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45th & 47th President · 2017–2021; 2025–present

Donald J. Trump

A New York real estate developer and television personality who won the presidency in 2016 without any prior government service, lost reelection in 2020 and returned to the White House in 2025 — the second president to serve non-consecutive terms.

Official portrait of President Donald J. Trump, 2017, smiling, with the American flag behind him
45th President, 2017Photo: Shealah Craighead, The White HousePublic domainSource
Portrait of Donald J. Trump
47th President, 2025Photo: Daniel Torok, The White HousePublic domainSource
Born
June 14, 1946Queens, New York City, New York
Home state
New York; Florida since 2019
Vice presidents
Mike Pence, JD Vance

Life & Offices

The son of a Queens real estate developer, Trump graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, took over his father’s company and built a brand in Manhattan real estate, casinos, golf courses and licensing. Already a well-known public figure by the 1980s, he reached a still wider audience as host of the NBC reality program The Apprentice. Campaigning as an outsider on immigration enforcement, trade protection and an “America First” foreign policy, he won the 2016 Republican nomination over a large field and defeated Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College while losing the popular vote.

His first term brought the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, three Supreme Court appointments, the First Step Act on criminal justice, a renegotiated North American trade agreement, tariffs on China and other trading partners, and the Abraham Accords normalizing relations between Israel and several Arab states. The COVID-19 pandemic dominated 2020. The House impeached Trump twice — in 2019 over his dealings with Ukraine and in January 2021 after the attack on the Capitol — and the Senate acquitted him both times. He lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, contested the result and did not concede.

Trump won the Republican nomination again in 2024, survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, that July, and defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote. He became the second president, after Grover Cleveland, to serve non-consecutive terms. His second term, which began on January 20, 2025, has been marked by extensive use of executive orders, aggressive immigration enforcement, sweeping tariffs and a 2025 budget law that made his first-term individual tax cuts permanent.

Offices before the presidency

  • No public office before 2017 — the first president with no prior government or military service
  • 45th President of the United States (2017–2021)

Era: XI. Trump, MAGA and America First

The Record

  • 2017

    Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

    Signed December 22, 2017, the law cut the corporate income-tax rate from 35 to 21 percent, lowered individual rates, nearly doubled the standard deduction and capped the deduction for state and local taxes. Most individual provisions were scheduled to expire after 2025.

    Primary Source

  • 2017–2020

    Supreme Court and federal judiciary

    Trump appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and more than 200 other federal judges. All three justices joined the 2022 majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overruled Roe v. Wade.

    Historical Record

  • 2018

    First Step Act

    The bipartisan law shortened some mandatory minimum sentences, made the Fair Sentencing Act’s reduced crack-cocaine penalties retroactive and expanded rehabilitation programs and earned-time credits in federal prisons.

    Primary Source

  • 2018–2020

    Tariffs and the USMCA

    Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods, prompting retaliation, and replaced NAFTA with the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, which took effect in July 2020.

    Historical Record

  • 2020

    Abraham Accords

    Agreements signed at the White House in September 2020 normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain; Morocco and Sudan followed.

    Historical Record

  • 2020

    Operation Warp Speed

    A public-private effort launched in May 2020 funded the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines, the first of which received emergency authorization in December 2020.

    Historical Record

  • 2025

    Second inauguration and first-day actions

    Sworn in on January 20, 2025, Trump signed executive orders the same day declaring a national emergency at the southern border and withdrawing again from the Paris climate agreement, and granted pardons or commutations to about 1,500 people charged in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

    Historical Record

  • 2025

    Reciprocal tariffs

    In Executive Order 14257 of April 2, 2025, the administration declared that large and persistent U.S. goods trade deficits — which it attributed to a lack of reciprocity, foreign tariffs and non-tariff barriers — constituted a national emergency, and it imposed a baseline tariff on most imports with higher rates for many trading partners. It presented the tariffs as a means to restore fair trade, revive domestic manufacturing and gain leverage in negotiations.

    Trump Administration Position

  • 2025

    Reconciliation law extending the 2017 tax cuts

    Signed July 4, 2025, the law widely known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Public Law 119-21) made the 2017 individual tax cuts permanent, added temporary deductions for tips and overtime pay, increased spending on border security and immigration enforcement, and reduced projected federal spending on Medicaid and food assistance.

