By Trevor Hunnicutt
WASHINGTON, Feb 24 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump will use his State of the Union address on Tuesday to sell his turbulent, norm-breaking second term to American voters who will decide in November whether his Republican Party retains control of Congress.
Here is a list of the major policies and actions Trump has taken during his 13 months in office.
THE ECONOMY
Trump will defend his handling of the economy at a time when most Americans disapprove of his approach and just days after the Supreme Court swatted down his use of emergency powers to levy tariffs on allies and other countries.
Tariffs have been at the center of Trump’s second term. He has used them to punish countries that oppose his policies and address perceived trade imbalances with countries like China. Now, his team is scrambling to find new legal pathways to keep those tariffs on. In the meantime, he’s put a 15% temporary tariff on U.S. imports from all countries.
Trump is likely to tout his major legislative accomplishment: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut some individual income taxes. Less clear is how much credit he will give former close ally Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency for shrinking the size of the federal government workforce.
Republican strategists will look for signs that Trump might shift the combative tone of his recent economic speeches, where he has offered little assurance to Americans squeezed by high living costs and blamed inflation on his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.
Voter frustration with inflation helped propel Trump into office, but Americans remain unhappy with high prices and increasingly disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy. In recent months Trump has repeatedly declared victory in the fight against inflation, even as government data shows price pressures remain elevated.
While the economy has continued to grow under Trump, the job market has slowed and unemployment has edged up. Trump has launched an unprecedented pressure campaign on the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates.
WAR AND PEACE
As Trump takes the dais for his address, the U.S. appears on the verge of open conflict with Iran over its nuclear program.
Trump has built up the U.S. military presence in the Middle East and warned that “really bad things will happen” if no deal is reached to solve the dispute.
Americans are wary of a long war in the Middle East, and Trump has preferred short-term engagements in the past. Trump’s novel uses of the military have included bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities last June, striking alleged Caribbean drug boats in international waters, arresting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro last month and threatening to seize Greenland, raising serious questions about the future of the NATO alliance.
Trump has styled himself the peacemaking president, including his efforts to secure a fragile ceasefire deal in the Gaza war and his Board of Peace focused on rebuilding the devastated Palestinian enclave.
He has repeatedly claimed to have solved eight wars in his pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize, but that is widely viewed as exaggerated and contrary to the facts on the ground in some of the conflicts. After months of alternately pressuring Kyiv while issuing – but rarely enforcing – threats against Moscow, a peace deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to elude him.
IMMIGRATION
Trump may look to rebuild public perception of his hardline immigration policies in the speech amid softening public support for his crackdown on illegal immigration. Few issues are more closely tied to Trump than immigration, but it has become a liability as masked federal immigration agents have clashed violently with U.S. protesters and activists and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
Trump campaigned on launching the biggest deportation drive in decades and ordered sweeping immigration raids immediately after returning to office in January 2025. Some of those deported have not been returned to their homelands but instead sent to third countries known for human rights abuses. Trump’s policies have succeeded in largely stemming the flow of migrants crossing the U.S. southern border with Mexico.
EXECUTIVE POWER
The Trump administration has pursued these goals largely unilaterally, dominating executive agencies, withdrawing from international forums and ignoring past norms.
It has attacked civil society groups, activists, local officials, judges and journalists seen as obstacles. Most of Trump’s policy accomplishments were executive actions, a kind of rule-by-fiat approach that U.S. presidents once avoided because they bypass Congress.
Trump has also granted hundreds of pardons, including for all of those charged with offenses in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
This year alone, Trump has used executive orders and similar memos to set tariffs, promote glyphosate-based herbicides, boost coal production, discourage private equity firms from buying single-family homes and direct Venezuelan oil revenue.
In all, Trump has signed 240 executive orders since taking office, the most in 13 months since the World War Two-era presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
CLIMATE POLICY
The Trump administration has taken steps to reverse Biden-era climate regulations as well as clean energy and EV tax incentives. It has chipped away at the legal foundation for these policies to make it harder for any future administration to implement new rules without congressional support.
Trump last year removed the United States from the Paris Agreement, as well as the underlying U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change – joining Iran, Libya and Yemen as outliers.
The Trump administration has also aggressively worked to block wind and solar energy projects, including those that have nearly been completed, by issuing stop-work orders or slowing down permitting. The administration has meanwhile eased clean air and water regulations or exempted coal plants or oil and gas infrastructure from complying with rules.
HEALTHCARE
Sixteen of the largest global drugmakers have struck “most-favored nation” deals with the Trump administration to cut drug prices for Americans in exchange for exemptions from U.S. tariffs. Under those agreements, they will lower prices for the government’s Medicaid program and, via the government-run TrumpRx website, to cash-paying consumers.
Millions of Americans, however, are facing higher healthcare costs in 2026 after Congress failed to agree on how to reinstate generous COVID-era tax credits. Trump did not support congressional moves to stop the tax credits from expiring.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici, editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller)
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