Trump’s agenda struggling with political and economic reality

Donald Trump, announcing his new radical prices on American imports on Wednesday, promised that history books would record on April 2 as the “Liberation Day” in America.

After two days of stock market troubles, however, this can also be recalled as the week, the president’s program in the second mandate has experienced the head of economic and political reality.

American actions have been in a Tailpin since Trump unveiled his prices during the Rose Garden event on Wednesday afternoon, with signs that American trade partners – Canada, the European Union and China, in particular – do not decide a fight.

Meanwhile, other presidential efforts, on foreign policy and immigration, and in the ballot boxes – have faced notable setbacks in recent days.

Thursday, the White House looked a bit like a building for a storm to come. The four large posters showing America’s “reciprocal” prices on a long list of countries were in a view to the press conference room, but administration officials available to answer media questions were rare.

On Pennsylvania avenue, the workers have unloaded metal fence pallets, which call for the White House ground in preparation for what those in charge predict to be a large anti-Trump demonstration at the Washington Monument Neighbor on Saturday. The first lady announced that an event on the tour of the White House garden which had been planned for this day had been postponed due to security problems.

Even the Normally Loquace President only stopped briefly to speak with the crushing of journalists on his way to get on the Marine One helicopter during the first stage of his trip to Florida.

“I said it would be exactly like that,” he said when they asked him for stock market troubles of the day. The markets – and America as a whole – would go soon, he said.

The president, it seems, is ready to wait for the storm created by his pricing plan. He seems convinced that his economic vision of an American manufacturing sector reconstructed and rich in protected employment against foreign competition – a vision that he has held closely for decades – will ultimately be proven.

The close meeting of the Trump agenda with cold and hard reality has not been limited to trade this week.

Its two main priorities in foreign policy – ending wars in Gaza and Ukraine – seem to be mired in the kind of disorderly details and conflicting agendas which often hinder lasting peace.

Israel has once again moved to Gaza and intensified a bombing campaign that generates generalized civilian victims. The ceasefire that Trump praised in the days preceding his entry into office seems to be in tatters.

Russia, on the other hand, continues to stack new conditions on negotiations for a complete ceasefire with Ukraine, which indicates that the nation could buy time to allow its land forces to take more territory.

“If I think they teach us, I will not be happy,” said Trump about Russia. But he added that he still thought that President Vladimir Putin wanted to “conclude an agreement”.

Until now, the evidence indicates the opposite, according to Jake Sullivan, who was adviser to the national security of President Joe Biden.

In an interview with the BBC, he accused Trump of having submitted Russia most of his requests, although he recognized that it was still at the start of the process and that things could still change.

“Thus, the current dynamics of these negotiations a) in fact does not produce the Russian will to reach a just and a compromise, but b) actually stimulates a view in Moscow that if they continue to hold, they will simply obtain concessions from the United States. And so far, that is what has happened.”

Even the efforts to deport Trump immigration and immigration, which still have high public support, have been at least partially derailed by legal challenges.

Although his administration has succeeded in several flights to transfer the alleged members of Gang de Tren de Aragua in a high security prison El Salvador, the judge presiding over the exports said on Thursday that there was a “real probability”.

Other judicial disputes – to the suspension of Trump of the political treatment of asylum and the resettlement of refugees, of its attempt to end the citizenship of the birth law and its revocation of the temporary status protected for approximately 350,000 Venezuelans – are currently working on the American legal system.

At one point, the United States Supreme Court should weigh on many of these disputes.

This week also marked the largest series of elections since Trump’s victory in November 2024, when voters went to the Wisconsin polls to elect a state judge and in two special elections in Florida for seats in the House of Representatives.

While republican candidates in Florida prevailed, their winning margins were about 15%, about half of what Trump posted in these congress districts in November.

In Wisconsin, a major state of the political battlefield, the candidate supported by Democrat won. The Democrats were able to maintain the liberal majority in the court despite the tens of millions of dollars spent by conservative groups, in particular by the technological billionaire Elon Musk, who campaigned there in person.

Overall, the results suggest that democrats are doing well in highly contested races and can make breakthroughs even in reliably – partially campaigning against Musk and their efforts to massively reduce programs and federal staff.

This could be an indication that the party will have the political wind in the back in the state elections in November and the congress elections halfway up next year.

The tumult of the stock market and these results of voting bulletins can be the cause of some dispersed signs of dissent in republican ranks.

Ted Cruz, an Arch -Conservative senator from Texas, said on his podcast on Friday that Trump prices “could harm the employment and injure America” ​​- especially if other nations retaliates, as China has already done.

“If we are in a scenario in 30 days, in 60 days, in 90 days, with massive American prices and massive prices on American products in all other countries on earth, it is a terrible result,” he continued.

On Wednesday evening in the American Senate, four Republicans joined the Democrats to support the cancellation of the emergency declaration which justifies the previous prices of Trump Canada.

And Thursday, the republican senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa joined the Democrat Maria Cantwell of Washington to support a measure which would oblige the congress to directly approve prices which remain in force more than 60 days.

Overall, the Republicans headed for the president. They seem little willing, or incapable, to swing Trump of his current course on government prices and cuts and seem to fear the political consequences of the rupture with the man who has a vice in the party.

But if the current economic shock becomes a long -term difficulty, and if the government program cuts result in tangible disturbances in popular or If Trump is standing in opinion polls continues to sagMembers of his own party can start watching the exit panels for the first time in years.

And that would bring an end without ceremony to some of Trump’s most ambitious efforts.

Trump, who no longer cares about standing in front of the voters, can feel released from the immediate political consequences of his actions – but reality has a way of asserting oneself in the end.