As 2026 begins, there’s little doubt that U.S. President Donald Trump will remain a towering figure in geopolitics. He will mark one year in office by attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and will continue to be influential in global conflicts, trade, and immigration. At home, Trump will look to stave off his domestic opponents as they coalesce around a political platform based on affordability.
What are the key events to keep an eye on as January kicks off? On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, who has covered six U.S. presidencies and reported overseas from Moscow and Jerusalem, among other places. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or download the FP Live podcast. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.
Ravi Agrawal: How do you think Trump is going to mark the country’s 250th anniversary?
Peter Baker: I think he couldn’t be happier to be the president who’s in office when this happens. He loves nothing more than a big show. He loves nothing more than a patriotic display and wrapping himself in the flag—he literally did that in his first term once. So I think he’s going to find all kinds of ways to put this birthday on display and to associate himself with it.
It’s going to be interesting to watch whether the Department of the Treasury, for instance, follows through on something they’ve discussed doing, which is putting his face on a commemorative coin. We’ve already seen him put his face on tickets, along with George Washington’s, for National Park admissions in 2026. He likes to make himself out as the custodian, if you will, of American patriotism. So I would expect lots of showmanship, lots of military flyovers, and all that kind of stuff. It’s hard to imagine somebody more eager for this kind of an event.
RA: Let’s talk a bit about immigration. It’s a World Cup year, but there’s already some controversy over how the tickets are the most expensive ever and the fact that the White House has banned travel now from several dozen countries, which will make it much harder for fans from many African countries, especially, to come and watch the games.
I want to use that as a way to talk more broadly about immigration policy and how it plays out in 2026. I have to say, Trump has not deported anywhere near as many people as we expected, or he suggested, he might one year ago. But instead he seems to have put a giant “do not come here” sign on the southern border and elsewhere. What’s your sense of how immigration plays out as an issue in 2026?
PB: I think you’re right. He has successfully stopped the flow of people coming over the southern border. That was a big crisis during the Biden administration that didn’t get fully addressed by the president, and it fueled the reelection of Donald Trump. No question about it.
Where things have been more controversial is the rounding up of people in the streets—not just criminals but everyday residents of America who may be here unauthorized, without documentation—in some cases with some documentation—who are just living their lives, working their jobs, raising their families, and yet are suddenly handcuffed and put into detention facilities by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. I think a lot of Americans have recoiled at that. The question is whether he has any kind of reboot in the second year. You’re right to say that he hasn’t even gotten to the goals that he himself set in terms of deportation. They were never realistic goals. He said he was going to deport every person who’s in the country illegally. That was never possible according to anybody’s assessment of the challenges involved with that.
But it’s important to remember that it’s not just illegal immigration and certainly not just criminals who are here. He is against a lot of legal immigration. He has changed the rules to make it harder to be here legally. It’s not, “Oh, we just don’t want people to come here illegally. We want them to follow the rules.” He’s changing the rules, and he’s even going after people who are naturalized American citizens and trying to find ways of unnaturalizing them if he doesn’t like them.
It’s a really dramatic change. The question is whether there’s backlash in 2026. You’re right to talk about the World Cup because this is supposed to be a time when America brings the world to us and he’s telling the world, “We don’t really want you.” Or, “We don’t want some of you.”
RA: Exactly. The other thing I’m going to be looking out for in 2026 is to see how tariff policy plays out. It’s interesting to see that there have already been some setbacks. The president was forced to reverse course on tariffs on some items, crucially coffee. Americans love their coffee, of course. But we’re all also eagerly waiting for a Supreme Court judgment on whether Trump can continue using the arcane national security exclusion on tariffs. If not, he might then turn to other sources to be able to continue his policy of using tariffs as a cudgel. What is your sense of how that plays out?
PB: What he likes about the International Emergency Economic Powers Act authority is that it is sort of like snapping your fingers. He doesn’t have to make a finding. He doesn’t have to convince anybody of anything. There are no real standards to meet, at least as he has pursued this policy. Remember, nobody’s ever used this law in the way he has. I think he likes it that way.
