alleged mortgage fraud first raised by Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. It was the first time a president used the power to sack a Fed official "for cause". Ms Cook has not been charged with a crime and refused to resign. The dollar has fallen by 9% against other rich-world currencies during Trump's second term, and gold has soared. America now runs a fiscal deficit of 7% of GDP. Government net debt sits at around 100% of GDP.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act cleared the Senate on July 1st 2025 with J.D. Vance casting the tie-breaking vote, and the House approved the Senate's version on July 3rd by 218 to 214, without any Democratic votes. Trump signed it into law on July 4th 2025, billing it as "arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country". The dollar fell 11% in 2025, reflecting long-term risks to the American economy from rising debt, attacks on the Fed, defunding of scientific research, and trade-policy uncertainty. When Thom Tillis, one of three Republican senators to vote against it, defied the president, Trump threatened to drum up a primary challenger; Tillis announced he would not seek re-election.
America's average effective tariff rate had risen to 17% by mid-July 2025, from 2.5% the previous year. By early August the Yale Budget Lab put the effective rate at 18%. "Reciprocal" tariffs ranging from 10% to 41% on tens of trading partners went into effect on August 7th 2025. In August 2025 he imposed 50% tariffs on India, citing its "massive" oil purchases from Russia, while simultaneously hailing a new trade deal with Pakistan and branding India a "dead economy". Analysts at Goldman Sachs reckoned that four-fifths of the tariffs had been borne by American consumers and firms rather than foreign suppliers. Ford and GM paid $800m and $1.1bn respectively in tariff costs in the second quarter of 2025 alone. US Customs was collecting roughly $30bn a month in tariff revenue.
HR 1, the "One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act" passed by the House in May 2025, contains Section 899 on "unfair foreign taxes". The provision would impose a 5% tax surcharge in its first year, rising by 5% annually to a maximum of 20%, on dividend, interest and property income flowing from America to countries with taxes Congress dislikes—such as digital services taxes (which mainly affect American tech giants) or the global minimum corporation-tax rule. Most EU members, plus Britain, Australia, Canada and South Korea would probably be targeted. Sovereign wealth funds and public pension funds from offending countries would also lose their existing tax exemptions. The bill gives the Treasury discretion to add new "unfair foreign taxes" to the list. Companies cajoled by tariffs into scaling up American operations would be punished with surcharges on cash sent back to headquarters.
Section 899 revives the logic of Section 891, a provision passed in 1934 to pressure France into ratifying a tax treaty, which granted the president power to double levies on citizens and companies from countries deemed to be overtaxing Americans. Section 891 was never used. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, Section 899 is a rare tax rise on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve: by the early 2030s, it would start to lose the government money by scaring off foreign investors and lowering American asset prices.
The bill also includes a 3.5% tax on remittances sent abroad by foreigners working in America. The Centre for Global Development estimates Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras would each lose 0.7-1% of GNI.
Trump has declared himself the "fertilisation president" and unveiled a plan to offer discounted fertility drugs through TrumpRx, an administration direct-to-consumer website. Sean Duffy, the transport secretary, has said he will prioritise investment in places with higher birth rates. A more modest proposal is to award a "motherhood medal" to women with more than six children.
On May 12th 2025 Trump signed an executive order seeking to force drugmakers to reduce their American prices to the lowest rate they charge in other rich countries. The order instructs his administration to "communicate price targets" to firms based on international benchmarks and to establish a mechanism for patients to buy drugs directly, bypassing middlemen. Companies that do not comply could face "aggressive measures". A similar proposal during his first term was struck down in court. Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, said he is "not a big fan" of the idea.
Separately, on April 1st 2025 the administration launched an investigation into whether pharmaceutical imports threaten national security, which could lead to tariffs of 25-200%. Several firms pledged to boost American production in response: Johnson & Johnson ($55bn), Roche ($50bn), Eli Lilly ($27bn) and Novartis ($23bn).
In February 2025 Trump halted graft investigations under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), blaming the law for erecting "excessive barriers to American commerce". His special envoy, Ric Grenell, has claimed that Trump frets that "sanctions penalise American companies."
Trump has pledged to remove ten existing regulations for every new one introduced. He has largely bypassed the Administrative Procedures Act, issuing a directive on April 9th 2025 to repeal regulations without the act's required notice-and-comment period. His executive orders have also largely bypassed review by the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, which had previously checked presidential orders for compliance with existing law.
On February 18th 2025 he issued an executive order declaring that "The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President's supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch," with such opinions "controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties."
Over 16 years, George W. Bush and Barack Obama filed a total of eight emergency applications in the Supreme Court. In 20 weeks of his second term, as many of his executive orders were blocked by lower courts, Trump filed 18.
By October 2025 Trump had lost only two of his administration's nearly 30 emergency pleas. The conservative supermajority granted his requests to gut the Department of Education, racially profile suspects during ICE arrests, deport men to South Sudan, restructure the federal government and remove Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. It also let him cut nearly $800m in research grants from the National Institutes of Health, sack the last Democrat on the Federal Trade Commission and withhold $4bn in foreign aid that Congress had appropriated. Justice Elena Kagan suggested in a dissent on September 26th 2025 that this mode of jurisprudence, which resolves cases briskly without full briefing or oral argument, may not meet the gravity of the moment.
In 2024 Trump won 48% of the Latino vote, more than any previous Republican presidential candidate. By early 2026 his approval rating among Hispanics had collapsed to 22%, hurt by tariff-driven price increases and aggressive immigration enforcement that has swept up long-settled workers, not just criminals. An Economist/YouGov poll found Latinos favoured Democratic candidates over Republicans by 43% to 27%.
Trump issued an executive order criticising America's "patchwork of voting methods" and calling for a national set of rules requiring voters to prove their citizenship before registering. The order directed the attorney-general to force states to stop counting absentee ballots arriving after election day. A judge blocked the order, ruling that Congress and the states set election rules under the constitution, not the president, and that Congress was already considering a similar bill—the SAVE Act, which cleared the House in April 2025 but is unlikely to pass the Senate.
After losing the 2020 presidential election, Trump and his allies filed 62 lawsuits challenging the result; he lost all but one, and that exception had no bearing on the outcome of the race. In January 2021 he urged Brad Raffensperger, Georgia's secretary of state, to "find" enough votes to change the result in his favour. On March 31st 2025 he issued an executive order directing the US Postal Service not to send ballots to anyone not on a "state citizenship list" that his administration is compiling. The DoJ sued 30 mostly Democratic-run states to force them to hand over unredacted voter rolls with Social Security and driving-licence numbers; four courts rejected the information grabs. In January 2026 the FBI seized 700 boxes of material from the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, apparently relying on long-debunked conspiracy theories about counterfeit ballots. A YouGov/Economist poll in early 2026 found only 25% of Americans had confidence that the midterm elections would be fair, down from 44% before the 2024 vote.
