Sometimes you don’t know how important something was until it is gone. And so it was with President Donald Trump, only the second president in American history to be elected to two non-consecutive terms in 2016 and then in 2024 after being ousted in 2020 during the Covid recession.
Almost overnight, when former President Joe Biden was elected, the borders were made wide open as 10.8 million illegal aliens poured over the border over the next four years.
The Covid spendathon never ended as Biden returned to Congress for the $1.9 trillion American “Rescue” Plan to boost demand even as production still lagged behind demand from the Covid lockdowns and after we had already printed, spent and borrowed $6 trillion for Covid — too much money chasing too few goods — fueling the inflation nightmare as inflation peaked in June 2022 at 9.1 percent.
It might take until mid-2027 just to break even from that mess if average weekly earnings and consumer prices continue growing at their current rates of 3.75 percent and 2.7 percent, respectively, an Americans for Limited Government Foundation analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows. 2027! That’s how bad it was.
In 2022, Biden even tried to get Senate Democrats to abolish the filibuster rule requiring 60 votes to advance legislation in the Senate to pack the Supreme Court, pass the Green New Deal, make Puerto Rico and D.C. states to pack the Senate and render immigration enforcement null and void and pass amnesty for the millions of illegal aliens to pack the Census and thus the House — all of which was narrowly averted by Kirsten Sinema, Joe Manchin and Senate Republicans.
As the incumbents, Biden, Harris and the Democrats suffered, with Biden going underwater in approval just 8 months or so into his term as discontent over the economy, inflation, illegal immigration and Democratic overreach to imprison Trump built up through the 2022 midterms and then the 2024 election that swept Trump back into power, the first Republican to win the national popular vote since the year 2000.
Was 2024 a referendum for Trump or against Democrats? Maybe it was a little bit of both.
One year ago, President Trump took office to finish what he started in 2017, to secure the border, to put America first on trade and to restore America as a great power globally. And on all three counts, he has kept his promises.
As Trump’s second term began, the President had political capital and he proceeded to use it: declaring national border and trade emergencies, sending the military to the border resulting in a 90 percent decrease in southwest border encounters, declaring drug cartels to be narcoterrorist organizations and targeting them and their state sponsors, instituting reciprocal tariffs to protect national security and encourage producers (especially GPU chip manufacturers) to come back to America to fuel the artificial intelligence revolution, declaring a crime emergency and restoring order to the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., rolling back Biden-era regulations holding back U.S. energy and electricity production, pushing Congress to make the Trump tax cuts permanent and to institute his campaign promises of no taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security and reforming the U.S. Treasury’s payment systems to better detect waste, fraud and abuse. Promises made, promises kept.
President Trump has devoted himself to fighting crime in America’s cities, and now he faces perhaps his greatest challenge yet in somehow persuading blue states to stop being sanctuary states and to instead cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts. Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz has falsely called this a “war” when it is simply restoring federal authority to enforce the nation’s laws. States don’t get to do nullification. We saw how that went in the 1860s. Don’t want to go that way.
On the foreign stage, President Trump restored U.S. credibility including the credible threat of force, destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons program as Israel faced repeated barrage of missiles from Iran, and yet also offered peace, who with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the President’s special envoys, ended eight wars including the Israel-Hamas war while successfully negotiating the release of the hostages who had been held in captivity since Oct. 7, 2023, resulting in a 94 percent reduction wartime fatalities in Gaza.
Even now, the President continues to press for an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, never discouraged even as thousands continue to perish weekly, reminding the world of the need to pull back from the brink of a wider war. There might be no more important accomplishment abroad in the President’s second term than ending that war and averting a wider war with Russia. Keep at it, Mr. President. It’s only a matter of time.
More locally but also very notably historically, the President has once again asserted U.S. power in the Western Hemisphere, pushing for better U.S. access and control over the Panama Canal and pushing for North American missile defense systems to be put into and over Canada and Greenland — one way or another.
That’s one of those where politicians and bureaucrats can and will wring their hands, but all will benefit in the long run from peace through strength, geopolitical stability and maintaining the global balance of power.
Consider the Panama Canal, construction of which occurred in 1904 during the U.S. era of imperialism. We took it over from the French, and in the process connected the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Just think, if the U.S. had not built the canal, we might not have been able to win World War II. Just connecting our navies was that important.
Well, in Greenland, presently, it might be difficult to see in 2026 why it was important for President Trump to build his missile defense shield over all the skies and space above North America but by 2056, maybe we can just thank him later. These are very well considered projections of U.S. power that might save us all — you just don’t know it yet.
The fact is the world has always been far safer when America is strong, respected and feared. Freedom isn’t free, but it’s a lot cheaper when you plan ahead — and for the first time in a long time, we have a president who understands that.
2025 was a bumpy ride, as capital markets can attest, initially taking a hit as Wall Street whined about tariffs briefly before hitting fresh new highs throughout the year. The inflation that was predicted on the heels of the tariffs has not come to fruition as the U.S. continues the disinflation that began in 2023.
That can easily be shown when inflation is compared to household incomes and earnings, a long process that, again, might not fully correct itself until about mid-2027 — almost certainly not in time for Congressional midterms — but is still important to chart the progress of.
If prices cool faster (flood the markets with food, energy and electricity, Mr. President) or if incomes grow faster in a non-inflationary way, then it can move a bit faster. How fast that goes all boils down to how aggressive the President wants to be. The miracle of the American economy is that on balance, over time and historically, U.S. households get wealthier as wages grow faster than prices. But in politics, you don’t get a lot of time. If we need more imports in certain areas, then go secure the temporary trade deals we need and prices will come down all the faster. It doesn’t have to be permanent, just liking importing eggs wasn’t permanent — we already ate them. Now, inflation all the way down to 2.7 percent. Not too shabby, but there’s still a way’s to go.
What’s important is we are headed in the right direction. Just stay the course, Mr. President. We’ll get there.
Just on the southern border alone, the difference a year later is palpable — and provable. More than 2 million illegal aliens a year down to 118,000 since the end of January, according U.S. Customs and Border Patrol data. It didn’t take a miracle. It took a President. Thank you.
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government and Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
