WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has promised to take drastic measures in a second term. The former president and now president-elect has often omitted details, but through more than a year of policy statements and written communications he has outlined a broad agenda that combines traditional conservative approaches on tax, regulation and cultural issues with a more populist bent toward trade and a change in the international role of the United States. Trump’s agenda would also reduce the federal government’s efforts on civil rights and expand presidential powers. A look at what Trump has proposed:
Immigration: ”Build the wall!” of his 2016 campaign has become creating “the largest mass deportation program in history.” Trump has proposed using the National Guard and empowering domestic police forces in the effort. However, Trump has been short on details of what the program would look like and how he would ensure it only targeted people in the United States illegally.
He has proposed “ideological filtering” for potential entrants, ending birthright citizenship (which would almost certainly require a constitutional change) and said he would reinstate policies from his first term such as “Remain in Mexico,” limiting migrants for public health reasons and severely limiting or prohibiting the entry of people from certain Muslim-majority nations. Taken together, the approach would not only crack down on illegal migration, but limit immigration overall.
Abortion: Trump has downplayed abortion as a priority for a second term, even as he took credit for the Supreme Court ending a woman’s federal right to terminate a pregnancy and returning abortion regulation to state governments. At Trump’s insistence, the Republican Party platform, for the first time in decades, did not call for a national ban on abortion. Trump maintains that overturning Roe v. Wade is enough at the federal level.
Taxes: Trump’s tax policies lean heavily toward corporations and the wealthiest Americans. This is mainly due to his promise to extend his 2017 tax reform, with some notable changes including reducing the corporate income tax rate to 15% from the current 21%. This also involves reversing Democratic President Joe Biden’s income tax increases on the wealthiest Americans and eliminating Inflation Reduction Act levies that fund energy measures aimed at combating climate change.
Tariffs and trade: Trump’s stance on international trade is to distrust global markets as detrimental to American interests. He proposes tariffs of 10% to 20% on foreign goods, and in some speeches he has mentioned even higher percentages. He vows to reinstate an August 2020 executive order that requires the Food and Drug Administration to purchase only “essential” drugs from U.S. companies. It pledges to block purchases of “any vital infrastructure” in the United States by Chinese buyers.
Diversity, LGBTQ and civil rights: Trump has called for a rollback of societal emphasis on diversity and legal protections for LGBTQ citizens. He has called for an end to diversity, equity and inclusion programs in government institutions, using federal funds as leverage.
On transgender rights, Trump generally promises to end “boys in girls’ sports,” a practice he insists, without evidence, is widespread. But his policies go far beyond the standard applause lines of his rally speeches. Among other ideas, Trump would repeal the Biden administration’s policy of extending Title IX civil rights protections to transgender students, and ask Congress to require only two genders to be recognized at birth.
Regulation, federal bureaucracy and presidential power: The president-elect seeks to reduce the role of federal bureaucrats and regulations in economic sectors. Trump frames all regulatory cuts as an economic magic wand. It promises precipitous drops in American households’ utility bills by removing obstacles to fossil fuel production, including opening all federal lands to exploration, even though U.S. energy production is already at record levels. Trump promises to unleash housing construction by cutting regulations, although most construction rules come from state and local governments. It also says it would put an end to “frivolous litigation by environmental extremists.”
The approach would strengthen the influence of the executive branch in many ways. That power would come more directly from the White House.
It would make it easier to fire federal workers by classifying thousands of them as outside civil service protections. This could weaken the government’s power to enforce statutes and rules by reducing the number of employees participating in the work and potentially imposing a chilling effect on those who remain.
Trump also claims that presidents have sole power to control federal spending even after Congress has appropriated money. Trump argues that lawmakers’ budget actions “establish a ceiling” on spending but not a floor, meaning the president’s constitutional duty to “faithfully execute the laws” includes discretion over whether to spend the money. This interpretation could set up a legal battle with Congress.
As a candidate, he also suggested that the Federal Reserve, an independent entity that sets interest rates, should be subject to more presidential power. Although he has not offered details, any such move would represent a momentous change in how the US economic and monetary systems work.
Education: The federal Department of Education could be eliminated in a second Trump term. That doesn’t mean Trump wants Washington out of the classroom. It still proposes, among other maneuvers, to use federal funds as leverage to pressure K-12 school systems to abolish tenure and adopt merit pay for teachers and to eliminate diversity programs at all levels of education. It calls for withdrawing federal funding “for any school or program that promotes Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content to our children.”
In higher education, Trump proposes taking control of the accreditation processes for universities, a move he describes as his “secret weapon” against the “Marxist maniacs and lunatics” he says control higher education. Trump takes aim at higher education endowments, saying he will collect “billions of dollars” from schools through “taxes, fines and lawsuits on excessively large private university endowments” on schools that do not comply with his edicts. This would almost certainly end in protracted legal fights.
As in other policy areas, Trump is not actually proposing to limit federal power in higher education but to strengthen it. Calls to redirect money from confiscated estates toward an online “American Academy” that offers college credentials to all Americans tuition-free. “It will be strictly apolitical, and no ‘woke’ tendencies or jihadism will be allowed, none of that will be allowed,” Trump said on November 1, 2023.
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid: Trump insists he would protect Social Security and Medicare, popular programs geared toward older Americans and among the largest pieces of the federal spending pie each year. There are questions about how his proposal to not tax tips and overtime wages could affect Social Security and Medicare. If such plans eventually involved only income taxes, social benefit programs would not be affected. But exempting those wages from payroll taxes would reduce the flow of funds for Social Security and Medicare disbursements. Trump has said little about Medicaid, but his first administration generally leaned toward approving state requests for waivers of various federal rules and broadly supported state-level work requirements for recipients.
Affordable Care Act and health care: As he has done since 2015, Trump calls for repealing the Affordable Care Act and its subsidized health insurance markets. But he has not yet proposed a replacement: In a September debate, he insisted he had the “concepts of a plan.” In the final stages of the campaign, Trump highlighted his alliance with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a critic of vaccines and pesticides used in American agriculture. Trump repeatedly told crowds at rallies that he would put Kennedy in charge of “making America healthy again.”
Climate and energy: Trump, who falsely claims that climate change is a “hoax,” criticizes Biden-era spending on cleaner energy designed to reduce America’s dependence on fossil fuels. It proposes an energy policy, and spending on transportation infrastructure, anchored to fossil fuels: roads, bridges and combustion engine vehicles. ”Drill, drill!” was a regular chant at Trump rallies. Trump says he is not opposed to electric vehicles but promises to end all Biden incentives to encourage development of the electric vehicle market. Trump also promises to roll back Biden-era fuel efficiency standards.
Workers’ rights: Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance framed their candidacy as pro-worker in the United States. But Trump could make it harder for workers to unionize. When discussing auto workers, Trump focused almost exclusively on Biden’s push toward electric vehicles. When he mentioned unions, it was often to lump together “union bosses and CEOs” as complicit in “this disastrous electric car scheme.” In a statement on October 23, 2023, Trump said of the United Auto Workers, “I tell you, you shouldn’t be paying those dues.”
National Defense and America’s Role in the World: Trump’s rhetoric and political approach to world affairs is more isolationist diplomatically, noninterventionist militarily, and protectionist economically than the United States has been since World War II. But the details are more complicated. He promises military expansion, promises to protect Pentagon spending from austerity efforts and proposes a new missile defense shield, an old idea from the Reagan era during the Cold War. Trump insists he can end Russia’s war in Ukraine and the war between Israel and Hamas, without explaining how. Trump summarizes his approach through another Reagan phrase: “peace through strength.” But he remains critical of NATO and senior US military leaders. “I don’t consider them leaders,” Trump said of the Pentagon officials Americans “watch on television.” He has repeatedly praised authoritarians such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
