Image Credit: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons
Since his re-election as President in November 2024, and the commencement of his second term in January 2025, Trump’s presidency has been marked by decisions and outcomes that might have once been described as term-defining moments. But their frequency over the past two years has arguably reduced the attention given to any single one, as new announcements and social media posts have followed in quick succession.
With Americans having cast their ballots and elected a Democrat-dominated Congress this week, it seems pertinent to revisit key landmark decisions in the first half of Trump’s second term, and to consider what the outcome of these midterm elections could mean for the next 2 years in American politics.
Economic Tariffs
From the start of Trump’s second term, it's been near-impossible to check the news without seeing mention of Trump’s tariffs, which he argued would encourage Americans to buy domestic products and boost investment from foreign countries. While the Supreme Court struck down some of Trump's imposed tariffs, enacted under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, more than half of US Goods imports are still affected by Trump’s tariffs, implemented under different statutory authorities. Research by the Tax Foundation illustrates the real economic impact of these tariffs on Americans, estimating that the tariffs increased by an average of $1,000 per US household in 2025 prior to the Supreme Court ruling. Further research conducted by Goldman Sachs anticipated that US consumers would bear the economic brunt of the tariffs, absorbing 55% of tariff costs by the end of 2025, with foreign exporters absorbing only 18%. This is because tariffs function as a tax on imported goods, the ultimate cost of which is passed from importers and retailers to the consumer in the form of inflated prices.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Another story that once dominated the news cycle worldwide; since returning to office Trump has pursued ‘the largest domestic deportation operation’ in US history. This pursuit has pushed the boundaries of presidential power, including; the enablement of military action by declaring a national emergency on the Southern border; expanded expedited removals, allowing the deportation of undocumented immigrants without a court hearing; and more than 600 deportation flights, sometimes sending migrants to third countries to which they have no ties (ruled unlawful by a federal judge in February 2026). Further to this, by January 2026, almost 69,000 people were being held in ICE detention centres, with immigration authorities having targeted workplaces, farms, university campuses, and private homes to meet their reported daily arrest quota of 3,000 undocumented immigrants.
Department of Government Efficiency
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was established to reduce federal spending and increase efficiency, led initially by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. The actual impact of the department on spend cutting, however, was limited, and further effects were largely negative. Despite Trump’s claim that “we found hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse”, Professor Betsey Stevenson at Ford School, stated that “DOGE has managed to save every American, at most, one or two cups of coffee”, reinforced by the US Government Accountability Office that found DOGE’s self-reported savings figures ‘vastly inflated and unreliable’. Furthermore, a congressional report found that the contracts DOGE has terminated and spending it has frozen largely reflect policy disagreements with the Biden administration rather than waste, fraud or abuse. The impact of DOGE on the USAID programme, responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and global development assistance, had also been severe, with conservative estimates showing that 750,000 people have already died unnecessarily due to these cuts, and that those numbers could potentially be up to 14 million over the next five years, according to Oxfam.
These landmark decisions provide just a glimpse of the political turbulence the US has experienced over the past 2 years. Backed by a Republican-dominated Congress, the president has been empowered to challenge the boundaries of presidential power. But that’s about to change with the results of this week’s midterm elections meaning that the Democrats hold a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. With the agreement of both chambers of Congress necessary to pass federal legislation, this will represent a significant constraint on the president’s power. Nevertheless, having passed more than 140 executive orders in his first 100 days in office, outpacing the legislative output of Congress in the same period, it's unclear whether Trump will be restricted by this eventuality at all.