Trump has designated drug cartels as "foreign terrorist organisations" and launched an expanded war on drugs using the armed forces. Roosevelt Roads, a decommissioned naval base in Puerto Rico, is being revived as a staging ground. Three destroyers, a guided-missile cruiser, an attack submarine and amphibious assault ships now sit off the coast of Venezuela, at a cost of about $7m per day. F-35 fighter jets, MQ-9 Reaper drones and spy-planes have been deployed to nearby bases. Drone strikes in the southern Caribbean have killed at least 27 people. The Pentagon is reportedly drawing up strike options on targets inside Venezuela, including drug labs and gang leaders. An assessment by 18 intelligence agencies in March 2025 elevated the threat of drug gangs above that of jihadists.
By late October 2025 at least 34 people had been killed in eight strikes since September 2nd. Two survivors of an October 16th strike were immediately deported—one to Ecuador, the other to Colombia—sparing the administration the risk of a habeas corpus petition. Trump called Gustavo Petro, Colombia's president, an "illegal drug leader" the following day. After beginning the strikes, the administration told Congress that America was in a "non-international armed conflict" against "non-state armed groups" but released no evidence that the ships carried fentanyl and has not identified the "armed groups" responsible.
On September 2nd 2025 he celebrated a military strike on a boat that he said was full of drugs and members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, declaring on Truth Social: "Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America." He has also claimed Tren de Aragua is conducting an "invasion" of the United States at the behest of the Venezuelan government; an appeals court rejected that claim on September 2nd. Previous presidents used drones to assassinate suspected terrorists—Barack Obama ordered 563 targeted killings—but those rested on Congress's post-9/11 authorisation of military force against al-Qaeda. Designating commercial drug gangs as "terrorists" extends that logic to groups whose violence serves a commercial, not political, goal. The conventional approach to drug boats in international waters has been to stop, search, arrest and try the crew. Some 80,000 Americans died of overdoses in the year preceding the strike.
On June 9th 2025 a travel ban on nationals from 12 countries, mostly in the Middle East and Africa, came into effect—the fourth iteration of a policy first attempted in 2017. Nationals from seven other countries, including Cuba and Venezuela, face partial restrictions. The ban was crafted to survive judicial review after the Supreme Court's ruling in Trump v Hawaii, in which John Roberts found that the Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president exceptional discretion to bar specific nationalities whose presence he deems "detrimental to the interests of the United States". The Cato Institute estimated the ban could block 116,000 immigrants and more than 500,000 visitors over four years.
On June 7th 2025 Trump federalised units of the California National Guard to protect federal agents conducting immigration raids in Los Angeles, over the objections of California's governor, Gavin Newsom. The move provoked large protests and some violence, including the burning of driverless cars. Trump doubled the guardsmen and added 700 active-duty marines. The deployment rested on the president's "protective power" over federal buildings and personnel; Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act but did not rule it out.
Immigration-enforcement officers rounded up hundreds of South Korean workers at an electric-vehicle battery plant in Georgia. In his second term Trump has tried to end birthright citizenship; used war powers to deport alleged gang members to El Salvador; revoked the visas of more than 1,700 international students and recent graduates; and classified some 6,000 migrants as dead to cancel their Social Security cards and encourage self-deportation. He deployed more than 9,600 troops to patrol the southern border and on April 11th 2025 directed the defence department to take control of a strip of public land north of a section of the border wall.
In January 2025 the Department of Homeland Security extended immigration-arrest powers to federal agents across many departments, including the FBI, DEA and Customs and Border Protection, effectively creating a sprawling deportation task force. Trump also ended the longstanding practice, observed by presidents since at least Bill Clinton, of avoiding immigration arrests at "sensitive locations" such as schools, churches and courthouses. On April 28th 2025 he issued an executive order calling local sanctuary policies "a lawless insurrection" and directing his attorney-general and DHS secretary to pursue legal remedies against them.
Under Trump, more than 12,000 of the Department of Homeland Security's investigative officers, some of whom had worked in counterterrorism, were reassigned to immigration enforcement. Roughly 2,000 Border Patrol agents normally tasked with guarding against threats were pulled off their duties to help ICE. A 22-year-old was installed to oversee the dismantling of a DHS agency dedicated to terrorism prevention. Early in Trump's second term, nearly a quarter of FBI agents were reassigned to immigration enforcement, diverting some from counterterrorism work.
Between 2000 and 2020 annual net migration into America averaged 1m; under President Joe Biden it reached 2.5m a year. In 2025 net migration could be zero or negative for the first recorded time since the Depression. The administration's assault extends to high-skilled workers, some of whom face a $100,000 fee for visas. The average migrant with a graduate degree boosts the Treasury's coffers by a net $1.8m over their lifetime; skilled migrants account for 5% of the labour force but 10% of labour earnings. One study attributes 30-50% of American productivity gains between 1990 and 2010 to skilled migrants.
By late 2025 "encounters" of migrants by Border Patrol agents at the frontier had plummeted to the lowest level in decades. Almost no one was travelling north through the Darién Gap, a jungle on the Colombia-Panama border that had become a thoroughfare for migrants from around the world. A small reverse migration began: at least 15,000 people, mostly Venezuelans, returned to South America since January. In Tijuana aid workers say migrant shelters, once overflowing, are mostly empty. The administration's approach is "layered, like an onion", as one analyst put it: soldiers, harsher penalties for border-crossers, the performative cruelty of deportations without trial to prison in El Salvador, and an asylum ban reinforce each other. The BBB includes nearly $47bn for the border wall, cameras and sensors. Stryker armoured vehicles and anti-submarine surveillance planes are now features of the borderlands. The administration annexed strips of border land and attached them to nearby military bases so that soldiers can detain trespassers without violating the Posse Comitatus Act. An asylum ban signed on Trump's first day in office bars the pathway that migrants used to secure a hearing date and a work permit. A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington allowed the ban to remain in place while being litigated, citing Trump v Hawaii (2018) as precedent.
Despite the upheaval, the pace of deportations may be trailing that of President Joe Biden's final year, largely because irregular crossings have fallen to their lowest level in decades.
Republicans in Congress are negotiating a budget bill that could increase immigration-enforcement funding by $90bn-175bn over the next decade. ICE's annual budget is $9bn. As of April 17th 2025, 456 sheriff and police departments or state agencies were working with ICE under 287(g) agreements, 70% of which signed on since Trump's inauguration.
By May 2025 America's immigration detention centres had reached capacity, with roughly 49,000 detainees against a congressional allocation for 41,500 beds. The House's budget bill provides $59bn, which the government reckons would be enough to double the number of beds. The federal government closed the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, which had given detainees advocates on the inside.
On April 23rd 2025 Trump signed an executive order entitled "Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy", aiming to dismantle the disparate-impact doctrine—the idea that policies without discriminatory intent can still violate civil rights if they produce disproportionate outcomes along racial or gender lines. The order aims to extirpate disparate-impact reasoning "in all contexts to the maximum degree possible", alongside the downsizing of civil-rights divisions in the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security.
