If Trump is to be believed, things are going to change considerably during his presidency: the US is to return to full reliance on fossil fuels, immigration is to be severely curtailed, and Greenland and the Panama Canal are to be incorporated into the United States. Despite all his promises, Hull says it is difficult to say what he will actually do during his presidency. This is not only to do with promises that politicians often make, but also something inherent to Trump and the way he does politics.

‘Unpredictability is itself a key strain of Trumpism—almost a policy in itself. It is, in part, the president-elect’s way of putting himself at the center of every news story, as journalists and pundits work to decipher his sometimes contradictory statements.  From 2016 to 2020 it became commonplace to say that Trump should be taken “seriously but not literally,” meaning that we should recognize how norm-breaking and destabilizing a lot of what he said was, but that we should not assume that his administration would try and put his every utterance into effect. To some extent, the same applies in 2025, but there are some key differences. While most right-wing organizations and operatives were unprepared for a Trump victory in the 2016 election, they were anticipating and planning for it this time round. This means that there ought to be a more effective approach to governing according to a Trumpian agenda from day one.’

Domestic policies: roll backs and tax cuts

Starting with Trump's election promises, we can already fill in what this Trumpian agenda will look like from a few things. For instance, domestic policy will be dominated by immigration controls, tax cuts and deregulation. According to Hull, the latter is no surprise. ‘Deregulation tends to happen every time Republicans assume the presidency and gain control of Congress. Trump plans to roll back environmental protections in particular, to ensure that the United States can produce more energy, with little concern for whether this energy is clean or green.’

Also the tax cuts are no surprise to her. ‘Tax cuts are likewise fairly standard Republican policy. In fact, a large part of Trump’s plan consists of extending tax cuts that have been on the books since his first administration and are set to expire this year. That means that most Americans actually won’t feel any benefit from these particular tax cuts if they take place, only pain if they do not. On the campaign trail, Trump also promised tax cuts aimed specifically at working Americans: for instance, he promised that tips would not be taxed if he were to win the election. It remains to be seen if these kinds of tax cuts will become law.’ 

Deportations

And then there is the other big, domestic theme of Trump's campaign: mass deportations of illegal immigrants in the United States. However, much is still unclear about the scale of these deportations. ‘I have seen predictions of annual deportation numbers ranging from 300,000 undocumented immigrants (based on Trump’s first term) to 2,1 million (based on Trump’s stated intentions). That’s a wide range!’ says Hull. ‘As a reference point, the Biden administration deported close to 300,000 undocumented migrants from the US in 2023-24 fiscal year, so the low case would not represent change, so much as “deportation as usual.” The uncertainty surrounding Trump’s deportation policy is not great for the economy, overall. And it sows fear among undocumented migrants, who make up the backbone of the low-wage economy in the United States. Mass deportations in such high numbers could not proceed in a lawful or humanitarian way.’

According to Hull, some of the uncertainty about the size of deportations is due to legal and administrative roadblocks. What must also be taken into account is that deportations on such a large scale will have negative effects on the economic lives of ordinary Americans. ‘Trump knows that the US economy is built on cheap labor provided by undocumented migrants in a variety of sectors – including construction, meat processing, and agriculture – who are doing jobs that other Americans are not willing to do, for wages that other Americans would not accept. If the administration were to remove a vast number of undocumented immigrants from the labor market, costs and prices would inevitably rise. So, it remains unclear whether Trump’s campaign talk was mainly a rhetorical tactic to appeal to nativist and xenophobic urges of some voters, or a genuine policy priority.’

Foreign policies: America First

As in his first term, Trump is betting heavily on his now well-known slogan America First. ‘Trump’s belief in protectionism is perhaps the most consistent aspect of all his politics and policy proposals, stretching back decades’, explains Hull. ‘He has indicated that he would put 10 to 20 percent tariffs on all imports to the US, wherever they came from. With regard to Europe, he has stated that these tariffs will come into effect unless Europeans step up their purchase of US oil and gas. As with many of Trump’s policy intentions, the president elect is probably calculating that he can bully his negotiating partners into submission— this is a classic Trump move that stems from his ideas of how to be an effective businessman.’

Regarding NATO, Trump’s approach is likely to continue from his first term. ‘A lot of commentators note that Trump is willing to say what other American leaders have complained about in private but had been too diplomatic to articulate in public, which is that US military spending holds the alliance together. There may yet be an increase in anti-NATO messaging in Trump’s second term. His refusal to rule out annexing Greenland by force is, among other things, an expression of his lack of respect for the United States’ allies in NATO. His seemingly conciliatory position toward Putin is another. It is quite within the norms for Republican administrations to prefer unilateralism over multilateralism. But NATO used to be a notable exception to that general rule. Not any longer.’

Reforming the Government

Besides wanting his domestic and foreign policies to take a different course from his Democratic predecessor, Trump has also expressed a desire to overhaul the US government. One of his plans is the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk. According to the president-elect's campaign promises, the informal council will identify $2 trillion to trim from the federal budget.

In addition, Trump has also been critical of federal employees who would not support him, and has threatened to replace them with political appointees. Hull: ‘At the end of his previous term in office, Trump issued an executive order that would make it easier to fire permanent federal workers, and he has talked about issuing this order once more. But whether there will be loyalty tests or large numbers of job losses in federal government remains to be seen. If we bear in mind the material expectations of Trump’s base, the president-elect can’t very well eliminate the organs of government that keep drinking water flowing or enable social security to reach its beneficiaries. What we are likely to see—just as we did in the first term—is that heads of agencies will fall in line with Trump’s demands either because they are genuinely loyal to him, or because they fear the consequences of not doing so. Given Trump’s entirely predictable nomination of loyalists to the Department of Justice – including a number of his personal lawyers who defended him in recent civil and criminal cases – it seems that employees of this agency, in particular, will struggle to enforce the rule of law in a totally apolitical fashion. There are literally millions of Americans who will keep their heads down and get on with their jobs as best they can, but many of them are looking toward the new administration with feelings of trepidation.’