Just prior to his second election victory in 2024, US President Donald Trump promised that he was ‘not going to start wars’, but rather stop them. Four years before that, at the tail end of his first term, he’d declared that he was ‘ending the era of endless wars’.
Now, closing in on the halfway point of his second term, he finds himself bogged down in two: the conflict with Iran, which has slammed the brakes on the global economy, and his trade war. Both seem as though they will define the remainder of Trump’s second term, particularly if his path to legislative action is stymied by the Democrats winning one or (less likely) both houses of Congress in the November 2026 midterm elections.
The United States was not meant to be a monarchy – indeed, it was founded 250 years ago partly based on grievances that the executive was paying no attention to local legislatures. As Trump has found out, even the conservative-leaning Supreme Court still cleaves to the idea that fiscal policy — including tariff policy — is a prerogative of Congress, not the President. The ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs imposed with much fanfare in April 2025 were earlier this year nixed by the Court, including by two justices appointed by Trump himself.