At the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference Trump promised: "For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution." Since his inauguration the administration has ordered investigations into former Biden aides, bullied law firms and cut federal funding for universities. James Comey, the FBI director he fired in 2017 for investigating Russia's election interference, was indicted on charges of making false statements to a Senate committee; Comey denies the charges. Reports suggest an FBI agent who refused to stage a perp walk of Comey was suspended.
Letitia James, New York's attorney-general, who sued Trump successfully for fraud at his real-estate business, was indicted on October 9th 2025 on two felony counts related to a mortgage application. Prosecutors must prove intent and materiality; James called the charges "baseless". The DoJ has also gutted its Public Integrity unit, which specialised in political corruption: several targets had investigations dropped, charges dismissed or sentences expunged. Eric Adams, New York's mayor, had his case dropped; Tom Homan, Trump's border tsar, had a probe of him dropped; and Brad Bondi, the attorney-general's brother, represents two defendants whose pending cases were closed. Since January Trump has erased the convictions of one donor and the son of another who each spent $1m to attend a fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago, sparing both prison; the former boss of Fatburger, a fast-food chain, had tax-fraud charges dropped.
Polling by YouGov for The Economist in October 2025 found that most Republicans largely favour the revenge agenda, while independents overwhelmingly dislike it. Of 25 revenge-agenda items tested, only one—deporting American citizens who disagree with the president—drew more opposition than support from Republicans, yet over a third still backed it. All 25 proposals were unpopular with independents. The most enthusiastic supporters of the agenda are men, rural residents and those with at most a high-school diploma; the most uneasy are women, older voters and regular churchgoers.
Trump has ejected a news agency from the Oval Office for its choice of words and told Harvard University it will lose funding unless it enforces "viewpoint diversity" under government oversight. Linda McMahon, Trump's education secretary, barred Harvard from future federal grants on May 5th 2025. He targeted law firms that represented his political foes, starting with Covington & Burling, then Perkins Coie, Paul Weiss, WilmerHale and others, stripping security clearances and warning their clients that working with the firms would put government contracts at risk. Paul Weiss regained favour by pledging $40m of pro-bono work for Trump's causes; eight other firms struck deals offering a combined $900m in free labour. Four firms sued. Harvard filed a lawsuit against the administration on April 21st 2025.
Since returning to the White House, the administration has cancelled or withdrawn roughly $8bn in science funding, equivalent to nearly 16% of the yearly federal grant budget for higher education, and more than 3,000 approved grants. His proposed 2026 budget would cut nearly $40bn from federal research agencies, including a 38% reduction at the NIH, more than 50% at the NSF, and almost 55% at the EPA. Michael Kratsios, his scientific adviser, has defended the vision as making research "better and more efficient".
The administration terminated more than 400 grants to Columbia University ($400m in total) as leverage over the university's handling of campus antisemitism, including research on Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia and HIV that the NIH confirmed as priority areas. It withheld $2.7bn from Harvard; within hours of Harvard refusing the administration's demands, scientists received stop-work orders, and the administration declared Harvard would receive no further federal grants. Cornell University received 75 stop-work orders for DoD-sponsored research on materials, superconductors, robotics and satellites. Over $1.7bn was also frozen from Brown, Northwestern, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.
In the first four months of 2025 at least 1,800 international students or recent graduates had their visas revoked without explanation, only to have them restored again in April. On May 22nd the administration abruptly stripped Harvard of its ability to enroll foreign students; a judge blocked the move the following day. On May 27th it suspended all new visa interviews for foreign students hoping to study in America, pending a review of how applicants' social-media posts are screened, and said it would "aggressively" revoke visas of Chinese students. International students added $43.8bn to America's economy in the 2023-24 academic year; more than half of America's billion-dollar startups were founded by at least one immigrant, a quarter by someone who first arrived as a student. Trump has also promised to increase taxes on big college endowments.
His administration's DOGE operation also seized the United States Institute of Peace building in Washington on March 17th 2025, firing its board and president—a takeover that a federal judge later ruled illegal and "null and void", finding that the institute is not part of the executive branch.
In July 2025 the administration froze $584m in NSF and NIH grants to UCLA over alleged antisemitism, demanding $1bn and sweeping campus-policy changes to release the funds. It marked a new stage in the campaign: whereas earlier targets were wealthy private schools, the vast majority of America's college students—nearly three-quarters—attend public universities.
Trump has directed federal agencies to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism in considering claims of discrimination. The definition was drafted by Ken Stern, a lawyer, some 21 years ago to help European researchers track hate crimes; Mr Stern has long advocated against its use as a speech code on campus, arguing that "in a political fight—which this is, over Israel and Palestine—any tool at your disposal that can be used will be adopted and subverted and abused and distorted." Under their agreements with the administration, Columbia and Harvard have each hired additional administrators to support Jewish students and address antisemitism—even as the same agreements declare that universities will not provide benefits to individuals on the basis of protected characteristics.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression found in a 2025 survey a "continued decline in support for free speech among all students, but particularly conservatives". Fully 34% of students called it acceptable in some cases to use violence to stop someone from speaking on campus.
Harvard's federal funds constitute 11% of its operating budget and represent almost all the discretionary money available for research. Making do without, while maintaining current spending, would see the university draw down its $53bn endowment by about 2% a year. Since January 2025 Harvard has adopted the government's preferred definition of antisemitism; ended a partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank; removed the leadership of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies; and suspended the Palestine Solidarity Committee, an undergraduate group. DEI offices have been renamed and their websites scrubbed. In 2023 a Crimson poll found that less than 3% of faculty identified as conservative. Reports suggest Harvard may settle for up to $500m, following the model of Brown University ($50m to workforce-development organisations) and Columbia University ($200m to the government, with most of its $1.3bn in federal funding reinstated). The Internal Revenue Service is considering revoking Harvard's tax-exempt status.
Trump has called for Harvard University to lose its non-profit status, which would require the IRS to show malfeasance by means of an audit—but a law passed in 1998 specifically forbids the president from ordering an audit of a specific taxpayer.
Trump's broad challenge to the rule of law weakens the case for dollar exceptionalism. Trust in the fairness of America's legal system has historically helped convince investors that American assets are among the safest in the world; his efforts to extend presidential power make foreign holders of US assets feel less secure. The dollar has declined by around 12% since its peak before Trump's inauguration, sliding to its softest in almost four years against a basket of other currencies. When asked about its weakness on January 27th 2026, Trump said it was "doing great". He appears to believe that a weaker dollar will boost American exports and curb imports. Many investors fear it reflects something more malign: his disdain for America's European allies, his assaults on the independence of the Federal Reserve and the erosion of other institutional norms. Trading floors are abuzz with talk of the "debasement trade"—bets on the deterioration of American financial exceptionalism. Gold has surged to over $5,500 an ounce, up 28% since the start of 2026.
