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Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world
The road to hell is paved with premature declarations of Donald Trump’s political demise. Yet Democrats can be forgiven for interpreting their big wins this week as a glimpse of Trump’s end.
Not only did centrist and socialist Democrats alike sweep the board — in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City and a smattering of races elsewhere — their victories were magnified by high turnouts. Voters tend to sit tight in so called off-year elections. But on Tuesday, Hispanics and young men of all races showed up in droves. So much for Trump having forged a multiracial working-class coalition. It turns out they were only for rent.
Either way, Trump’s opponents sense a potential dawn. In the year since he was re-elected, Democrats had been suffering from the institutional version of depression. Led by ageing time servers, who seemed punch drunk by the audacity of Trump’s manoeuvres, the party’s approval rating kept falling. Those numbers were still low on Tuesday night when their candidates romped home. This accounts for some of the shock from those wins. How could a tired party with a sagging brand be left holding the prize?
The answer is that candidates turned Trump’s guns against him. His 2024 defeat of Kamala Harris was chiefly about the economy. Against prevailing evidence, Joe Biden, then Harris, kept insisting that Americans had rarely had it so good. They blamed the public’s lack of gratitude on poor communication. If only we could express more clearly how voters are better off, they would vote for us, Democrats told themselves.
Trump won because he vowed to fix what was angering voters — especially inflation. Moreover, he promised to extinguish the Democratic era of preaching about pronouns and other moral causes. “Kamala is for they/them,” said his devastating ad. “President Trump is for you.”
This week’s winners digested those lessons. Each of them focused relentlessly on prices. Even Zohran Mamdani, New York’s new mayor, talked chiefly about affordability. Though his remedies are far more radical, including a citywide rent-freeze, Mamdani’s message discipline was striking. When asked last Monday to react to Trump’s claim that he was better looking than the 34-year-old candidate, Mamdani said, “My focus is on the cost of living crisis, man.”
In their different ways, Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, the new governors of Virginia and New Jersey, did the same. Spanberger’s Republican opponent tried to pin the trans issue on her, although she never raised it. Republicans were left fighting a phantom culture war. Trump, meanwhile, was starting to sound like Biden. “We have no inflation,” he said in a 60 Minutes interview last Sunday. “Our groceries are down . . . We’re ready to really rock.” Trump blamed Tuesday’s results on the fact that his name was not on the ballot. Exit polls told a different story. More than 60 per cent of Americans blame what they see as a poor economy on Trump.
That post-election autopsy puts Trump in a genuine quandary. His logical move would be to acknowledge America’s cost of living anger and do something about it. He has a full year to act before voters deliver what could be a far more consequential verdict in the 2026 midterm elections. A Democratic takeover of Capitol Hill would turn Trump into a lame duck, or worse. Past form suggests he will seek victory at all costs, including trying to reverse the outcome. Yet he has no hope of putting a lid on inflation if he persists with the global tariff wars. Tariffs are the main tool of both Trump’s economic and foreign policy. He calls himself “Tariff Man”.
In this regard, China may have ridden inadvertently to his rescue. The previous week in South Korea, Trump struck a one-year truce with Xi Jinping on the US-China trade war. An exuberant Trump channelled his inner Spinal Tap to mark their deal as a “twelve out of ten”. By contrast, the unsmiling Xi could barely bring himself to look at Trump. By wielding a bigger bazooka — the threat of an export ban on China’s indispensable rare earths — Xi bought Trump to heel.
Trump now has a strong incentive to declare similar wins on other trade wars. In that regard, Tuesday night was also a good one for Brazil, India, Canada and other targets of Trump’s ire. By a quirk of timing, the US Supreme Court on Wednesday held hearings on the legality of his tariff war. Was it coincidence that conservative justices sounded unusually bold in querying that? They too might possibly help Trump by striking the tariffs down.
Either way, the opening act of Trump’s second term is over. His loyalists running the so-called power ministries will continue to execute his whims. Expect his attorney-general, FBI director, ICE and the Pentagon to be deployed around next year’s elections. This week’s setback is likely only to intensify his strongman instincts. Only the naive would bet on an unmolested midterm election. Whatever the contours of Trump’s response, his will-to-power is ferocious. But for the first time in a while, Democrats think they can see a way out of the gloom. Big victory margins are by far the best guardrail against skulduggery.
