Journal writers look ahead to Trump 47
Our hopes, fears and expectations for the first non-consecutive White House term in 132 years.
What is your greatest hope for the second Trump term?
Karl Rove, columnist: That President Trump learned in the past eight years to keep the focus on the big things that the American people care about. That would require him to abandon his desire for retribution and domination of the political stage. Both would sap his energy, diminish his political capital, and lessen his chance for a productive second term.
Kyle Peterson, editorial board member: Not to jinx it, but is there some chance of finally getting serious about pruning an overgrown government? Mr Trump’s cabinet secretaries are raring to deregulate, and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy promise to identify unproductive government make-work. If they start a running list of bureaucratic output that looks ferociously useless, maybe Congress could rescind some of its many orders and delegations to the D.C. apparatuses.
Barton Swaim, editorial page writer: I hope Democratic politicians and commentators consider the possibility that they overinterpreted the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. For the past four years they seemed to think that admittedly disgraceful event justified every over-the-top accusation they made since 2016 and every attempt to destroy Mr. Trump since. But voters didn’t buy it. Democrats would do themselves an enormous favour by internalising an unfortunate but important truth: that 2020 was an idiotic year in which many Americans, including many well-heeled liberals, said and did a lot of ludicrous things. A majority of voters has chosen to forgive and forget. As liberals said after another impeachment, it’s time to move on.
Gerard Baker, columnist: Mr. Trump has a rare opportunity to vanquish for good the progressive ascendancy that has done so much damage to the nation’s institutions for decades and to re-establish the primacy of America’s global standing. In overcoming the challenges he has faced in the past few years, he has shown astonishing personal resilience and political skill. It is devoutly to be hoped that he can deploy those character strengths for America’s greater unity and success.
Matthew Hennessey, deputy editorial features editor: Growth matters. Americans are naturally optimistic. They believe in their bones that tomorrow will be better than today. But they will rescind the GOP’s majority in 2026 if it doesn’t cut taxes, reduce burdensome regulation and get the growth engine humming. Tariffs, industrial policy and net-zero immigration hinder the growth that Americans need and want. I hope the White House economic team understands that.
William McGurn, columnist: I hope that the press will reconsider its treatment of Trump voters. Mr Trump has to expect pushback when he insults people, but ordinary Americans who support him have become used to a press that considers MAGA a synonym for “fascist.” The most recent absurd example was Pete Hegseth’s tattoo of the Jerusalem cross — the same cross featured on the cover of Jimmy Carter’s funeral program — as evidence of “white nationalism.” Maybe self-reflection from the press is too much to hope for.
Tunku Varadarajan, contributor: My greatest hope is that Mr. Trump becomes a 21st-century Reagan. The two presidents diverge on many policies, but their personal effect on America’s morale could be comparably electrifying. Mr Trump could jolt it out of its malaise, prod it out of its defeatism, and lance the boils of wokeism that mar the body politic. This wouldn’t merely bring joy to this country; it would be welcomed by the world. Demand for a strong America is huge and global. For the past four years there’s been little supply.
What is your biggest fear?
Kimberley A. Strassel, columnist: The horseshoe theory of politics holds that the far left and far right tend to converge. Under Mr. Trump’s leadership, Republicans are chasing populist economic policies that sound much like the Bernie Sanders left. Mr Trump’s first-term success came from a Reaganesque agenda: broadbased tax cuts, deregulation, muscular foreign policy. Yet a subsection of the party, including JD Vance, is increasingly focused on populist policies — handouts to families, crackdowns on business, price controls, industrial policy, even ending right-to-work laws. Mr Trump got in on the act with promises to exempt tips and overtime from income taxes, limit credit-card interest rates, and ramp up tariffs. If this continues, the GOP may cease to be the party of free markets and limited government — and the economy will suffer.
Gerard Baker: That Mr. Trump has neither the self-discipline nor the interest in governing to secure the historic change he has the opportunity to achieve. If he uses his power to pursue vendettas, places his personal interests and vanity above the country’s needs, further coarsens and embitters the public discourse, and marginalises constructive dissenters, he will deepen our divisions and weaken the country he leads. I fear that liberation from his many trials of recent years may bring the less benign qualities of the man’s character to the fore.
Tunku Varadarajan: My biggest fear is that another four years with Mr. Trump will lead the Democrats to embrace even more self-destructively the policies that lost them the 2024 election. So come 2029, Mr. Trump will leave a GOP rudderless without its cultic leader and a Democratic Party more awful than ever.
Matthew Hennessey: War between the U.S. and China. Xi Jinping seems intent on taking Taiwan by force, and America has promised before the world to defend Taiwan militarily. If that happens, things could quickly get out of hand. If the U.S. stands back as China takes Taiwan, the outcome would be even worse. Deterring Beijing from invading in the first place should be Mr. Trump’s top priority in dealing with Mr. Xi.
Allysia Finley, editorial board member: I worry there will be a recession or financial crack-up, which Democrats will blame on Mr. Trump no matter the actual cause. The economy now appears strong, but there are signs that the labour market is cooling. The Biden administration has covered up problems in the housing market by waiving and reducing mortgage payments. Asset prices are stretched, and leverage in financial markets has increased. The European and Chinese economies have slowed, and their problems could dent U.S. growth. If there is a recession, Congress and Mr. Trump will almost certainly respond with a fire hose of spending, which would increase debt and borrowing costs. This could set Democrats up to retake Washington in 2028.