Trump has also decided to ignore a bipartisan law requiring the sale of TikTok, on vague national-security grounds. In September 2025 he announced a deal for a group of American investors—said to include Oracle, controlled by the Ellison family, and Fox, controlled by the Murdoch family—to buy a controlling 80% stake in TikTok's American operations from ByteDance. He has signalled his intention to "impound"—refuse to spend—funds that Congress has allocated by law if they conflict with his priorities.
Trump has posted that it was "seditious, perhaps even treasonous" for the New York Times to publish "fake" reports, calling them "true Enemies of the People" and adding: "We should do something about it." The White House publishes a list of "media offenders", naming individual reporters it accuses of lying, malpractice or "left-wing lunacy". Americans' trust in the news media is at an all-time low, according to Gallup; only 8% of Republicans trust them to report fairly or accurately, down from 33% in 2007. Trump's demonisation of journalists has eroded the taboo on other politicians doing the same; Jodie Ginsberg, the head of the Committee to Protect Journalists, says "the Trump textbook is being picked up by global leaders everywhere." Trump has sued ABC, the BBC, CNN, the New York Times and others, sometimes demanding billions of dollars in damages. See press freedom.
In the past decade Trump or his businesses have been involved in at least 34 media or defamation lawsuits, according to a tally by Axios. He has sued three newspapers over their coverage, including the New York Times for $15bn, and threatened to revoke broadcast television licences. In 2008, 92% of America's 100 largest newspapers by circulation endorsed a presidential candidate; in 2024 three-quarters did not. His FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, threatened to investigate chat-show host Jimmy Kimmel for remarks about the murder of Charlie Kirk; Disney, Kimmel's employer, briefly took him off air before reinstating him after a celebrity backlash. The Department of Defence required reporters to sign a pledge not to obtain or use unauthorised material, on pain of losing press credentials. In a press-freedom ranking by Reporters Without Borders, America came 57th, below most of Europe.
The consolidation of Hollywood media firms—Disney's purchase of most of 21st Century Fox in 2019, Amazon's acquisition of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 2022, Paramount's merger with Skydance—gives Trump leverage, since big acquisitions need the blessing of the Federal Trade Commission and, for broadcast TV, the FCC.
On April 24th 2025 Trump signed an executive order authorising deep-sea mining for critical minerals, breaching provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that America had long accepted as customary international law, even though it never ratified the treaty. The order applies to international waters beyond American jurisdiction as well as America's own exclusive economic zone. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is to issue mining licences. Administration officials claimed the strategy would create around 100,000 jobs over ten years. Trump's determination to secure mineral supplies "independent of foreign adversary control" also colours his land-grabbing views about Canada and Greenland, and his dealings with Ukraine.
In testimony before Congress in 1993, Trump argued against allowing the Pequot tribe to build a casino near one of his own, saying: "They don't look like Indians to me."
In October 1980, at the age of 34, Trump told gossip columnist Rona Barrett that America should have invaded Iran during the hostage crisis—"the easiest victory we would have ever won"—and that a country with such decisive leadership would command the world's respect. It was an early expression of the instincts that would shape his presidency.
In an interview with The Economist in 2015, when still a businessman, Trump called for America to stop playing policeman in the Middle East and to simply "take the oil". He called himself "the most militaristic person" before clarifying: "You have to know when to use the military. Or have it so strong that nobody is going to mess with you, which is my ultimate goal."
Trump has a deep aversion to regime change. Days after his first election victory in 2016 he announced a Middle Eastern policy focused narrowly on fighting terrorists, saying: "We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about." Elliott Abrams, who served as his special envoy to Venezuela and Iran, attributes this to policy failures in Afghanistan and Iraq and to the influence of Henry Kissinger and cold-war realpolitik.
Trump is willing to kill foreigners who threaten America—he sent drones to assassinate Qassem Suleimani, Iran's most important general, in Baghdad in January 2020—but he refuses to target political leaders. When Iran fired missiles at American bases in northern Iraq to avenge the Suleimani killing, scores of soldiers suffered brain injuries and concussions; Trump dismissed these as "headaches" and cited the lack of American deaths as he called off planned retaliatory strikes on Iran. According to Reuters, in June 2025 he vetoed an Israeli plan to kill Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei, declaring political leaders off-limits unless Iran attacked American targets.
In his first term the closest he came to endorsing regime change was declaring Juan Guaidó, a Venezuelan opposition leader, to be the country's legitimate president and hinting that America might use force against Nicolás Maduro. Trump later lost confidence in Mr Guaidó, believing he had backed "the wrong horse".
On January 3rd 2026 he ordered American forces to capture Mr Maduro in a lightning raid on Caracas. He watched the operation by video link from Mar-a-Lago. He subsequently declared the "Donroe doctrine", an update to the Monroe Doctrine asserting America's right to intervene in the western hemisphere however it sees fit. He announced that America would market all Venezuelan oil "indefinitely" and put multiple countries in the region on notice that they could expect similar treatment. He threatened to order more air strikes or "boots on the ground" if necessary, said Colombia "sounds good to me" when asked about a military operation there, and asserted that Cuba appeared "ready to fall". Public opinion was divided: roughly equal proportions—between 30% and 40%—supported or opposed the raid, and a majority worried about America getting drawn in too deeply.
John Bolton, his national security adviser in 2018-19, was fired partly for advocating regime change in Iran and for publicly proposing the "Libyan model" for North Korea's denuclearisation, a reference that angered Pyongyang. During Trump's first term, when Iran shot down an American drone, he launched a reprisal strike but then recalled the planes. Bolton wrote in his memoir that Trump kept "repeating he didn't want to have a lot of body bags on television". After the American strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities in June 2025, however, Trump publicly mused about "regime change"—a striking departure.
The isolationist wing of Trump's coalition, including Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Tulsi Gabbard and JD Vance, lobbied against the Iran strikes but failed to sway the president. After the third Gulf war began in February 2026, Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene voiced objections but the America First faction has largely given Trump leeway. Elected Democrats grudgingly gave credit for degrading Iran's nuclear capacity but complained that Trump acted without notifying Congress, as the War Powers Act of 1973 requires. The political reality, however, is that presidents of both parties have routinely made military deployments without congressional consent.
Trump praised Vladimir Putin on television as far back as 2007. He invited Putin to the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow in 2013 and wondered on Twitter if he would be his "new best friend". He sought Putin's help to build a tower in Moscow from 2013 to 2016 and tried unsuccessfully many times in 2015 to secure a meeting with him. Russia interfered in the 2016 election, including hacking Democrats' emails to undermine Hillary Clinton. An independent counsel, Robert Mueller, released an exhaustive report in 2019 affirming that "the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome" and indicted numerous Russians, but did not conclude the campaign "conspired or co-ordinated" with them.
