Victory lap? Pep rally? Reclamation of narratives? In those senses, Donald Trump’s year-end speech fits well within the usual paradigms of presidential addresses from the White House.
In another sense, it follows a recent presidential tradition in another way. Like both of his predecessors, Trump blamed economic woes on the policies of their predecessors, and promised that his policies had already begun to repair the damage. This will be a key part of Trump’s midterm campaign message, and this speech marks the official launch of that campaign as surely as it served as a valediction for 2025.
First, as Roger Kimball points out, Trump earned this victory lap. He spent the last eleven months delivering on campaign promises at a speed and muscularity that hasn’t been seen since Ronald Reagan, or perhaps even FDR. Kimball writes at The Spectator that Trump “has accomplished more in 11 months than most presidents have achieved in eight years”:
As a mighty US armada bobs in the Caribbean off the shores of Venezuela, President Trump just addressed the nation from the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House. With characteristic delicacy and understatement, he outlined the accomplishments of the first 11 months of his second term in office, lightly criticized his predecessor and cautiously opined about what the future held in store for the United States of America in the coming semiquincentennial year.
Well, some viewers may wish to dispute my emphases and assessments of tone. But let’s just say that the President’s short speech was vintage Trump. It was hyperbolic, yes, over the top, indubitably, but in essence 100 percent true. The simple truth is that the whirlwind that is Donald Trump has accomplished more in 11 months than most presidents have achieved in eight years.
Really, what was Trump elected to do? Well, to seal the southern border. He has done that. To remove illegal immigrants from our country. He is well on the way to doing that, too. Trump was elected to take on the whole DEI establishment. He certainly has done that. Then there are all the economic issues: energy, including the “green energy scam.” All of that is quickly becoming a vague memory scene in Al Gore’s rearview mirror. Above all, Trump was elected to restore confidence in and enthusiasm about the United States of America. That current of cultural self-confidence is absolutely central to fulfilling the imperative of “Make America Great Again.”
All of this is true, but success brings its own complications. The more Trump succeeds on these issues, the less acute they become to voters. That leaves economic issues as the main focus for midterm voters, and presents a conundrum to Trump. If he cannot hold the House and Senate in those upcoming elections, then not only can he not get legislation on broader policy issues passed, the gains he made in 2025 become even more fragile. Trump has accomplished all of the gains Kimball notes almost exclusively through executive power, and unless a Republican succeeds him in the White House, most of these can and will be reversed, just as surely as Trump reversed the depredations of the Biden Regency.
Trump therefore approached the economic message in two ways. First off, he took a page out of the Obama and Biden playbooks and blamed lingering woes about prices and wages on both of them. Kimball wrote that Trump “lightly criticized his predecessor,” but Trump literally led the speech with it:
Eleven months ago, I inherited a mess, and I’m fixing it. When I took office, inflation was the worst in 48 years, and some would say in the history of our country, which caused prices to be higher than ever before, making life unaffordable for millions and millions of Americans. This happened during a Democrat administration, and it’s when we first began hearing the word affordability.
Our border was open. And because of this, our country was being invaded by an army of 25 million people, many who came from prisons and jails, mental institutions and insane asylums. They were drug dealers, gang members and even 11,888 murderers, more than 50 percent of whom killed more than one person. This is what the Biden administration allowed to happen to our country, and it can never be allowed to happen again.
Later, Trump did something that he usually doesn’t do – drill down into the data. He did this, again, to remind people about the economic mess he inherited, and to contrast it with improvements his policies have already created:
Let’s look at the facts. Under the Biden administration, car prices rose 22 percent, and in many states, 30 percent or more. Gasoline rose 30 to 50 percent. Hotel rates rose 37 percent. Airfares rose 31 percent. Now, under our leadership, they are all coming down and coming down fast. Democrat politicians also sent the cost of groceries soaring, but we are solving that, too. The price of a Thanksgiving turkey was down 33 percent compared to the Biden last year. The price of eggs is down 82 percent since March, and everything else is falling rapidly. And it’s not done yet, but boy, are we making progress. Nobody can believe what’s going on.
Here are just some of the efforts that we have underway you will see in your wallets and bank accounts in the new year. After years of record-setting falling incomes, our policies are boosting take-home pay at a historic pace. Under Biden, real wages plummeted by $3,000. Under Trump, the typical factory worker has seen a wage increase of $1,300. For construction workers, it’s $1,800. For miners, we’re bringing back clean, beautiful coal, it’s $3,300. And for the first time in years, wages are rising much faster than inflation. Remember that rate, the wages, just look at it, wages are going up much faster than inflation. How big is that?
Trump then turned to another favorite tactic of his predecessors as a sweetener to open the midterm campaign messaging on his economic policies: stimulus checks, dressed up as “dividends” and tax refunds:
Next year, you will also see the results of the largest tax cuts in American history that were really accomplished through our great Big, Beautiful Bill, perhaps the most sweeping legislation ever passed in Congress. We wrapped 12 different bills up into one beautiful bill. That includes no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors. Under these cuts, many families will be saving between $11,000 and $20,000 a year, and next spring is projected to be the largest tax refund season of all time.
Because of tariffs, along with the just passed One Big, Beautiful Bill, tonight I am also proud to announce that more than 1,000, 450,000, think of this, 1,450,000 military service members will receive a special, we call warrior dividend before Christmas, a warrior dividend. In honor of our nation’s founding in 1776, we are sending every soldier $1,776.
That will cost $2.6 billion, a drop in the bucket for the $300 billion in tariff revenue Trump claims to have received this year. We can talk about the wisdom of demand-side stimulus in the macro-economic sense later, but this makes political sense as an opening salvo in the midterms. Trump refrained from announcing broader “dividend” disbursements, although some had expected Trump to propose them in this speech, but those would likely require Congress to approve, regardless of whether the funds came from tariffs or other revenues.
The year-end speech offered a relatively disciplined, rather traditional address for a president about to go on the campaign trail to push hard and protect his thin majorities on Capitol Hill. Trump is signaling that he intends to put himself on the top of the ticket on his own terms in this year’s elections. It may be the only way for Trump to make these wins permanent.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump’s leadership and bold policies, America’s economy is back on track.
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