The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump's (second) first year

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

One year ago today, Donald Trump was sworn into office as the 47th president, having already served as the 45th. We look at some of what he has done in this first year back in the White House.This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This podcast was produced and edited by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast for Tuesday, January 20th, 20th, 2026. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. We're recording this at 12.20 p.m. Eastern time. And almost exactly one year ago from when we're taping this, Donald Trump took office for a second time. Tam, Mara, our intrepid, White House reporters who have been following every minute of the past year. I want to talk about this first year back in the White House. And I, I, I, I want to start by asking you both a simple question, which is, if you had to summarize this past year in one word, what would it be and why? My word would be power, as in comma, unchecked executive.

He has transformed our system of government to, instead of three co-equal branches and an executive that has checks and balances limiting their powers, he is well on his way to creating a system with a, a much, much more powerful executive that is unfettered. How long that will last in the future when he's gone is unclear. How much the Supreme Court might chip away at that is also unclear because they have a ton of big cases that they haven't yet decided about executive power. But that's the word I'd use. I was just listening back to an interview I did with a political scientist recently, who described this term as President Trump pushing on an open door. That is, you know, as Mara talks about unchecked. But that's not one word.

No, I know. No, I know. Here's my one word. And I'm cheating on this too. My one word is Yolo. You only live once. President Trump is governing like someone who just doesn't care about what other people think, who does not care about Norm. he and his team say that he has this almost unlimited Article 2 power. And I would, you know, underneath this heading, talk about all kinds of things. Like his retribution campaign, which is largely unchecked and very widespread. He is rewarding allies and punishing perceived enemies, going back to the pardon of all of those January 6th defendants, his pardon of any number of other people convicted of things that are sort of similar to what he

faced prosecution for back when he was out of office. He has surrounded himself with loyalists, which means there are no internal guardrails in the second Trump administration. There are no limits. The things that he wanted to do in the first term but just couldn't quite get to or was told, oh, sir, that's not a great idea. This time, whatever he wants, you only live once, he is doing it. Yeah. Okay, well, I do want to focus on policy here, a few aspects of Trump's policies this year that have gotten a lot of attention. I want to start with the economy because obviously this is what matters most to voters. It was also a key part of his campaign was turning around an economy that voters felt very frustrated with.

Tam, Trump ran on the promise of enacting widespread tariffs on foreign goods. I mean, obviously promise made, promise kept. This has been a key part of this first year back in. office. I mean, how would the White House characterize the tariff regime? President Trump has long believed that tariffs give him power, power to negotiate. He has said that the tariff power that he has made it possible for him to end wars because he can just make a threat and say that he's going to raise tariffs and then countries just do what he wants. And we certainly are seeing this again just most recently with Greenland.

where he is promising to tariff U.S. allies in Europe to try to somehow extract Greenland from Denmark. And there's a whole lot of drama there. But yes, in terms of the economy, tariffs are the centerpiece of his economic agenda. But they haven't actually accomplished what he said it would accomplish. The idea was that if you impose these steep tariffs, it's going to incentivize companies to almost. onshore manufacturing, to bring manufacturing jobs back to America. In America, we're going to make things again. Well, since President Trump put these tariffs in place, the economy has shed 70,000 manufacturing jobs.

That's 70,000 people who are not working in manufacturing who were before he put those tariffs into place. So it has not had the effect that he said it would. That said, you know, the administration. is urging patience. The drop in manufacturing jobs just continues the trend that has been going on for decades. Absolutely. Tariffs didn't turn them around.

Tariffs didn't start or create the loss of manufacturing jobs, but they did not, as Tam says, do what Trump said they would do, which is bring manufacturing back. Also hasn't brought down prices, which I think was also one of the big things that voters were concerned about. On the contrary, they've raised prices. The other thing I would say that he's done on the economy, with the exception of tariffs, which actually has hurt the economy, is he's trying to run the economy hot. He's trying to boost GDP, tax cuts, lower interest rates, all of these things risk inflation,

but they also have the potential to put more money in people's pockets with tax cuts and goose the economy, make GDP bigger. He's hoping that that will help his party win the midterm elections. But they are causing long-term risks that economists are warning about. The economy has been running hot, at least in the economy. terms of the stock market, but it's been sort of a K-shaped economy where the wealthy are doing well, the AI boom is booming, but people are still having a hard time paying their bills. They're upset about their energy bills going up. They're concerned about never being able to buy a house. And, you know,

as much as President Trump sort of pooh-poo's the idea of affordability is just this thing that Democrats talk about, but it's really their fault and, you know, it's just a hoax. He is responding to this signal that voters are sending by announcing a whole raft of new policies in the last couple of weeks aimed at bringing down prices. Now, it's not clear whether that's actually going to work. A lot of it is sort of branding and repackaging, but it is definitely something that even if he won't admit it, he is sensitive to. And you know, the shorthand way of saying this is you can't eat GDP. I mean, it doesn't matter if the economy is doing great. It also doesn't matter if the rate of inflation is coming down. People don't care about inflation. They care about prices.