In late August 2025 Trump met Putin at the American base in Anchorage. Putin conceded nothing, not even a ceasefire; Russia spun the meeting as a great victory. Three days later Trump met Zelensky and a host of European leaders at the White House, where he suggested America could support security guarantees for Ukraine.
On October 8th 2025 Marco Rubio handed Trump a handwritten note during a White House event saying negotiators in Egypt were "very close" to a ceasefire in Gaza. Trump announced the deal on Truth Social just before 2am in Israel and Gaza: "Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first phase of our peace plan." Under the deal, 20 living hostages would be released and Israel would pull back from cities in Gaza. The war had killed some 67,000 people in Gaza since the massacre of nearly 1,200 in southern Israel on October 7th 2023.
In October 2025 Trump addressed the Knesset, Israel's parliament, and publicly suggested to Isaac Herzog, Israel's president, that he pardon Binyamin Netanyahu. On November 12th he repeated the request in a letter.
In his first term Trump recognised Israel's claim to the Golan Heights and Morocco's claim to Western Sahara—twice granting American recognition of territory gained by force, contrary to a principle that had been a cornerstone of American foreign policy since the 1930s.
Trump claims to have ended eight "unendable" wars in his second term. In Gaza he imposed a ceasefire, forced Israel to withdraw from populated areas and compelled Hamas to release its hostages. However, three months after the ceasefire went into effect, only one element of the 20-point peace plan's second phase had been implemented: a Palestinian National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) was appointed on January 14th 2026. The committee has 15 members, but Israel has not allowed them to enter the territory.
In January 2026 Trump announced three new peacemaking bodies, including an executive board for Gaza dominated by people more adept at scouting for business than ending humanitarian crises. It does not include a single Palestinian. Above them all sits a "Board of Peace", a private club of world leaders. Membership costs $1bn. The veto-wielding chairman, perhaps for life, is Trump himself. The board's charter laments that "too many approaches to peace-building foster perpetual dependency and institutionalise crisis."
Trump's diplomacy follows a recurring playbook: he stokes or allows tensions to reach a crisis point, then suggests compromises offering doses of pain and economic profit to each side. He told the UN General Assembly in 2019 that "the future does not belong to globalists" but to "patriots", yet his second term has seen frenetic engagement in conflicts from Ukraine to Kashmir. During his first term he showed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a film depicting beach resorts North Korea could build if it abandoned nuclear weapons; Kim was not swayed. Trump is said to covet a Nobel peace prize. Arab rulers have offered Trump-family businesses property and cryptocurrency investments worth billions; one country gave him a $130,000 gold bar; Qatar has proposed giving a Boeing 747 to serve as Air Force One; Syria's interim ruler suggested Damascus as the site for a new Trump Tower.
In late October 2025 Trump traipsed across Asia, visiting Malaysia, Japan and South Korea. He eschewed the larger regional gatherings—leaving the East Asia Summit in Malaysia on the morning it convened and skipping the main APEC heads-of-state meeting in South Korea—focusing instead on bilateral deals and bolstering his reputation as a peacemaker. In Malaysia he presided over the signing of a ceasefire deal between Cambodia and Thailand that he had helped forge. Takaichi Sanae, Japan's prime minister, pledged to nominate him for the Nobel peace prize. In South Korea he formalised a deal lowering tariffs from 25% to 15% in exchange for $350bn in investments, and approved South Korea's plan to build nuclear-powered submarines. Countries across the region offered trade concessions to stay in his good graces.
On August 8th 2025 Trump hosted Armenia's prime minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan's president Ilham Aliyev at the White House, where the trio signed a peace declaration. Armenia agreed to open an American-operated transport corridor called the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) across its territory to Azerbaijan's exclave, Nakhchivan, on a 99-year lease to America. Both leaders vowed to nominate Trump for a Nobel peace prize. Trump waived 1992 sanctions prohibiting military co-operation with Azerbaijan and announced a "strategic partnership". The deal diminishes Russia's and Iran's influence in the south Caucasus and could pave the way for normalisation between Armenia and Turkey.
On May 10th 2025 Trump announced a ceasefire between India and Pakistan during their worst fighting in 25 years. American officials said they intervened after receiving alarming intelligence as fighting escalated on the night of May 9th. Trump claimed to have brokered the truce and promised broader peace talks, but Indian officials said they were blindsided by the announcement. On May 11th he offered to help negotiate over Kashmir, despite India's longstanding objection to third-party involvement—repeating an offer he had made in 2019 that also upset India. He also asserted that he had threatened not to trade with either side if they continued to fight, a claim Indian officials denied.
Trump launched $TRUMP, a meme coin, three days before beginning his second term on January 17th 2025. Companies associated with the Trump family own 80% of the coins. Its market capitalisation peaked at around $15bn before slumping. His wife Melania Trump launched a separate meme coin on January 19th. The family's $TRUMP holdings alone were worth almost $2bn in mid-2025—not much less than all his properties, golf courses and clubs.
The Trump family owns a 60% stake in World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency firm launched in September 2024. Trump is listed as its "chief crypto advocate". In April 2025 Trump Media and Technology Group, in which Trump owns a 52% stake, announced a tie-up with Crypto.com to sell exchange-traded funds involving digital assets and other securities; the company said it was also considering launching a crypto wallet and currency.
Trump's deep financial ties to the crypto industry have complicated legislative efforts. A bipartisan stablecoin bill failed to win Senate approval on May 8th 2025, with Democrats arguing it would fuel the president's influence-peddling. Even Cynthia Lummis, a Republican senator and co-sponsor of the bill, said Trump's meme-coin dinner for big investors "gives me pause". As recently as 2021 Trump had disdained digital assets, calling Bitcoin "a scam" and complaining it competed against the dollar.
In May 2025 Trump signed four executive orders aimed at re-establishing America "as the global leader in nuclear energy" and securing America's supplies of enriched uranium—ambitious goals given that American firms have long struggled to build reactors on time and on budget, and that America relies on imported enriched uranium, much of which comes from Russia.
On October 29th 2025 Trump unexpectedly announced on Truth Social that he was ordering the Pentagon to "start testing" nuclear weapons immediately, which on its face meant resuming underground nuclear explosions in Nevada for the first time since 1992. His post opened by claiming that "the United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country"—incorrect, since the Federation of American Scientists estimates America's stockpile at 5,177 warheads against Russia's 5,459. He also claimed China "will be even within five years", though the Pentagon reckons China will have roughly 1,000 warheads by 2030. He justified the order by citing "other countries testing programs", though the only country known to have conducted explosive tests this century is North Korea, last in 2017. America regularly tests its delivery systems, including ICBMs. In an interview with CBS News he seemed fixated on underground explosions, insisting other countries were conducting them. Most American nuclear experts, including Republican-leaning ones, argue that China has most to gain from a return to testing, having conducted far fewer tests (45) than Russia (715) or America (1,030). It could take years, and congressional funding, to resume full underground tests.
