The Trump agenda: Here’s what to expect from his second term

Armed with a better understanding of government, Trump is expected to pursue a bigger agenda, faster than he did in his first term

By Daniel Payne

onald Trump has promised the largest deportation of immigrants in American history, sweeping new tariffs on imports, a freeze on climate-related regulations, a remaking of federal health agencies and ideological changes in the education system.

Now he gets his chance.

And Trump insiders say they believe he’ll be able to move faster than he did in his first term to accomplish those goals.

In his first term, Trump made major policy changes but often complained of bureaucracy getting in the way of his most ambitious aims.

Armed with that experience, he expects officials in his second administration will better understand how to navigate complex agencies and policy processes, making a faster — and more ambitious — agenda possible, according to Trump’s advisers.

Though some of Trump’s largest agenda items — tax breaks and Affordable Care Act changes — will take congressional approval, many won’t. The Trump administration will be able to change immigration enforcement, impose tariffs, change health regulations, intervene in overseas wars and shape the education system without help from the Hill.

The president-elect has promised to make as many as 50,000 civil servants political appointees, effectively stripping the career protections of those currently in the roles and ensuring loyalists would remain.

And Trump supporter Elon Musk said that, if he joins the administration as part of a new Department of Government Efficiency, he would find $2 trillion in budget cuts.

Trump’s policy goals don’t just look to undo the work of the Biden administration. He looks to remake policies — and the federal agencies that create them — at their core.

Here’s a look at nine policy areas under the Trump presidency — what the president-elect is proposing, and what’s actually possible.

Immigration & the southern border

The president-elect has vowed to build huge detention camps, implement mass deportations at a scale never before seen, hire thousands more border agents, funnel military spending toward border security and invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to expel suspected members of drug cartels and criminal gangs without a court hearing.

Trump has also said he would end “catch-and-release” — the release of migrants into a U.S. community while they await their immigration court hearings — and restore Remain in Mexico, a policy from his first term that required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases were processed.

And he has sidestepped questions about whether or not he would try to bring back his controversial zero-tolerance, family separation policy that placed roughly 5,000 children in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and sent them to shelters and foster homes across the country while their parents were criminally prosecuted for crossing the border illegally.

While aggressive and sweeping in nature, there’s another common theme among these policy proposals — they’re light on details.

The president-elect hasn’t answered questions about exactly how he would round up undocumented immigrants or how he would fund his plans. Trump could also face challenges hiring extra border agents, given that the Border Patrol has long struggled with recruitment.

And courts might reject his proposal to use some of the military’s budget for border security, one of many legal roadblocks that could lie ahead for his policies.

Last go-around, a number of Trump’s immigration policies, including Remain in Mexico, faced court challenges. There was also a great deal of backlash over some of his actions, including the separation of families at the southern border.

— Myah Ward

Tariffs, CHIPS manufacturing policy

Trump says “tariff” is his favorite word in the dictionary and he is likely to try to move quickly on new trade restrictions that he promised during the campaign.

The president-elect says he will impose between a 10 and 20 percent across-the-board tariff on all $3 trillion worth of U.S. goods imports and a 60 percent tariff on all Chinese goods. That would dramatically expand the duties he imposed during his first term on tens of billions of dollars worth of steel and aluminum and more than $300 billion worth of Chinese goods.

Trump and his campaign were vague about how he plans to implement that plan. Many trade experts think he could quickly draw on existing authority like the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which gives the president sweeping authority to control economic transactions after declaring an emergency.

That could lead to a legal challenge, but a recent report from the Cato Institute, a free market think tank, cast doubt on the courts’ or Congress’ ability to rein Trump in. However, trading partners such as the EU could retaliate with tariffs on U.S. exports.

Trump is also expected to take an aggressive stance in the six-year-review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which his first administration negotiated to replace NAFTA. That review officially begins in 2026, but the countries are already preparing for it. Trump could also threaten tariffs to pressure Mexico on immigration, as he did in 2019 using IEEPA.

Other possible actions, like revoking permanent normal trade relations with China or imposing a carbon-border adjustment tax, would require congressional approval. Congress could also take up trade and tariff issues as part of legislation to renew Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which expire next year. Trump has talked about using the import tax both as a way to raise revenue and to reduce the U.S. trade deficit.

— Doug Palmer and Christine Mui

Ukraine / China / Middle East

Trump has said that he wants Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza by January should he win the presidency. Similarly, he’s insisted that the war in Ukraine needs to end, though he’s offered no pathway for how to pause the hostilities between Kyiv and Moscow.