and prices are still high. It's also worth noting that a lot of Trump's economic policies are things that would not be considered, classically Republican, right? Tariffs aren't reflective of a free market. The government took a 10% stake in the technology company Intel, for instance. I want to talk about like the role that Trump is playing here and playing a more meddling role with the economy, which is something that I guess today, today, Republicans, you would assume wouldn't like. Like, how did we end up here? I mean, I was talking to someone who served in the first Trump term who said, you know, it's not just that there aren't really the guardrails on Trump's presidency this term. It's that he's doing things that are just not conservative, that Ronald Reagan would not recognize some of these policies that President Trump has enacted, like demanding that tech companies give the U.S. a cut if he allows them to, you know, sell their chips in China, for instance. Essentially, President Trump's.

approach has been, well, if I can get money for the United States, then we should do it. What could possibly be wrong with that? It's not a real free market way of doing things. I would say that if Kamala Harris or Barack Obama or Joe Biden or certainly Bernie Sanders proposed some of the things that President Trump has just sort of barreled through and done, there would have been massive pushback from the Chamber of Commerce in the corporate world. But thus far, corporations and and many other institutions have been sort of bowed by Trump rather than pushing back. Well, that's the big story of the Trump years is the wholesale transformation of the Republican Party. They're not a conservative small government party anymore.

They're a party that their leader believes in something you could call state capitalism, you know, taking chunks of private companies, asking law firms, universities, and other institutions in America to do what he wants or else he'll punish them. And he has punished them. And he has punished them in retribution. So businesses, capitalists used to like economies where the rules were clear and there was a level playing field and the rules applied to everyone. Now, if you are a friend of Trump's and donate money to his ballroom or other projects, you might get your merger approved by the FTC. And if you don't, you'll suffer some kind of retaliation. I want to quickly pivot to foreign policy here because the two are pretty connected. I think a lot about the first Trump term where he threatened to leave NATO, if you're countries didn't spend more on defense and that threat to some extent worked. Mara, are tariffs another form of this? Do what the U.S. wants or it will cost you? Well, that's certainly how he's using them. He's no longer content to say that tariffs are an economic tool. They're a tool of foreign policy and diplomacy. When he says to Europe, if you don't let me take over Greenland, you're going to have

tariffs, then we see that tariffs is a kind of Swiss army knife for him. They're just useful for everything. That's how he's operating right now. The other thing that I think is really the biggest thing that he's done because it has geopolitical implications and it's going to change the whole balance of power in the world is that he no longer supports NATO. He has said very clearly that there might have to be a choice between the U.S. getting Greenland, as he says, whether they like it or not, and preserving NATO. He understands that if he does use military force to grab Greenland, which belongs to Denmark, a NATO ally, that NATO would, for all intents and purposes be over. This is the most successful alliance in world history, kept the peace in Europe for 80 years.

And he's about to go to Davos, an international business meeting, and talk about this. But this is a huge change that the U.S. no longer believes in alliances. He sees allies, especially European allies, as freeloaders. It seems like he has more in common with Vladimir Putin than with our European allies. He's even invited Vladimir Putin to be on this peace board to rebuild Gaza, which some people see as an alternative to the UN Security Council. Let's look at Greenland. He said to the leader of Norway that because he didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize, which the government of Norway doesn't control, well, maybe he doesn't need to care. about peace all that much and he needs Greenland. That is about the president and his feelings

as much as it is about foreign policy. Okay. Well, let's take a quick break more in a moment. And we're back. And I want to keep talking about foreign policy here. Tam, we've talked about this on the pod before. But as a candidate, and even in his first term, Trump ran on the idea of America first. No more entanglements in foreign conflicts from here on out. The U.S. is going to go it alone. I mean, that sure doesn't seem to have happened this time around. This seems to be a place where promises kept is not quite as clear. President Trump has redefined America first, repeatedly, to fit his definition or to fit his policy aims at any given moment. You take the strikes on Iran's nuclear program. President Trump saw that as in the American interest, therefore,

America first. Even though, like, a lot of people would argue, oh, gosh, that. That is definitely a foreign entanglement. That is definitely way outside of what many people imagined he meant. But he argues, nope, that is America first. American power, American military supremacy is part of America first. The idea is really more like you come in, you hit them hard, and then you're done. It's sort of a one and done. So if you look at that, if you look at the airstrikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen, if you consider what is happening in, Venezuela. There was this military intervention removing Maduro from the country, but then U.S. troops also left the country. The president wants the U.S. and U.S. oil companies to control Venezuelan oil, but he, in terms of entanglements, does not seem to want U.S. boots on the ground to do that. The through line here is he's very quick to use military force against smaller, weaker countries or like bombing Iran and then leaving. But he is not willing to stand up to Russia or China. He's not willing to put pressure on Russia to end its invasion of Ukraine. He hasn't

spoken out about China's plans to take over Taiwan. I think he does believe in spheres of influence. This is a huge change for the United States foreign policy, going back to kind of early 20th century gunboat diplomacy, where three big superpowers Russia, China and the U.S. each have dominance in their own neighborhood, their own spheres of influence, and big countries get to do whatever they want to smaller, weaker countries and self-determination and sovereignty is just not something that he cares about. Yeah. I do wonder, though, what voters would make of, like, will foreign policy become a bigger issue for them? Because for now, at least we know that like intervention in Greenland,

for example, there's a lot of disapproval among voters. I just don't know how important it will be, you know, moving into midterms. Well, traditionally, it hasn't been, unless, U.S. soldiers are dying overseas. And so far, we don't have boots on the ground overseas. But I think the way it might figure in to the midterm elections is that it's just more chaos. And it just shows Donald Trump not paying attention to the price of eggs. He's just busy trying to acquire Greenland. If the Democrats can make that into an issue to say he doesn't care about you, he just cares about getting Venezuelan oil for his billionaire buddies, then maybe it becomes an issue. Foreign policy doesn't really help presidents, but it can hurt them if it seems like they're paying too much attention to what's going on in other countries if they've taken their eye off the ball of the United States. Yeah. Well, let's talk about immigration on the campaign trail. Donald Trump campaigned on carrying out the largest mass deportation efforts in U.S. history. Let's do a quick fact check here, Tam. Has that happened? No, but there certainly has been very aggressive immigration action. And it has not lined up exactly with what President Trump said that he was going to do. What he said was that they were going to go after the worst of the worst. And there also has been like a really significant emphasis on sort of the shock and awe of it all going into U.S. cities with masked ice agents and CBP officers. who are there to, on some level, incite fear. Because a big part of the agenda is actually self-deportation, getting people to decide that it just isn't worth it to stay in the United States.

And I think beyond immigration enforcement, we also need to talk about how the administration has really shifted policy. The administration has put a near halt to refugee admissions to the country, just a dramatic dialing back, even from the levels during the first Trump administration. They have revoked temporary protective status, TPS, from a wide swath of people who've been living in the U.S. for many years now. The administration says it's temporary for a reason. Generally, the Trump administration is shifting the idea of who should be allowed into the country. I mean, and there has been cost to this more, right? sort of dissuading people from even moving here legally has seemed to have an effect on the labor market so far. Yes. The United States had a labor crisis before Trump came into office. We didn't have enough workers.

Trump's immigration policy has exacerbated that. So it's reduced legal immigration to the country. And it's depressed the labor market. And that's having a negative economic effect. And interestingly, the unemployment rate has actually gone up during this period. Well, I mean, one of the things I think we should talk about is, you know, so much of what the administration has put in place this year has not been done through legislation, right? Congress hasn't sent him a lot of bills to sign. Congress has arguably done very little. It's most of this has been done through executive action. And I mean, how much of those actions can be undone pretty quickly if the next president wants them gone? Let me just give you some numbers. This is as of December 15th, Pew Research, put this together, President Trump had signed more executive orders in his first year of his second term than he had in his entire first term. You have to go back to President Carter to find a president who signed more executive orders in a single term. And this is just the end of year one. President Trump is enamored with that Sharpie and that process of signing a piece of paper and

and making it so. The issue, though, is that Congress has been incredibly unproductive. The Republicans control the White House, the House, and the Senate. And Congress simply has not been working very hard at enacting the president's policies into law. And executive orders just as easily as President Trump can sign with a sharpie, the next president can come in with their pin and reverse the executive actions. Now, some of these things will be hard to reverse. Like, it's not like you can. make USAID just immediately come back to life. That agency has been eviscerated. But like a lot of what President Trump has done on immigration, for instance, that's almost entirely executive action. That is enforcement decisions. Those are decisions that can be reversed as soon as he's out of

office if the next president disagrees with the way he has conducted the presidency. That's been true for a long time. I mean, what an executive order, giveeth another executive order can takeeth away. However, I think that a lot of what Trump is doing will be very, very hard to reverse and will have permanent effects on American politics and government. Okay, that's all for today. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.