Relations between Trump and Lula thawed after they met at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 23rd 2025. After the pair spoke by phone in December Trump called the chat "great" and said "I like him." In recent weeks Trump has lifted the sanctions on Alexandre de Moraes and removed many tariffs on Brazilian goods, which were driving up food prices in the United States and creating cost-of-living problems for his own supporters. The reasons for the initial change of heart are not clear; firms affected by tariffs had sought to de-escalate, and Reuters reported that Trump recently met Joesley Batista, co-owner of JBS, whose American subsidiary donated to Trump's inauguration. JBS was hurt badly by the 50% tariff Trump placed on Brazilian imports. Trump's assault on Brazil backfired: Lula's approval surged and he is now the favourite for the October 2026 presidential election.
On July 9th 2025 Trump pledged tariffs of 50% on Brazilian exports, citing a "witch hunt" against Jair Bolsonaro. The trigger appears to have been the BRICS summit that Brazil hosted on July 6th-7th. The State Department revoked the visas of most Brazilian Supreme Court judges and officials connected to Mr Bolsonaro's prosecution. Marco Rubio said he wants to use the Global Magnitsky Act to sanction Alexandre de Moraes, a prominent justice. The moves backfired: Lula da Silva's approval ratings perked up, Brazil's Congress rallied around him, and the tariffs fell disproportionately on agriculture in Bolsonaro strongholds. Eduardo Bolsonaro, the former president's son, had moved to Texas and was lobbying Republican congressmen against Brazilian officials.
Trump has falsely called the situation facing white farmers in South Africa a "genocide". His administration has cut aid to Africa's largest economy and signalled it will cancel South Africa's preferential trade terms. It has offered asylum to white South Africans; 59 have so far been granted refugee status. In May 2025 Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa's president, visited the Oval Office to salvage economic ties; Trump ambushed him by dimming the lights to show videos about white farmers.
Trump ordered officials to review America's participation in all international organisations, including the United Nations, with results due in mid-July 2025. He froze funding for international bodies. On July 1st 2025 he closed the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), absorbing it into the State Department. USAID had spent 40% of its budget on sub-Saharan Africa.
Trump hosted presidents from five African countries (Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal) at the White House on July 9th 2025, the first of a mooted series of meetings. A bigger summit involving dozens of African leaders is planned for September. According to Judd Devermont, a former Africa official in the White House, George W. Bush holds the record for the most Oval Office meetings with African leaders. The Trump administration's priority in Africa is business: ambassadors' performance is now partly assessed on whether they can seal deals for American firms. Of the 19 countries subject to Trump's latest travel ban, ten are African. Trump has called Namibia (or maybe Zambia) "Nambia" and said of Congo "I don't know what that is".
On May 20th 2025 Trump announced Golden Dome, a missile-defence shield intended to protect America using hundreds or thousands of satellites that can both track and attack enemy missiles as they launch. He said $25bn in initial funding was included in his tax bill and that the project would cost $175bn in total, though the Congressional Budget Office reckons the bill could exceed $500bn over 20 years. Trump claimed a timeline of "two and a half to three years"; a report by the American Physical Society suggested the system would require tens of thousands of space-based interceptors.
Trump initially spoke of eliminating FEMA but softened after a flood in Texas in early July 2025 killed more than 135 people. His administration talks instead of making FEMA more "efficient". A fifth of the agency's permanent staff have left; the president is denying some governors' aid requests and taking longer to approve others. In April 2025 a FEMA memo proposed declaring fewer disasters and reimbursing at the minimum 75% rate.
On August 1st 2025 Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the Bureau of Labour Statistics commissioner who had been confirmed on a bipartisan basis, after a jobs report showed employers added fewer jobs than expected. He alleged, without evidence, that the figures were "rigged". He put forward E.J. Antoni, a partisan figure, to replace her, but subsequently withdrew the nomination. A BLS memo in July said the agency had stopped collecting about 15% of prices in its usual sample, up from 5% during the worst of the pandemic. The BLS's budget has fallen by some 12% in real terms over the past decade, and response rates to government surveys have dropped by 20 percentage points. The White House has proposed cutting the bureau's budget by another 8%.
In August 2025 Trump set an ultimatum for Russia to end its war on Ukraine or face economic punishment, including "secondary tariffs" on countries that buy Russian oil, among them India and China. He agreed to supply weapons to Ukraine on condition that European countries pay for them. He also said he had ordered the repositioning of two "nuclear submarines"—presumably boats carrying nuclear weapons—in response to Russian nuclear threats.
The National Park Service has lost nearly a quarter of its permanent employees since Trump took office, according to internal documents leaked to the National Parks Conservation Association. Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, ordered parks to remain open despite staffing cuts and directed that signs should not "inappropriately disparage Americans past or living". The administration requested a 37% reduction to the NPS's $3.3bn budget.
In July 2025 Trump signed a series of executive orders on AI, including "Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government", which requires AI labs seeking government contracts to display "truth-seeking" and "ideological neutrality". The order cited Google's image-generation feature, which in early 2024 depicted popes and Vikings as black-skinned, as evidence that large language models were embedding progressive ideology. It requires AI labs to disclose any ideological agenda used to train their models. His AI Action Plan called for the government's AI Risk-Management Framework to drop references to misinformation, DEI and climate change. Some Republican state attorneys-general have begun probing modelmakers, with one accusing Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI of "AI-generated propaganda".
On September 17th 2025 Trump made a state visit to Britain, hosted by King Charles III at Windsor Castle. He declared the relationship between Britain and America "eternal, irreplaceable and unbreakable", adding that "the word 'special' does not begin to do it justice". He was conveyed in a gilded carriage to inspect a parade of red-tunicked guardsmen. Britain was the first country to strike an agreement to partially mitigate the effects of his "Liberation Day" tariffs, at a baseline rate of 10%. A promised elimination of tariffs on British steel had been put on ice by the eve of the visit. Deals on nuclear power and artificial intelligence were announced during the visit.
American farmers have been hit hard by Trump's trade war. China, which last year bought $13bn of American soyabeans—about half of exports and almost a quarter of the entire crop—stopped buying after imposing a 20% retaliatory tariff. By mid-September 2025 Chinese buyers had not placed a single order for the new harvest. While commodity prices were falling, input costs were rising owing to import tariffs, and ICE raids were disrupting the supply of workers in labour-intensive sectors such as dairy, fresh produce and cattle farming. Farm bankruptcies have risen, though they remain below pre-pandemic levels. More American farmers are older than 75 than younger than 35.
The competitive threat is growing: soya and corn cultivation in Brazil has expanded by 40% in recent years, Chinese investment in new railways and ports there is making it cheaper to get to market, and Brazil's climate allows two crops a year. When Javier Milei removed Argentina's export tax on soyabeans—after Scott Bessent offered a $20bn swap line—China immediately bought 20 shiploads from Argentina. Trump promised in June 2025 never to "do anything to hurt our farmers"; Bessent is expected to announce a bail-out. What farmers want, however, is a deal with China, not a handout.
