The first month of Trump 2.0 has left much of Washington stunned and disoriented and allies from Europe to Asia unsettled. The president and Elon Musk are following the American football strategy of "flooding the zone", where the offence sends everybody downfield at once to overwhelm and disorient the defence. It can work well...but not for the whole game. Veteran Republican strategists like Karl Rove are warning the administration to slow down before it breaks itself. Veteran Democratic strategists like James Carville are advising Democrats to stand by because the Trump administration will eventually crash and burn.
Public opinion polls show that a majority of Americans started out liking the boldness of Trump's early moves, which they saw as a contrast to President Biden's diminishing presence towards the end of his term. And most observers expected that a Republican administration would naturally reprioritise policies and cut government programs. What few saw coming was that Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would put technicians inside the government to pause payments to multiple departments and non-profits before any official review could even be conducted.
The first 100 days of most presidents are called the "honeymoon period" when Congress and the public give the new administration time to get started, but we have never seen a start quite like this. Can it continue? Opinions vary but five headwinds are worth watching.
First, President Trump started with the lowest approval rating of any new president in modern times other than himself. And his numbers have dropped faster than any new president at this point. He still has a solid base of support within the Republican Party, but he is now "underwater" (disapproval tops approval) on the economy for the first time. Polls show that while the public liked boldness, over 2/3 of respondents said the president was not doing enough to reduce the cost of living – the number one reason voters say they elected him in the first place. Tariffs, one of Trump's signature policies, cause inflation, and polls show the public knows that with solid majorities opposing the imposition of tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Markets also don't like inflation and though they have reacted positively to the deregulation, tax-cuts and pro-business elements of the Trump agenda, they will react negatively to excessive protectionism. That will impact the president's popularity, not to mention the returns of the many Americans who have invested in the stock market.
Second, the Congress will have to make a move by 14 March to extend the current budget resolution. They have just passed a budget framework, but that is not the full budget, let alone a budget approved by the Senate too. Republicans have only a three-seat majority and have failed in the past two budget debates to get enough of their own members over the top without Democrats helping them. The Democrats will have leverage even if we do not know yet how they will use it. If there is an impasse and the government has to shut down, some around Elon Musk might rejoice, but history shows the public will blame the administration.
Third, the courts are fielding dozens of cases testing the legality of DOGE and other moves by the president. Some of those cases Trump will clearly lose, others he will try to ignore or work around, and some he might win. But the legal process is only beginning and many of the cases will test constitutional questions requiring the Supreme Court to eventually rule. This is a conservative Supreme Court, but there is no reason to think it is anti-constitutional.
Fourth, the government departments are not yet staffed with senior political appointees. Secretary Marco Rubio is the only Senate-confirmed official at the State Department. As scores of under secretaries and assistant secretaries get confirmed and populate State, Treasury and the Pentagon, they will want to get control of their departments. These will be Trump appointees, but appointees who want actual departments to run.
Finally, public opinion on America's role in the world is going to prove sticky. In a recent poll by the Reagan Institute 77% of Americans said “The US has a moral obligation to stand up for human rights and democracy whenever possible in international affairs.”
This is not possible with the dismantling of all the institutions and NGOs that do that work. Large majorities of Americans also support NATO and US alliances in Asia. These majority positions are reflected in the mainstream views of Republican and Democratic members of Congress. There is a logic to stabilising the Ukraine War or pushing European allies to do more in their own defence. There was also a logic to stepping away from Afghanistan four years ago. But when the Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan turned into a debacle, it did permanent damage to his support with the public. Will Trump want Ukraine to be his Afghanistan? Foreign policy was not a high priority for voters compared with inflation or immigration in 2024, but it can quickly become the public's focus when they think the president is losing control of the world.
The United States is in uncharted territory in many ways. Nobody is really able to predict how this will go in the coming months. Many of my friends, family and former colleagues in Washington are deeply anxious. But in some ways this is not entirely uncharted territory. As the columnist David Brooks noted in a brilliant speech in London last week, the US system periodically purges itself – when Andrew Jackson came to power or in the aftermath of the Vietnam War for example – yet eventually the pluralism observed by DeTocqueville led to new innovations and a regeneration of institutions. How much damage will be done in the meantime, we do not know. We could consider the Nixon administration, which arguably caused far greater disruption with the Guam Doctrine (the withdrawal of ground forces from Southeast Asia), the opening to China, and the free-floating of the dollar. Many in Asia still remember those “Nixon shocks”, but the US economy and military and diplomatic power did recover. Indeed, US alliances ended up peacefully ending the Cold War.
But since we do not know what this disruption means in the longer term, it is critical to have objective, historically informed analysis and a focus on achieving policy outcomes even when the political grounding underfoot is shaking. The United States Studies Centre (USSC) is configured to do that – independent, connected and informed. In this and all of our other work we will endeavour to bring that clarity in the months and years to come.