If he loses at the Supreme Court, the other authorities he has to impose tariffs are more cumbersome. They require, in some cases, findings and time deadlines. He would be very unhappy if he loses that Supreme Court case, but it wouldn’t mean the end of tariffs. I think he likes tariffs because it doesn’t involve Congress. It’s the most raw exercise of power that he has. He’s made clear that he uses it not just to influence economics but to influence policy. “I don’t like the immigration coming over the border. I don’t like the fentanyl coming over the border. I don’t like the fact that you put out an ad quoting Ronald Reagan.” So, therefore, tariffs are an all-purpose weapon for him in foreign policy.
To some extent, it’s been successful because other countries do tend to find themselves on the receiving end of economic pain and try to therefore satisfy him in one way or the other. But it’s so volatile, so unpredictable, that it makes it really hard to accomplish things he says he wants to accomplish, which is to encourage people to build factories and create jobs here in America. If you’re a business, and you don’t know how much it’s going to cost to do business a year from now, much less even actually a month from now, then how will you make plans for a large investment in an Ohio plant? I think some of that’s getting through to him. We’ll see whether that changes his approach in the second term. By the end of the year, he backed off a little bit, as you say, on some of the places where it was hurting Americans, but it’s still a very volatile moment for the American economy and the world economy.
RA: Indeed. The big, big, big thing we’ll be looking at toward the end of the year is the midterm elections in November. I feel as if that could end up determining the rest of the course of Trump’s presidency and how much room he actually has to maneuver, not just domestic policy but foreign policy as well. What are the big trend lines you’ll be watching this year on that front?
PB: First of all, there’ll be some special elections in the early part of the year and some house races. We’ll see how they go and whether they tell us anything. We ought to be careful about overanalyzing special elections and off-year elections because there’s a different electorate that comes to vote, but they are instructive nonetheless.
What we’ve seen so far is clearly a pretty sharp move to the Democrats since he took office. Now, if the Democrats were to win the House—which seems very plausible, which is historically normal for a midterm election—it may not hobble him legislatively because he actually hasn’t asked the legislature to do very much. That’s really interesting: Even though he controls both houses of Congress, he’s not pursuing a legislative presidency. Every other president I’ve seen in the first year of his term has tried to use that moment of maximum momentum and credibility to push some big priority through Congress—Obamacare or, in George W. Bush’s case, No Child Left Behind.
That’s not been the way Trump has operated. So, if he loses the House, it doesn’t mean that he can’t get stuff done. What it does mean, though, is the Democrats, who have been largely voiceless, will have a platform to oppose him on various things. It will give them the committee gavel. They’ll be able to have hearings. They’ll have subpoena power. (He tends to ignore subpoenas, so we’ll see if that makes a difference.) But, at the very least, they’ll have more of an opportunity to showcase and highlight issues that otherwise get pushed under the rug because the Republicans on the Hill don’t want to address them.
And as soon as the midterm is over, the 2028 presidential race starts in earnest. With every passing day after November 2026, Trump’s influence, and the attention on him, begins to drain toward potential successors. That may actually make him upset—he doesn’t like to cede the stage to other people. So he may be more willing to be provocative to keep the focus on him.
RA: What is your sense of how those discussions about succession are going? How do you expect the fractures within MAGA world over a range of issues—whether it’s intervening in conflicts abroad or even domestic issues—to play out?
PB: On the Republican side, we start 2026 with a pretty straightforward dynamic. There’s a broad consensus in the party that the nomination in 2028 is J.D. Vance’s to lose. He’s been signaled now as the favorite heir apparent. The other person seen as his main competitor is Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio has said now that if Vance runs, he will defer to him and support him for the nomination. That doesn’t mean there won’t be other people running. Of course there will be.
The question is whether or not MAGA continues to control the party even without Trump. Trump, again, is sui generis. Whether or not loyalty to him can be translated to another figure is a really open question.
On the Democratic side, it’s a completely open field. I can name 20 people who may or may not run at this point. And there’s no giant in the field. Somebody’s going to have to prove themselves to be somebody who can take a broken party, find a way to fix it, and make it a success again.
RA: Trump’s approval ratings are quite low. You just said that Trump is sui generis, but how do presidents usually respond to lower ratings in year two of their second term? If you put your historian’s hat on, are there any parallels that we should keep in mind?
PB: It’s a great point because, in fact, what’s really interesting about Trump is that in some ways he is both the strongest president and the weakest president we’ve seen in our lifetime. By strong, I mean that he is completely dominant in Washington. He sets the agenda. Whatever he says is what people talk about. He has complete control of his party, even though there are cracks, like Marjorie Taylor Greene deciding to leave. No other president I’ve seen has been as dominant within his party as Trump is as we start the second year of his second term.