On July 31st 2025 Trump announced that a ballroom would be built for the White House, to be paid for by wealthy friends. On October 20th demolition gangs began bulldozing the East Wing, which had been built in 1902 and contained a number of familiar offices including the First Lady's. Trump said that after "a tremendous amount of study with some of the best architects in the world" they had decided it all had to go. The planned ballroom would hold 900 people and cost over $300m; at 90,000 square feet, it would dwarf the original building. Trump also announced plans for an overscale Arc de Triomphe in central Washington to celebrate America's 250th birthday; when a journalist asked who the arch was for, Trump pointed at himself and said: "Me".
The 22nd Amendment, ratified after Franklin Delano Roosevelt's norm-shattering fourth electoral victory in 1944, states that "no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice". Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of serving a third term, saying "I would love to do it," before more recently ruling it out: "It's pretty clear I'm not allowed to run." Steve Bannon has been less reticent, telling The Economist in late October 2025 that "Trump is going to be president in 28."
Legal scholars argue there may be a loophole: the amendment bars a person from being "elected" to more than two terms but says nothing about serving or holding office again. Trump could theoretically run as a vice-presidential candidate, then succeed to the presidency once his running-mate resigns. Critics retort that the 12th Amendment, which says someone ineligible to be elected president cannot be elected vice-president, rules this out. Another path involves being appointed, not elected, to the vice-presidency by a new president, then becoming president via the 25th Amendment—requiring a majority vote in both houses of Congress. Trump himself dismissed the vice-presidential route on October 27th: "It's too cute. It wouldn't be right."
In May 2026 Mr Trump dropped a $10bn lawsuit he had filed against his own administration over the leak of his tax returns in 2018-2020 by Charles Littlejohn, an IRS contractor later sentenced to five years. In exchange the administration committed $1.8bn to compensate victims of government "lawfare". The deal was secured by Todd Blanche, defending the government, who had once worked as Mr Trump's private lawyer ("I love you, sir," he had told his boss). The IRS also agreed to drop any pending audits of Mr Trump, his family or firms. Anyone who "suffered weaponisation" can file a claim; payouts can be kept secret. The fund expires before the next election. The administration has already paid over $1m each to Michael Flynn and Carter Page; many of the 1,600 Capitol rioters Mr Trump pardoned on his first day back in office are expected to apply, as are pardoned anti-abortion activists and police officers. Ken Griffin, whose returns were also leaked by Mr Littlejohn, sought only an apology.
Trump's open transactionalism has incentivised companies, countries and individuals to pay for access and favour. A delegation of Swiss businessmen arrived at the Oval Office bearing a gold bar and a Rolex clock; days later America's tariff rate on Switzerland dropped by more than half. Qatar gave Trump a presidential jet worth $400m, bound eventually for his library; subsequently the Gulf state won approval to build a training facility for its fighter pilots at an air-force base in Idaho. Trump spritzed a foreign leader in the Oval Office with the perfume he hawks, declaring: "It's the best fragrance."
His entry into crypto has created new avenues for self-enrichment. Estimates by Reuters suggest revenues at the Trump Organisation reached $864m in the first half of 2025, up from $51m a year earlier; more than 90% came from cryptocurrency. The UAE fund MGX bought $2bn-worth of World Liberty Financial tokens; two weeks later Trump agreed to let the UAE buy the most coveted AI chips—a privilege denied by the Biden administration. Negotiating the chip deal for the Americans was Steve Witkoff, whose son is the boss of World Liberty Financial; opposite him was the brother of the Emirati crown prince, the chairman of MGX.
Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, who had spent four months in prison after pleading guilty to facilitating money-laundering. He also pardoned Trevor Milton, the founder of an electric-truck manufacturer whose family had donated $1.8m to Trump's 2024 campaign, and Paul Walczak, a health-care executive whose mother had recently paid $1m to attend a dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Since January Trump has pardoned ten politicians convicted of various forms of self-dealing. Sam Mangel, a clemency consultant, said he was retained by 28 applicants in 2025, up from one during Joe Biden's entire term. Some lobbyists marketing "executive relief" charge seven-figure success fees.
The DoJ has gutted its political-corruption unit and vastly narrowed the scope for bringing foreign-bribery cases.
National Guard troops had been on "presence patrol" in Washington, DC for months before two soldiers were critically wounded in a shooting on November 26th 2025, blocks from the White House. Trump called it an "act of terror". The alleged attacker was a 29-year-old Afghan who arrived in 2021 aboard an evacuation flight after the Taliban takeover of Kabul. He—along with more than 70,000 other Afghans—had received a temporary right to remain through a programme authorised by Joe Biden. Within hours the agency in charge of visa processing halted all requests from Afghans. Trump promised to "re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden". A federal judge had recently ruled the Guard's deployment in DC illegal; the administration cited the attack in its legal filings. Trump called up 500 more guardsmen to the capital.
Until 2025, presidents had federalised National Guard troops without a governor's consent only five times. In October 2025 Trump ordered about 700 of the National Guard—300 from Illinois, 400 from Texas—into federal service, citing violent demonstrations near Chicago's immigration-enforcement facilities. He invoked Section 12406 of Title 10, which lets presidents call Guard units into service when a "rebellion" threatens federal authority. J.B. Pritzker, Illinois's Democratic governor, balked, insisting state police were keeping order. Illinois and the city of Chicago sued; a district-court judge blocked the deployment. The Supreme Court took the case as Trump v Illinois. Illinois contended that the protests "drew only small groups" and "never hindered the continued operation of the ICE facility". The court had not faced a question like this since Martin v Mott in 1827.
Trump's 32-page National Security Strategy (NSS), published on December 4th/5th 2025, amounts to what Rebecca Lissner, who helped draft Joe Biden's NSS, calls "the first MAGA national security strategy". The document labels its approach "flexible realism" and self-consciously dumps past ideologies: it is pragmatic but not "pragmatist"; realistic but not "realist"; muscular but not "hawkish"; restrained but not "doveish". It was written and rewritten by a small group of aides with little of the usual bureaucratic consultation.
The NSS envisages a Darwinian world in which America aims for a "balance of power" that, at times, smacks of spheres of influence. "The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations," it opines. "Democracy" appears less often than in previous strategies; "economy" and "economic" much more frequently. Language about working with "partners" has been replaced by America's "wants".
The document introduces the "Trump Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine, calling for restoring "American pre-eminence in the western hemisphere" and protecting America's "access to key geographies". It says America will "deny non-hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets" and talks of using leverage to push out foreign firms building infrastructure and give "sole-source contracts" to American ones. The western hemisphere is now the foremost regional priority.
On China, the NSS was reportedly delayed by Scott Bessent's insistence that hostility to China be toned down. Many passages appear to describe China without naming it. The document mentions China mainly in relation to trade, expressing hopes for "a genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing". On December 8th Trump authorised the sale of Nvidia's H200 chips to China, saying 25% of the proceeds would go to the government.
