Analysis: Trump has been on a roll for the ages — but blowback could be looming

CNN

2 days ago

Nearly seven months into his second term, President Donald Trump is riding high on far-reaching policy wins and unchallenged personal power plays, barging into every corner of American life to impose his will and worldview.
But his presidency may be about to enter a new phase, as the policy and political consequences of his relentless pace begin to unfold and the lives of Americans and millions overseas feel the impact of his relentless ambition.
He's done everything, quickly, and all at once.
He's obsessed with slaying his biggest dragons — like global free trade — and more homespun goals that most presidents might not bother with — like reinstating a Presidential Fitness Test in schools or putting his architectural stamp on the White House.
His trade push is classic Trump. He imposed the most punitive tariffs on imports since the Great Depression — based on a lifelong personal obsession with an economic theory mocked by experts. He says he's reviving manufacturing — but the sector lost a combined net 14,000 jobs in May and June, according to federal data.
And the tariffs — a tax on everyone who buys goods — could spike inflation.
The president has been as good as his word and secured the southern border, honoring a promise that helped him win back the White House.
But will Americans now recoil at his draconian deportation methods as federal agents in masks sweep their neighbors off the streets and the administration builds armed camps to hold undocumented migrants?
Trump scored a legislative triumph by passing his 'big, beautiful bill' and extending his first-term tax cuts. The White House insists the measure will unleash roaring economic growth and job creation. But how will this giveaway to the rich look if it shuts down rural hospitals and thousands of people lose Medicaid?
Trump's Health and Human Services secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr., is vowing to 'Make America Healthy Again.' But the risks are enormous, especially if Kennedy's cancellation of a half-billion dollars in funding on inoculations like the ones that ended the Covid-19 pandemic expose the US to a new public health crisis that could cost thousands of lives.
Trump is meanwhile poised for his most consequential foreign policy move yet, as he hosts Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday to try to repair his failed bid to end the Ukraine war. A breakthrough could save thousands of lives and might even deliver his longed-for Nobel Prize. But if he caves to Putin's demands, Trump could make a historic error that paves the way to future Russian expansionism and shatters his White House-conjured image as 'the president of peace.'
There's a common thread running through most of Trump's actions — whether it's browbeating political enemies and weaponizing the legal system or forcing trade concessions out of small and vulnerable nations. He's always assessing his leverage over an adversary and seeking to impose his personal will.
But while showcasing American might can be effective, Trump is also alienating allies who were force multipliers of US global power. What happens the next time America wants help from its friends — for instance after a 9/11-style attack? Will disaffected populations allow leaders he bullied to rush to America's defense? Trump meanwhile may also be pushing angry allies into the arms of a new superpower — China. And his failure so far to wring trade concessions out of a Beijing that keeps dealing its rare-earth metals trump card may render his broader trade agenda hollow.
Trump's gambles are huge and risky. Perhaps many will pay off. But history is full of presidents who misread their mandate and overreached.
If some of Trump's most ambitious policies trigger adverse results, the coming months could show whether political gravity will assert itself.
The president is already underwater in polls. His approval rating is in the mid-to-low 40s in most surveys. And the administration's failure to quell the scandal over its refusal to release the Jeffrey Epstein files has meanwhile exposed a split in Trump's base for the first time.
A perilous national moment could arrive if public opinion turns sharply against Trump and Republicans seem about to pay the price in next year's midterm elections. This, after all, is a president who believes he has almost unlimited power and tried to steal an election he lost in 2020.
Trump's growing authoritarian streak shines through his unlocking of vast executive powers through dubious national emergencies. His assaults on the judiciary, the media, universities and officials in previous administrations already threaten the principles of republican government. This comes a year before he presides over the 250th anniversary of the American revolution, which shook off the unaccountable whims of kings — whom Trump increasingly resembles.
The president is already hedging against a political backlash.
Some of his recent moves, including the firing of the government official who presides over unemployment data and his attempt to craft five new US House seats from an unprecedented mid-cycle gerrymander in Texas, look like attempts to subvert reality and to avoid paying the political price if the economy goes sour.
Tariffs are the most stunning example of Trump's success in changing political and economic convention. America spent decades building a global free trade system. Trump has destroyed it in a matter of weeks.
'We're taking in trillions of dollars,' Trump said in an interview with CNBC last week, speaking of revenues flowing into the government from import duties. But while Trump never admits it, the ultimate price for tariffs will be paid by American consumers who are already tired of the higher cost of groceries and housing.
The administration says the global economy will adjust to tariff rates starting at 10% and rising much higher for some countries — and that every American will be better off. So far, Trump has escaped the worst consequences of reforms opposed by almost every economist.
'Right now, the tariffs are not necessarily creating the kind of economic chaos that I think was forecast,' Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster and strategist and CNN political commentator, said on 'State of the Union' on Sunday. But things will change if higher prices filter down to consumers. 'It is hard to message your way out of a situation … if prices are really going up, if these retailers are saying, 'We have been absorbing some of this for a little while, but we're going to have to stop.' There is a real potential for political blowback.'
Trump has been on a dayslong victory lap, touting trade deals after intimidating partners like Japan, Indonesia and the European Union into agreements that lopsidedly benefited the US. But the small print of such deals suggests they are less impressive than they seem. Hundreds of billions of dollars in promised foreign investment in the US is questionable. Foreign governments can't force firms to spend in the US. And most of the deals do not, as Trump claims, throw open protected sectors of foreign markets to US goods.
At best, they include pledges for the US and its trade adversaries to work together to find solutions. And while trade with the US is tariffed — other nations can still trade freely among themselves, meaning they have an incentive to find non-American markets.
Another perilous area for Trump is over immigration — his signature issue that twice helped him win the presidency but led to extreme enforcement efforts that alienated moderates in his first term. The approach has been even more punitive in his second. Flights of undocumented migrants have left for El Salvador and an oppressive prison. The due process rights of some migrants have been infringed. And the administration plans more migrant camps like the already notorious 'Alligator Alcatraz' in Florida. This has been accompanied by performative toughness to appeal to Trump's most hardline voters.
But Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a border-state Democrat, warned Sunday that Trump had gone too far. 'The border security issue under President Biden was not working. And I pushed the administration on that,' Kelly said on CBS' 'Face the Nation.' 'But we have now swung drastically in another direction. And I don't think this is what the American people want either.'
In a CNN poll last month, 55% of respondents said the president had gone too far when it comes to deporting immigrants living in the US illegally. That number has climbed 10 points since February. Majorities also oppose the construction of big detention centers to hold arrested migrants and the billions of dollars in spending that was included in Trump's big policy bill.
Passing that bill was Trump's greatest legislative achievement of his two terms. It was more impressive given the GOP's tiny House majority. But it's also one of the most unpopular things Trump has ever done. Roughly 6 in 10 Americans oppose the bill and a majority expects it will hurt the economy.
Trump is a singular politician, and he's been helped by a Republican Party that marches to his tune and a Democratic Party that doesn't have one.
But unless Trump shattered political logic while he was breaking the mold of the presidency, a reckoning could be looming.
What happens next will define how history remembers his second term.