Having said that, his approval rating numbers are terrible, as you say. They’re in the 30s, and that’s as weak as it gets, absent a Watergate-type scandal. Every other president I’ve ever covered who had low poll ratings like that, they smelled weak. You know what I mean? You could tell that they were weak. The fact that they were unpopular damaged them inside of Washington. It meant that other players in Washington didn’t respect them as much, didn’t fear them as much.
Trump plays a weak hand strong. He doesn’t suffer the way other people do with low poll numbers. He just simply ignores them and moves on as if he had some big giant mandate, which he doesn’t have. A lot of the political class responds to him as if that were correct because he has had the power to punish other Republicans through primary challenges and so forth. I’ve talked to some Republicans, such as former Sen. Jeff Flake, for instance, who think that as soon as the primary filing deadlines pass for Republicans, we may start to see more Republicans move away from him when they no longer have to fear a more outspoken MAGA challenger. We’ll see.
RA: Do you think Trump is going to continue to focus more on foreign policy in year two? Or are we beginning to see signs that he might try to pivot to cost of living and other domestic issues to combat the Democrats? In other words, is affordability the big new theme of 2026?
PB: We’ll certainly start off the year that way. Absolutely. If he doesn’t find a way to address it, if the economy doesn’t start picking up, then it’s to the detriment of Republicans.
Now, the Trump theory is that the tax cuts they pass in the first year will really begin to take effect in the two quarters of 2026, and you’ll see the economy start to take off. We’ll see. I’m not an economist, and frankly, even economists can’t tell you for sure. If he’s right, then obviously he has a lot more room to maneuver, but if the economy continues to stagnate along, that’s going to be the dominant thing going into the midterms.
People don’t care nearly as much about what’s happening overseas if they feel as if they can’t afford a place to live, if they can’t afford to pay their bills, or if they can’t afford health care. One statistic I thought was really interesting was that in the first 10 months of Trump’s presidency, the United States created about 500,000 jobs. In the first 10 months of 2024, before he came back to office, the United States created 1.5 million jobs. Job growth is down by two-thirds. Unemployment was starting to tick up at the end of 2025. So the trend lines aren’t good for him. He’s hoping for a jolt from these tax cuts. That’s what he’s really gambling on.
RA: One of the defining Trump foreign-policy themes in 2025 was him wanting to play peacemaker. One thing I’m going to be watching in 2026 is the conflicts he claims to have solved and where tensions have broken out again—say, Thailand and Cambodia. I’m going to be watching whether he tries to reengage with those conflicts or if he’s going to go with the line that “I fixed this. It’s done.” You could see this across a range of the other conflicts he’s claimed to have solved, whether it’s Armenia, Azerbaijan, or the Middle East, which remains a tinderbox. If you had to predict how Trump will try to sell his ability as a peacemaker in 2026, do you think that continues? Or is he going to say, “I’ve done it. I’m moving on to something else?”
PB: That’s a great question. I think that not a lot of people had Trump as peacemaker on their 2025 bingo card. A lot of people have worried about Trump being a warmonger. In fact, for the most part, except for Venezuela, it’s been the opposite. He wants to be remembered as a peacemaker. Even where he has exaggerated his successes—and he really has exaggerated them—his interest provides opportunities for people around the world to try to make at least some progress with these conflicts.
What Trump doesn’t seem to understand is that every president brokers cease-fires and modest deals in some of these conflicts around the word. They just don’t last. It’s usually a matter of keeping the pot from boiling over more than it is making paradigm shifts. But as you rightly point out, Cambodia and Thailand were shooting each other just days after the president was at the now newly renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, talking about how many wars he had settled.
I think you’re right that he doesn’t have the patience for the long, arduous, grinding work that diplomacy usually entails. He’s not the kind of guy who wants to have endless rounds of talks in Geneva to fashion a 300-page peace agreement between two warring parties. He wants to get two people in a room, he wants them to shake hands, he wants them to give him credit, and then he wants to move on. A lot of these conflicts he’s talking about right now, my guess is they are probably not fully settled and may rear their heads. If he can’t find a way to snap his fingers and say, “Get back on the page,” he may move on and simply pay attention to something else.