Trump’s views on Gaza and the West Bank diverge significantly from those of the Biden administration. Where Biden has pushed for Israeli troops to ultimately leave Gaza and for Netanyahu to agree to a two-state solution, Trump has previously pushed a plan that would allow Israel to gain greater control over the Palestinians. In that plan, Trump vowed to help guide $50 billion in international investment toward the Palestinian people, helping it prop up their economy.

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was heavily involved in Trump’s Middle East policy under the last administration, helping formulate the plan for Israel and the Palestinians and brokering the Abraham Accords — a deal in which Bahrain and the UAE recognized Israel’s sovereignty. Kushner has shown no signs that he will be actively involved in a second administration (at least not publicly).

Trump’s first administration took a strong stance against Iran, implementing what was then dubbed a “maximum pressure” campaign to heavily sanction Tehran and deprive its economy of the ability to grow. The sanctions also targeted top commanders of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corp and other high-ranking officials. Trump was responsible for killing former IRGC Commander Qassem Soleimani in a strike in January 2020. Angered by Soleimani’s death, Iran and its proxies have since vowed revenge and have even made threats to assassinate the president-elect.

Trump’s stance toward Iran is likely to influence how he approaches the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as his broader Middle East policy. While Trump and Netanyahu have not been on the best of terms, it’s likely that whatever policy Trump implements to deal with Tehran and its proxies will include a significant bump in support for Israel. The two leaders have spoken in recent weeks, signaling that they’ve already been talking about a second Trump term.

Like his comments on the Middle East, Trump said he would be able to quickly achieve a peace deal in the war between Ukraine and Russia — saying during the campaign he would begin talks before taking office.

But when asked if he wanted Ukraine to win the war, he wouldn’t answer. He’s blamed Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for the war and threatened to stop investment in the country if he wins.

Zelenskyy said he wasn’t worried about Trump’s break from decades of American foreign policy strategy, suggesting he’s just been posturing for the election. Zelenskyy visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago at the end of September.

Trump’s China policy was largely built on his broader “America first” stance. His first administration sought to reign in Chinese aggression in the trade sector, implementing harsh penalties for intellectual property theft. During the administration, Washington sought to reduce America’s alliance on Beijing and to blunt the country’s technological advancements. Trump is likely to continue that policy. The trickiest part for Trump will likely be how to manage an aggressive U.S. stance toward China without provoking Beijing.

— Erin Banco

Abortion and health care

If Trump’s true to his word, he’s about to turn health policy upside down.

Trump has promised to let vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild” with health in his administration. A major health role for Kennedy would shift the Republican agenda away from policy debates over legislation and regulation toward a more fundamental one about the government’s role in medicine.

Kennedy has touted the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism, written a book accusing former NIH official Anthony Fauci of conspiring with tech mogul Bill Gates and drug makers to sell Covid vaccines, and launched a movement to “make America healthy again” by replacing officials at agencies he says are captives of the industries they regulate, eliminating “toxic additives and pesticide residues” in food, promoting alternative medicine and ending fluoridation of public water.

There will be other changes.

On abortion, Trump has tried to distance himself from his role in appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. He not only denied that he would seek federal legislation to ban or restrict abortion but also said he’d veto any ban that reached his desk.

Still, Trump won’t move to codify abortion protections under Roe or otherwise seek to make the procedure more accessible in states that have restricted it.

On Obamacare, even conservative health policy analysts who’d like to repeal the Affordable Care Act say that’s not in the cards. Instead, they say Trump will focus on loosening regulations on insurers and targeting specific elements of the law for repeal or reform. Vice President-elect JD Vance wants to cut costs for healthy, younger people by allowing them to sign up for insurance based on the health risks they face. That could increase prices for older people and those with pre-existing conditions, who are shielded from risk-based pricing under Obamacare.

Trump supported allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices in his 2016 campaign but later backed away. Now he’s in charge of ongoing negotiations Congress mandated in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which are supposed to include dozens of new drugs during his term. Every Republican lawmaker voted against that law. Trump’s Justice Department is now tasked with defending it against pharmaceutical company challenges in court.

— Daniel Payne

Student debt & college affordability

Trump has attacked Biden’s student loan initiatives as a waste of taxpayer money but has not said whether he will address mounting student debt. Many of Biden’s debt-relief plans are tied up in court, and Trump hasn’t indicated what he will do if they proceed.

The Republican Party platform, which doesn’t mention student loans, calls for firing “radical Left accreditors” to drive down tuition costs. Trump has previously advocated for replacing accrediting organizations that oversee colleges and universities and imposing new standards such as removing staff members that focus on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

The platform also calls for creating “more affordable alternatives to a traditional four-year college degree” and funding “proven career training programs.” But Trump wants to gut the Education Department, which provides billions of dollars in scholarships for low-income students to afford higher education.