    Primary Source

Criticism & Debate

Opposing View / Debate

Did Trump’s conduct in the Ukraine affair and after the 2020 election warrant removal from office?

In December 2019 the House impeached Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, charging that he had pressed Ukraine’s president to investigate Joe Biden while withholding military aid; in February 2020 the Senate acquitted him on both articles, and Senator Mitt Romney was the only Republican to vote to convict, on the abuse-of-power charge. After the 2020 election Trump claimed widespread fraud; courts rejected his campaign’s challenges, and his attorney general said the Justice Department had not found fraud on a scale that could have changed the outcome. On January 6, 2021, after Trump urged supporters at a rally to march to the Capitol, a mob breached the building and disrupted the counting of electoral votes. The House impeached him for incitement of insurrection, and in February 2021 the Senate voted 57 to 43 to convict — ten votes short of the two-thirds required — with seven Republicans in the majority.

Critics

Critics, including the House impeachment managers and the Republicans who voted to convict, argued that Trump abused his office for personal political gain and that his false claims of a stolen election and his conduct on January 6 endangered the peaceful transfer of power.

Trump and his defenders

Trump and his defenders called both impeachments partisan and pointed to his acquittals. They argued that his dealings with a foreign leader were within his authority and his January 6 speech was protected political expression in which he told supporters to make their voices heard peacefully, and many Republican senators argued that a former president could not be tried by the Senate.

Sources

  1. List of Individuals Impeached by the House of Representatives · U.S. House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives
  2. Donald Trump: Life Between the Presidencies · Miller Center, University of Virginia
Opposing View / Debate

Were the criminal prosecutions of Trump the rule of law or political “lawfare”?

In 2023 Trump was indicted in four criminal cases: two federal cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, over classified documents and over efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and state cases in New York and Georgia. On May 30, 2024, a Manhattan jury convicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records connected to a payment made before the 2016 election; on January 10, 2025, the judge imposed an unconditional discharge, leaving the conviction in place without penalty. In July 2024 the Supreme Court held in Trump v. United States that former presidents are immune from prosecution for core constitutional acts and presumptively immune for other official acts. A federal judge dismissed the documents case that month, ruling the special counsel’s appointment unlawful, and after the 2024 election the special counsel ended both federal prosecutions, citing the Justice Department’s policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

Supporters of the prosecutions

Supporters argue that the cases showed no one is above the law, that grand juries and a trial jury found the evidence sufficient, and that the immunity ruling and the dismissals left serious allegations untested in court.

Trump and his defenders

Trump denied wrongdoing, called the cases politically motivated “lawfare” driven by his political opponents and said he would appeal his conviction. Many Republicans argued that the prosecutions were timed to interfere with the 2024 election and that the New York case stretched the law to reach him.

Sources

  1. Donald Trump: Life Between the Presidencies · Miller Center, University of Virginia
Opposing View / Debate

Are sweeping tariffs and an expansive view of executive power good for the country?

In both terms Trump made tariffs a central instrument of economic and foreign policy. In his second term he imposed tariffs on most imports under emergency powers, alongside executive actions reshaping the federal workforce and agencies. In February 2026, in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, the Supreme Court held 6–3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize tariffs; in June 2026, in Trump v. Slaughter, it upheld his removal of a Federal Trade Commission member.

Supporters

The administration and its supporters argue that tariffs protect American manufacturing and workers, counter unfair trade practices by China and others, raise revenue and create leverage for better trade deals, and that decisive executive action is needed to carry out the agenda voters endorsed.

Critics

Critics, including many economists and free-trade conservatives, argue that tariffs are taxes paid largely by American businesses and consumers, invite retaliation against farmers and exporters and create uncertainty, and that imposing them by emergency decree and acting without Congress exceed the president’s constitutional authority.

Sources

  1. Executive Order 14257 — Regulating Imports With a Reciprocal Tariff · The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara
  2. Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, 607 U.S. 229 (2026) · Supreme Court of the United States
  3. Trump v. Slaughter, 609 U.S. 422 (2026) · Supreme Court of the United States

Documents

Sources

  1. Donald Trump · Miller Center, University of Virginia
  2. Donald J. Trump · White House Historical Association
  3. Donald J. Trump Presidential Library · National Archives
  4. List of Individuals Impeached by the House of Representatives · U.S. House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives