Beyond January 2025: What Actually Happened to Trump's Roadmap
Eighteen months later, the predictions meet the record — tariffs, a war with Iran, and a fractured NATO
Six billion dollars. That is roughly what the U.S. Supreme Court ordered refunded to a single toy company and hundreds of thousands of other importers after ruling, 6-3, that Trump's second term tariff architecture rested on a law that never authorized it. Eighteen months ago, this publication laid out what an incoming Trump White House was expected to do. What follows is not a forecast anymore — it's the reckoning.
The Roadmap, Checked Against the Record
Predicting a second Trump term was never the hard part; nearly every outlet ran some version of the same list — tariffs, deportations, a leaner NATO commitment, a quick Ukraine deal. Verifying which of those predictions survived contact with courts, markets, and a shooting war is the harder job, and it's the one nobody wanted to do until the dust actually settled.
Here is the short version of eighteen months condensed into an answer a reader can act on:
| Promise (Jan 2025) | Where it stood by mid-2026 |
|---|---|
| Sweeping tariffs to fix the trade deficit | Struck down by the Supreme Court, Feb. 20, 2026 |
| End the Ukraine war in 24 hours | War continued through 2026; Trump signaled renewed engagement at the June G7 |
| Expand the Abraham Accords | Delivered — Saudi Arabia normalized relations in March 2025 |
| Force NATO allies to pay more | Partly delivered, at the cost of the alliance's worst trust crisis in decades |
The Tariff Wall the Supreme Court Tore Down
The "Liberation Day" tariffs of April 2025 were the loudest opening act of Trump's second term: a universal duty on nearly every trading partner, layered with steeper rates for China and the European Union. The Brookings Institution later calculated that the average effective U.S. tariff rate climbed to nearly 17% — the highest level since the early 1930s — and that American firms and consumers, not foreign exporters, absorbed close to 90% of the cost, adding an estimated $1,000 to $1,300 to household bills in a single year.
On February 20, 2026, that architecture collapsed. In Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, the Court held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — a sanctions statute, not a tax statute — never gave the president authority to set tariffs at all. Within a day, the administration pivoted to a narrower, time-limited tool under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, capped by law at 150 days without congressional renewal. The ruling didn't end the trade fight; it moved it back to Congress, which is exactly where the Constitution's framers put the power to tax in the first place.
Here's the number that got buried under the Iran headlines: the Federal Circuit's own injunction covered every importer nationwide, named plaintiff or not, which means a small toy company most Americans have never heard of triggered a refund process now estimated near $175 billion — money the government must, by law, return rather than keep. Somewhere between that ruling and the missiles over the Strait of Hormuz, the story of this presidency stopped being about intentions and became a story about institutional limits nobody had fully tested before.
The War the Original Roadmap Never Mentioned
Nothing in the pre-inauguration forecasts anticipated this: on February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran, killing the country's supreme leader and setting off forty days of missile exchanges, a closed Strait of Hormuz, and a naval blockade. By mid-June, the direct cost to American taxpayers alone was estimated at $113.3 billion. A ceasefire finally held after Trump and Iran's president signed the Islamabad Memorandum on June 17 — fittingly, at a dinner in Versailles after the G7 summit — establishing a 60-day window to negotiate whatever comes next.
Was this the "peace through strength" the original roadmap promised, or the opposite of it? Reasonable people who watched the same eighteen months answer that question very differently, and the honest position is that both readings capture something real: regional deterrence reshuffled, and a war nobody voted for.
Trump is extraordinarily effective at disrupting existing structures, and far less effective at building durable replacements for what he disrupts — the tariff wall didn't survive its own Supreme Court, and the war it wasn't supposed to start became the costliest single line item of the term.
Peak of Trending Editorial AnalysisNATO's Reckoning and the Abraham Accords Ledger
Not everything in the original forecast went sideways. The Abraham Accords expansion predicted for a second Trump term actually happened: Saudi Arabia normalized relations with Israel in March 2025, with Indonesia, Oman, and Kuwait following through the rest of that year — a genuine diplomatic achievement that reshapes Gulf alignments for a generation, independent of how the Iran war is ultimately judged.
NATO paid a different price
NATO's story is messier. Trump was neither consulted nor informed before the February strikes on Iran, and no European ally joined the operation — a snub that accelerated European talk of "strategic autonomy" on a timeline suddenly measured in years rather than decades. The burden-sharing fight Trump picked with European capitals did force real defense-spending increases; it also left the alliance's oldest members quietly building financial and military hedges against an American guarantee they no longer take for granted.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did the Supreme Court actually end Trump's tariffs?
Not entirely. The Court struck down tariffs imposed under the IEEPA sanctions law on February 20, 2026, but left other legal tools, including Section 122 and Section 301 of the Trade Act, available to the administration for narrower or time-limited tariffs.
Did Trump end the Russia-Ukraine war as promised?
No. The promised 24-hour resolution never materialized, and the war continued through 2025 and into 2026. By the June 2026 G7 summit, Trump had shifted tone, meeting Zelenskyy and signaling renewed U.S. engagement as Ukraine posted battlefield gains.
What triggered the 2026 Iran war?
The United States and Israel launched strikes on February 28, 2026, after nuclear talks collapsed, aiming to halt Iran's nuclear and missile programs. The conflict closed the Strait of Hormuz for weeks before a ceasefire and the June 2026 Islamabad Memorandum.
How has Trump's approval rating changed since inauguration?
Trump began his second term at 47% approval, already the second-lowest inaugural rating in modern polling. By mid-2026, tracking averages placed him in the high 30s, driven largely by economic dissatisfaction and the Iran war's aftermath.
Sources & References
- Supreme Court of the United States, Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump opinion, 2026
- Brookings Institution, tariff ruling analysis, February 2026
- NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll, June 2026
- Opinion polling compilation, second Trump presidency, 2026
- Al Jazeera, Islamabad Memorandum coverage, June 2026
- UK House of Commons Library, Israel/US-Iran conflict briefing, 2026