Trump's First Year of Second Term: The Realistic Paradox of Tariffs, Immigration, and Latin America Policy

On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump stood on the west side of the Capitol, announcing to his supporters that America's golden age had begun immediately. One year later, under the spotlight at Mar-a-Lago, he summarized his political achievements with the now-catchphrase: "We were a dead country, now we are the hottest country in the world." This compliment, originally from the Saudi king, has been repeatedly echoed by him, attempting to define the tumult and controversy of the past 365 days.

However, the picture painted by data and polls is far more complex than Trump's rhetoric. From the strict lockdown at the southern border to the front lines of the global trade war, from military adventures in Latin America to the structural contradictions in the domestic economy, the trajectory of Trump's second term in its first year resembles a high-stakes experiment. Its outcomes are not only reshaping America's domestic and foreign policies but also casting a long shadow of uncertainty across the globe.

The Economic Ledger of "America First": The Illusion of Prosperity and Structural Concerns

Trump's core promise has always been the economy. He vowed to leverage tariffs to unlock trillions of dollars in foreign investment, revitalize manufacturing, reduce inflation, and create a jobs boom. One year later, how much of these promises have been fulfilled?

The Double-Edged Sword of Tariffs did not wield the precision anticipated. In April 2025, Trump announced broad tariffs on global goods, with initial target rates once pointing above 20%. The market's violent reaction and the immediate supply chain pains forced him to quickly dial back. After a series of exemptions and adjustments, the actual average tariff rate ultimately stabilized around 17%, significantly higher than the pre-inauguration level of about 2.5%, yet it avoided the potential price tsunami of the initial proposal. Tariff revenue did surge, reaching approximately 264 billion dollars in 2025, more than triple the 2024 figure. The Trump administration portrayed this revenue as a magic pudding, planning to simultaneously use it for sending checks to families, abolishing the income tax, aiding farmers affected by the trade war, increasing defense spending, and reducing the deficit—a self-contradictory fiscal puzzle in itself.

The revival of the manufacturing industry has not occurred. Official data shows that manufacturing employment in the United States has not increased but rather decreased. As of December 2025, the number of manufacturing jobs fell to 12.69 million, the lowest point since March 2023. The automotive industry, once placed high hopes on by Trump, is struggling under 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum, supply chain disruptions, and its blows to the clean energy incentives of the Inflation Reduction Act. Ford recorded a $19.5 billion impairment loss on its electric vehicle investments, and General Motors also recorded a $7.1 billion loss. Meanwhile, hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in wind and solar energy have been stranded due to policy shifts, even as the enormous power demand from AI data centers is driving up energy prices.

The engine of economic growth does not stem from traditional manufacturing, but is highly concentrated in the technology sector, particularly the field of artificial intelligence. Approximately 3750 billion dollars in investment poured into AI in 2025, and it is projected to exceed 4500 billion dollars in 2026. This has supported about 14% of the stock market's gains, especially the significant 20% surge of the "Magnificent Seven" tech giants, and has become a primary contributor to GDP growth. The U.S. GDP growth reached 4.3% in the third quarter of 2025, the best since 2023, but the overall annualized growth rate remains roughly equivalent to the 2.8% seen at the end of the Biden administration. The International Monetary Fund predicts that U.S. growth will slow to 2.4% in 2026. This divergence between top-tier prosperity and perceived recession is directly reflected in the Consumer Confidence Index—which plummeted in 2025 due to tariff shocks, briefly recovered, but by year-end had approached its lowest point since the summer of 2022.

The Twin Peaks of Inflation and Debt Still Loom Large. The overall inflation rate slightly decreased from 2.9% when Biden left office to 2.7%, but food inflation remains at 3.1% and is on an upward trend, still far from the Federal Reserve's 2% target. Trump's promised price reductions have only been partially realized in specific areas such as gasoline. More critically, the government debt issue persists. Despite a surge in tariff revenues, the total U.S. national debt has climbed from 36.1 trillion dollars to over 38 trillion dollars, increasing by approximately 612 million dollars daily. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that even if tariffs are maintained, they could generate 2.5 trillion dollars in revenue over the next decade. However, the tax cuts in Trump's "Single Grand Beautiful Act" are projected to result in a 3.4 trillion dollar loss during the same period. Concerns over the monetization of such fiscal deficits have led to a 9.3% depreciation of the U.S. dollar against a basket of currencies within a year, prompting some foreign capital to sell off U.S. assets.

The Dual Cost of Immigration Policy: Closed Borders and a Divided Society

If the economic report card is full of contradictions, then Trump's execution on immigration issues can be described as highly efficient, but its social and political costs are becoming apparent.

The physical blockade at the southern border has achieved immediate results. The Trump administration almost completely shut down the asylum application process, and the number of monthly arrests recorded by the U.S. Border Patrol dropped to a multi-year low. The campaign slogan that a country without borders is not a country was implemented through administrative means. At the same time, the budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement received tens of billions of dollars in additional funding for large-scale searches and deportations of undocumented immigrants within the United States. The government claimed to have forcibly deported over 600,000 people.

However, this efficiency is sparking increasingly intense internal backlash. ICE raids are no longer limited to individuals with criminal records; workplace and residential raids have become frequent, even provoking open resistance from local governments in Democratic-led states and cities. In early 2026, the first death of a U.S. citizen during a raid in Minneapolis pushed the conflict to its peak. Polls indicate that this aggressive enforcement approach is losing public support, with not only strong opposition from Democrats but also declining approval among the Republican base and even among Latino voters, who largely shifted to the Republican Party in 2024.

Immigration policies have also brought about unexpected economic side effects. The tightening of the labor market has somewhat cushioned the rise in unemployment—despite weakness in the manufacturing sector, the national unemployment rate only increased slightly from 4.1% to 4.6%. However, this poses a potential threat to industries such as agriculture and services that rely on immigrant labor. While fulfilling campaign promises, immigration policies are creating new social divisions domestically and planting structural risks for the economy.

Latin America and the World: From the "Art of the Deal" to Military Adventurism

Trump's foreign policy, particularly in Latin America, demonstrates a remarkable shift from a transactional "America First" stance to direct military intervention.

Venezuela Operation at the Beginning of the Year set the tone for the year. On January 3, 2026, U.S. special forces launched an operation aimed at capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. This military adventure, a direct invasion of a sovereign nation, marked the evolution of Trump's diplomatic logic: when economic coercion and negotiations fail to achieve objectives, force becomes an option. This was not an isolated case. In 2025, U.S. bombs fell on Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, as well as on ships suspected of drug trafficking in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Trump even threatened potential ground operations against drug terrorists in Colombia and Mexico and mentioned the possibility of taking over Greenland by military means.

This military adventurism sharply contrasts with its self-proclaimed image as a peacemaker. Trump boasted of brokering eight peace agreements within a year, ending the Gaza war. However, analysis reveals that most of these agreements were fragile. The Gaza ceasefire was precarious even before the so-called second phase implementation; other purported peace agreements largely remained verbal commitments. Consequently, when the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded, despite Trump's grand boasts, he ultimately did not receive the award.

In the broader context of relations with China and Russia, the Trump administration demonstrated a pragmatic approach. On one hand, it sought summit meetings with China, showing a somewhat softened stance; on the other hand, it focused on promoting peace talks for the Russia-Ukraine war, despite uncertain prospects. This style of oscillating between toughness and pragmatism has led to a lack of coherent strategic stability in U.S. foreign policy, serving more to align with domestic political narratives and Trump's personal transactional logic.

Governance Model: Governing by Executive Orders Amid Low Public Approval

Trump's governance style in his second term was more radical than in his first. Although the Republican Party simultaneously controlled the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate, achieving the so-called "trifecta," legislative achievements were scarce. The only major bill passed was the "Single Grand Beautiful Act," which was criticized as robbing the poor to benefit the rich because it cut the social safety net while providing tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals and large corporations.

Trump prefers to bypass Congress and directly exercise executive power. In the calendar year 2025, he signed 225 executive orders, a number exceeding the total from his entire first term (2017-2021). Additionally, he frequently used his pardon power, initially pardoning 1,500 participants of the Capitol riot, and subsequently pardoning white-collar criminals or cryptocurrency fraudsters who had donated to his campaign on multiple occasions. This method of governing by pen highlights his impatience with traditional checks and balances and exacerbates policy instability and legal challenges. Currently, the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a case on whether his global tariffs are unconstitutional, and the ruling may force the government to refund half of the tariff revenue. Trump himself admitted that if he loses the case, "we're finished."

Public opinion is the most direct feedback on his governing style. Trump's approval rating has steadily declined from 48% at the beginning of his term to 36% by the end of 2025. Compared to the approval ratings of previous presidents at the end of their second term's first year, George W. Bush and Barack Obama stood at 42% and 41%, respectively. In modern polling history, only Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal (30%) fared worse. RealClearPolitics' polling aggregate shows his disapproval rating as high as 55.2%. Although his Chief of Staff Susie Wiles claimed that only polls from the weeks before the midterm elections truly matter, the persistently low public approval undoubtedly casts a shadow over the congressional elections in November 2026.

One year may be too short to assess a president's long-term legacy, but it is sufficient to observe the trajectory of their policies and potential risks. The first year of Trump's second term is a continuous struggle between grand promises and complex realities.

Economically, he created a divided prosperity: the technology and finance sectors surged ahead, with stock markets repeatedly hitting new highs, but the tangible economic experience of ordinary households, the struggles of the manufacturing sector, and the ever-expanding debt formed fault lines beneath the surface of this prosperity. The tariff weapon is a Damocles' sword that has not yet fully fallen; its long-term inflationary effects and potential trade retaliations may still be on the way.

In society, immigration policies have achieved short-term victories in border control at the cost of tearing apart social consensus and sacrificing some economic flexibility. The sustainability of these victories and their domestic costs are becoming new political burdens.

Diplomatically, the "America First" policy has increasingly shifted toward American unilateralism, particularly in Latin America. It has escalated from economic coercion to military intervention, undermining the post-war principle of non-intervention (albeit often hypocritical) established by the United States in the Americas. This may trigger long-term regional instability and anti-American sentiment.

Trump might give himself an A+, but the ink on history's scorecard is far from dry. His policy experiments have plunged the United States and even the world into a zone of heightened uncertainty. In the coming year, as midterm elections approach, the Supreme Court's ruling on tariff cases, whether the economy can achieve broader growth, and whether military adventures might trigger greater crises will all determine whether this experiment moves toward a fragile balance or slides into deeper turmoil. The only certainty is that within the most sought-after nation, heat is gathering—enough to burn itself.