Collin Levy, editorial board member: My biggest fear is that the isolationist voices in the MAGA base will minimise threats to U.S. security and push rapprochement with adversaries such as “smart” Vladimir Putin and “brilliant” Xi Jinping. On the intelligence front, the worst thing that could happen would be a failure next year to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, an indispensable tool for collecting information from foreigners overseas. Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, has disparaged Section 702. She changed position recently, and let’s hope she means it.
Mene Ukueberuwa, editorial board member: Americans are desperate for their incomes to catch up with prices, and tax reform will be Mr. Trump’s biggest lever. His challenge will be to exclude juicy carve-outs that sound good in a stump speech but do little to boost work and wages. A local tax deduction here and an exemption for tips there would also siphon revenue that could be used to offset rate cuts for households and businesses. If Mr. Trump lets his tax bill get too muddled, it could become an economic dud and doom Republicans in future elections. Tariffs are another trap. Mr Trump’s legacy may depend on whittling them down to something much smaller than the 10% levy he’s proposed for all imports. Achieving rapid real wage growth would be hard enough with no new tariff. With one or several in place, the odds of Bidenesque stagnation would be much higher.
Kyle Peterson: Erratic, ad hoc, ungrounded decision-making. A Truth Social post from Mr. Trump at 1:29am on a Sunday … declaring that imports from Denmark (except beautiful Greenland) are hereby subject to a 35% tariff … or summarily firing chief of staff Susie Wiles because she’s “DUMB AS A ROCK” … or promising that American forces will exit South Korea by July 4 … or announcing that the Navy’s next aircraft carrier will be named the USS Covfefe … or pledging to make bitcoin legal tender … or demanding that the GOP, as the “party of workers,” raise taxes and embrace union priorities. It’s easy to forget, four years after the fact, how much of the first Trump administration was a daily death match between sensible and screwball ideas.
Barton Swaim: On Tuesday the Yale historian Timothy Snyder reflected that “Trump’s nomination of Hegseth is best understood as a decapitation strike against the republic. A Christian Reconstructionist war on Americans led from the Department of Defense is likely to break the United States.” The vast majority of people take stuff like this for what it is: self-indulgent hysteria. A few will take it seriously. God forbid one acts on it.
What do you expect?
Allysia Finley: Nonstop chaos and gridlock. The GOP’s narrow majority in the House will make it difficult to extend the 2017 tax reform or do much of anything else. Democrats will likely retake the House in 2026 and launch more investigations into the administration. They may also try to lure Mr. Trump into cutting deals on spending or on regulation of politically popular targets — pharmacy benefit managers, social-media companies, drugmakers. Trump appointees will move ahead on deregulation, but the administration will be riven by divisions over trade and foreign policy. Administration policy will change by the day or hour, depending on who last spoke with the president. China will try to cozy up to Mr. Trump but will also test his mettle with more cyberintrusions and depredations in the South China Sea. Yet although his second term will be less successful than his first, Americans will get a welcome respite from progressive cultural imperialism.
Kyle Peterson: Good days and bad days, with the ratio determined by how Mr. Trump chooses to use his unexpected political leeway. He won a clean victory in November, or maybe it’s more accurate to say that Kamala Harris (and Joe Biden) decisively lost. Either way, this clear statement by the voters matters, and Democrats already sound more open to controlling illegal migration. Mr Trump, in other words, has political capital. His history suggests he’ll sometimes spend it wisely, sometimes fritter it away, and sometimes light a pile of it on fire just to bask in the glow.
Gerard Baker: Serious economic turbulence. An expansion built on the sands of massive spending, a handful of tech giants, and a plentiful supply of cheap, illegal migrant labour, combined with a timid Federal Reserve that acts like the hapless respondent to monthly economic data and a political class that believes in the perpetual-motion machine of ever-expanding federal deficits — all is ripe for a reckoning. The U.S. remains the undisputed global economic leader, but there is more than the usual whiff of cyclical accountability in the air. Mr Trump may find himself as much at the mercy of events as the master of them.
Daniel Henninger, columnist: A striking element of Mr. Trump’s victory was that he increased his vote share across so many demographics and districts. His voters want real wage gains and inflation tamed. His own economic priority is imposing a tariff regime on much of the world. A big question is how a grand scheme of tariffs will interact with the complexities of a new tax bill and Mr. Trump’s energy policies. If he doesn’t produce a tangible economic upside within two years, these newly acquired voters will turn against him. He has the GOP unified behind him. What I will be looking for from day one is whether he has acquired the political savvy, skills and focus to achieve his ambitious economic goals.
Matthew Hennessey: I expect it all — a bit of bumbling, plenty of bluster, a manufactured media scandal every week. Another impeachment wouldn’t surprise me. The left will go beyond ballistic if Mr. Trump gets to nominate another Supreme Court justice. And while there’s no way the U.S. gets the Panama Canal back, I put the chances of acquiring Greenland at better than 50/50. It makes strategic sense and the arguments against it aren’t terribly persuasive. I expect Mr. Trump to make Denmark an offer it can’t refuse.
Tunku Varadarajan: A better economy than most imagine and more peace in the world than most predict.
Karl Rove: For the next four years, we’ll be continually surprised by Mr. Trump’s words and deeds — many good, some bad, and a lot unexpected or entertaining. He will take Americans along on a wild ride as we celebrate our country’s 250th anniversary. The dissonance will be confounding at times. Buckle up, buttercups.
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