Key Points
- Donald Trump will be sworn in as US president on 20 January.
- He has taken a hardline stance against immigration.
- Trump wants to impose tariffs on all US goods imports.
When Donald Trump was president from 2017-2021, he was widely viewed as impulsive and unpredictable.
That makes it hard to predict what his next term will be like, but we can analyse comments he’s made on the campaign trail.
He said he would be “a dictator … but only on day one”, at a town hall event in Iowa with Fox News host Sean Hannity in December.
It’s still not certain to what extent the US Congress will enact Trump’s wishes.
Republicans secured a 52-48 , although 51 of the House of Representatives’ 435 races remained uncalled.
He could still face further barriers including the Senate rule known as the filibuster, which requires 60 of its 100 members to agree to pass most legislation, a threshold the new Senate will not clear with Republican votes alone.
You’re hired
Thousands of government positions will need filling by the president-elect early in his term, and he will appoint many people himself.
He has promised roles in his administration to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a prominent Trump donor, as well as to
We know JD Vance will serve as Trump’s vice president but who he will pick for other important cabinet roles is unclear.
Donald Trump’s views on immigration
Trump has taken a hardline stance on immigration, an important issue for US voters.
He promised a mass deportation of all undocumented migrants if elected, a proposal criticised by both human rights organisations and economists.
During the , Trump falsely claimed: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
He has sincerelating to Haitian immigrants in the Ohio city. There have been no credible reports of Haitians eating pets, and officials in Ohio — including Republicans — have repeatedly said the story is untrue.
Donald Trump and the border wall
Part of Trump’s immigration plan would be to continue building a wall along the border with Mexico.
It’s disputed how much of the wall he built during his first term — Trump says it was 435 miles (700 km).
But according to a BBC analysis of Customs and Border Protection data, Trump only added 15 miles (24km) of wall where there was none already, although he did rebuild existing barriers and built hundreds of miles of secondary barriers.
When President Joe Biden took office, he immediately halted border wall construction.
The US economy
Trump made tariffs and tax cuts the key elements of his economic pitch to voters. He has said he would cut federal spending, which Republicans blame for triggering consumer price spikes, and trim back federal regulations.
Trump has said he would impose between a 10 and 20 per cent tariff on all goods imported into the US and 60 per cent tariffs on all Chinese goods.
House Republican majority leader Steve Scalise told Reuters that politicians have been working with Trump for months to ensure they can hit the ground running with “a real aggressive, bold, conservative first 100-day agenda.”
He said they aim to recreate the economic growth experienced early in Trump’s first term, before the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020 and sent the economy into a steep decline.
Republicans point to buoyant gains in federal tax receipts since 2017 as proof that Trump’s tax cuts raised revenues and say his current agenda will bring more of the same.
But the revenue increase they cite is in nominal receipts driven by inflation and an expanding economy. That turns into a decline when the size of the economy is taken into account.
Abortion
Democrats made reproductive rights and improving access to abortion
Trump has said the matter should be left to individual states and that he does not support a national ban on the procedure.
He supports exceptions for rape, incest, and to protect the life of the mother and has said he would not block access to abortion medication. He has also expressed support for in vitro fertilisation, or IVF, which some anti-abortion proponents want to ban.
Changes to foreign policy
While the Ukraine war remains a marginal issue for voters, Trump claims Russia never would have invaded if he was president and he could end the war in as little as a day.
“This is a war that has to end and we’re gonna get that war ended. I’m gonna try, and I think I can, get it ended as president-elect. In other words, before I even take over the White House. We’ve gotta stop the people from dying”, he said on the campaign trail last month.
Trump has said he would end that war quickly, though it’s not clear how.
In his last term he was staunchly pro-Israel and his first administration took a strong stance against Iran, implementing what was then dubbed a “maximum pressure” campaign to heavily sanction the country and deprive its economy of the ability to grow.
Reversing Joe Biden’s climate initiatives
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.
Trump has vowed to save the nation’s coal-fired power plants and boost production of oil and natural gas.
With additional reporting from Reuters