The document declares "mass migration" the greatest threat facing the West, and pledges to support populist-right parties in Europe that promise to secure borders there. It does not mention the possibility that Russia might be a threat. The NSS renews America's commitment to deterring attacks on Taiwan.
On Europe, the NSS argues that Europeans' "lack of self-confidence"—not the invasion of Ukraine—causes them to see Russia as an "existential threat". It calls for halting NATO's expansion, and speaks of backing "healthy" European countries and "patriotic" parties, and of "cultivating resistance" to current policies, including on migration. It signals a determination to work with ideological allies across the continent, from Reform UK to the Alternative for Germany. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the adjustments "correspond in many ways to our vision."
A Reagan Institute poll published around the same time found strong majorities for hawkish globalism: 64% of Americans want their country to take the lead in international affairs; 68% view NATO favourably (the highest since the survey began in 2018); 62% want Ukraine to prevail; and 60% support committing American forces to defend Taiwan.
The war in Iran has diminished Trump's three political superpowers: his ability to impose his own reality on the world, his use of leverage and his hold on the Republican Party. As of mid-March 2026, 13 American service personnel had died. Average petrol and diesel prices reached $3.88 and $5.09 a gallon, compared with $3.11 and $3.72 at his inauguration. A mere 36% of Americans approved of his handling of Iran. Because petrol taxes tend to be lower in Republican-run states, a rise in the oil price leads to steeper pump-price increases in red states than in blue ones. Republican support for the war is strong but softening; a vocal MAGA faction, notably Tucker Carlson, talks of betrayal. Republicans are now considered highly likely to lose control of the House in the November 2026 midterms; their chances of losing the Senate have risen by ten points to about 50%. When Trump called on America's allies to help open the Strait of Hormuz, warning that NATO faced a "very bad" future if they refused, they turned him down. Brent crude spiked to more than $110 a barrel on March 18th. Iran has signalled it will grant safe passage through the strait to ships from friendly countries, using access as a bargaining tool; if the waterway remains closed until the end of April, the oil price could reach $150 a barrel.
On March 21st Trump gave Iran an ultimatum: reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours or face the bombing of its power plants. Two days later—two hours before markets opened on Monday—he reversed himself, announcing "very good and productive conversations" about a possible deal. Diplomats in the region say Trump was exaggerating; America and Iran had not spoken directly. He said he had exchanged messages with a "top person" in Iran, understood to be Muhammad Bagher Qalibaf, the parliamentary speaker.
After Pakistan brokered a two-week ceasefire, J.D. Vance led a delegation to Islamabad for face-to-face talks on April 11th. After 21 hours of negotiations, Vance said America and Iran had failed to reach an agreement. The two sides could not agree even on what plan they were to discuss: they disputed whether the ceasefire covered Lebanon, being attacked so hard by Israel that the threat to the broader truce seemed intentional, and disagreed over how Iran should reopen the strait. Trump has even mused about splitting the strait revenues with Iran.
The campaign, dubbed Operation Epic Fury, lasted nearly as long as the 1991 Gulf War. Roger Pielke of the American Enterprise Institute estimates the war has cost a typical American family $400 a month, by making fuel and fertiliser more expensive. On April 3rd 2026 Trump proposed a budget that would raise defence spending by 40%, suggesting the states should take on more domestic responsibilities. "It's not possible for [the federal government] to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things," he told a private audience. "We have to take care of one thing. We have to guard the country."
On April 12th 2026 Trump attacked Pope Leo XIV on social media, calling the pope "WEAK" on crime and "terrible" at diplomacy, after Leo had directly criticised Trump's threat to obliterate Iranian civilisation as "truly unacceptable". He also released an AI-generated image depicting himself as Jesus, which he later deleted.
On March 11th 2026, with the country at war, Trump made a rare appearance on the campaign trail in Kentucky to boost a primary challenger to Thomas Massie, a libertarian Republican who had defied him over the Epstein files and the war. Trump called Massie "disloyal to the United States". His allies were also spending millions in solidly Republican Indiana to back primary challengers to state legislators who had opposed his demand to gerrymander congressional districts. He declared he would not sign anything into law until Congress passed the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship and impose other burdensome regulations on voting; the bill passed the House but lacked enough Senate support.
On March 6th 2026 the administration published a new cyber-strategy document—seven pages, light on detail, but pugilistic in tone, pivoting firmly from defence to offence. "We will act swiftly, deliberately and proactively to disable cyber-threats to America," it declared, promising to disrupt threats "before they breach our networks". The strategy encourages private firms to play a larger role in disrupting foreign threats. Curiously, it makes no explicit mention of China's vast hacking operations, Russia's cyber-sabotage in Europe, or North Korea's cyber-crime. The NSA and Pentagon Cyber Command went without a Senate-confirmed leader for almost a year after Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer, reportedly urged Trump to fire the incumbent; the new commander has no direct experience in cyber-operations.
On March 19th 2026 the US Commission of Fine Arts approved a golden coin bearing Trump's likeness to commemorate America's 250th birthday. It depicts Trump leaning over a desk with fists clenched, brow furrowed and cheekbones chiselled, with the word "liberty" above him and an eagle on the reverse. Federal law bars living presidents from appearing on currency; the administration used a loophole allowing the US Mint to issue commemorative gold coins without explicit congressional approval. The last time a living American president appeared on a coin was in 1926, when Calvin Coolidge appeared on one celebrating America's 150th birthday. Gigantic banners bearing Trump's "big, beautiful face" also hang outside government buildings across Washington.
When touring George Washington's Mount Vernon estate, Trump reportedly said: "You've got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you." The Trump Gold Card, which for $1m allows the bearer to live in America, features the president's image larger than the Statue of Liberty.
Trump has long hoped for a Cuban government he could do business with. As far back as 1998 one of his companies, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, explored an investment in Cuba, in apparent violation of the American embargo. Ten years later he registered his trademark in Cuba. His national-security memorandum of June 2025 laid out ambitions for "more freedom and democracy" and "respect for human rights" in Cuba, though his piety about human rights is, as with sovereignty, largely instrumental. According to John Kavulich of the US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, Trump wants a partner that will import American products and services: "If you can do that, he really doesn't care what name is on your government." In mid-March 2026 he gloated: "I think I can do anything I want with it." He dispatched ICE agents to airports to help with TSA staffing shortages and said of the DHS funding standoff: "I think any deal they make, I'm pretty much not happy with."
Congress has been unable to check Trump's power, with Republican members fearing primary challenges. Four Republican senators joined Democrats to pass a resolution ending tariffs on Canada, but it failed in the House. Trump's executive actions have largely bypassed both Congress and internal executive-branch constraints. The post-Watergate norm of an arm's-length Department of Justice has ended under his second term.
Anarchy may not be a better form of government, but it's better than no government at all.