Congress would need to approve any major dismantling of the department, but Trump could seek deep funding cuts and relocate some of its key responsibilities to other agencies.

Trump, during his first administration, submitted a 2021 budget that nixed a popular public student loan forgiveness plan. It didn’t pass, but his administration did deny almost all of the program’s applicants.

— Rebecca Carballo

Race and gender in schools

The 2024 Republican platform vowed to cut federal funds for schools that teach about race and gender, bar transgender women from women’s sports teams and deport international students who voiced support for Palestinians.

Trump could accomplish many of those promises in his next administration — even without Congress.

He has threatened to pull federal money for schools that teach certain race-related curriculum, which he could do by directing his Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to launch investigations into schools with these classes and yank their funding.

His previous administration followed a similar playbook. Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ civil rights office determined that letting transgender women play on women’s teams violated a federal anti-discrimination law known as Title IX. She used the policy to threaten a local school board with legal action or a loss of funding.

Trump has promised to overhaul Title IX and to restore a 2020 rule that guided how schools respond to reports of sexual misconduct. The Biden administration rescinded the rule, a move that’s been tied up in court. A new rule could go much further to include clarifications on what “sex” means and determine whether transgender students can play on sports teams or use facilities that align with their gender identity.

The president-elect has also promised civil rights investigations into schools that use race in admissions and vowed to reinstate his 1776 Commission, which seeks to “promote fair and patriotic civics education.”

— Bianca Quilantan

Climate

Trump could bring a big freeze this January — a regulatory freeze. As soon as he takes office on Jan. 20, the president-elect is expected to reverse work on Biden’s aggressive climate change agenda that aimed to reduce fossil fuel use and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, Trump has vowed to save the nation’s aging fleet of coal-fired power plants and boost production of oil and natural gas, although the U.S. is already producing those fuels at record levels.

But the process of repealing and replacing Biden’s rules can be lengthy. Trump’s EPA was sometimes criticized for moving too slowly in 2017, but lessons learned in the first term could mean those he appoints move faster now.

There are some added twists this time around on key climate rules. Trump’s power plant climate rule was struck down in 2021 — coincidentally, on his last full day in office. Trump’s rule would have required coal-fired power plants make minor adjustments to improve their efficiency. A federal appeals court said EPA should have at least considered other regulatory possibilities such as carbon capture, the technology that now forms the basis of Biden’s replacement rule. That 2021 court ruling has technically been vacated, but it’s something his legal team may keep in mind moving forward.

Trump also can’t completely repeal Biden’s big methane rule that requires the oil and gas sector to crack down on its leaks of the potent greenhouse gas. Trump did a full repeal in his first term, but Congress since then has essentially required EPA to regulate. However, he can make a suite of tweaks desired by industry.

— Alex Guillén

Housing

Trump has pledged to ease regulations to help builders boost the supply of housing in a bid to bring down costs. The Republican National Committee also endorsed the idea of selling off federal lands for the construction of housing, which Utah Republicans have pushed in Congress.

The first Trump administration worked to recapitalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-controlled companies backing roughly half of the nation’s residential mortgages. But the plan to eventually release and privatize the government-sponsored enterprises ran aground when the pandemic struck. Now, depending on who Trump picks to lead the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the administration may have another shot.

— Katy O’Donnell

Taxes

Trump coasted through his campaign without much of a plan for next year’s battle royale over taxes, but he will soon have to face reality.

Tax cuts worth $4.6 trillion from Trump’s first term are set to expire at the end of 2025. Trump has pledged to make those tax cuts permanent, while at the same time proposing wide-ranging new cuts – from ending taxation of tips to allowing a deduction for auto-loan interest.

Congress will have to figure out which of his proposals are doable — even as they try to come up with the money to reup the expiring tax cuts currently on the books.

Those breaks mostly affect individual taxpayers, and nearly everyone’s taxes would rise if they are allowed to lapse at the end of next year.

Lawmakers will have to determine how much in total they intend to spend on a tax bill — a basic question that could take time to sort out. They are deeply divided over what to do about the government’s $2 trillion deficit.Trump wants to finance income tax cuts with tariff increases. It’s true that protectionist sentiment is on the rise in Congress, but many lawmakers are likely to balk at the steep tariffs Trump has proposed.

Republicans might also try to rescind Democrats’ green energy tax breaks, though some have become fans of the provisions, so that could be difficult as well. There are other, more gimmicky, ways Republicans could try to reduce costs, like a shorter extension of their tax cuts.

— Brian Faler