Report card: Conservative and liberal strategists reveal how Trump has fared on campaign promises
Ahead of President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address since returning to the White House, his record on key campaign pledges is mixed, as some promises have been fulfilled while others are still pending or tied up in legal challenges.
Trump’s 2024 campaign centered on immigration, the economy, sweeping tariffs and ending the United States’ involvement in foreign conflicts. More than a year into his second term, Republican and Democratic strategists alike told Fox News Digital the administration has made significant strides in some of those areas but fallen short in others.
Voters, meanwhile, view Trump as weak on the economy (40% approval), foreign policy (37% approval) and tariffs (37% approval), according to a Fox News poll last month. His approval rating is slightly higher on immigration at 44%, and a net positive 52% when it comes to border security.
One of Trump’s top promises was stopping what he described as an “invasion” at the southern border by curbing illegal crossings and pursuing an aggressive deportation agenda.
Department of Homeland Security data since Trump took office shows a sharp decrease in border crossings between ports of entry, an achievement Trump is likely to highlight in Tuesday’s speech.
But Trump’s promise to carry out mass deportations on a historic scale remains mired in controversy. ICE raids and enforcement initiatives, such as Operation Metro Surge, have not at this stage led to the removal of millions that Trump articulated on the campaign trail. Deportations have also been met with hundreds of lawsuits, intensifying scrutiny of them.
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Julian Epstein, a Democratic consultant and former chief counsel on the House Judiciary Committee, said Trump has “secured the borders, but he has not explained to the public adequately enough his purpose and rationale on deportation.”
Theo Wold, a former assistant attorney general and policy official in the first Trump White House, said the Biden administration’s lax border policies amounted to a “criminal undermining of federal immigration law” that Trump has completely reversed. But he acknowledged that contention over deportations has clouded the administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.
“The work to remove hundreds of thousands of criminal illegal aliens continues and will be an ongoing fight, as Democrats look to obstruct ICE’s progress,” Wold said. “But the ongoing fight over mass deportations has obscured President Trump’s novel regulatory rulemakings to ferret out asylum fraud and to ensure that foreign labor visas are not wielded to undermine the economic mobility of the American worker.”
Epstein gave Trump an A-.
Wold gave Trump an A-.
Trump vowed to impose steep tariffs on imports from around the world to protect U.S. manufacturing. But that plan took a hit when the Supreme Court ruled that he could not unilaterally impose broad tariffs on an emergency basis without congressional approval.
Undeterred, Trump announced a new set of 10% global tariffs under a different legal authority, and the president has signaled he plans to raise that rate to 15%.
“He has a good reason to claw back the losses of the middle class in the last three decades, that’s an honorable thing that he’s doing, but the policy has been too diffuse, not sufficiently targeted, and poorly explained to the public,” Epstein said.
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Bradley Devlin, an editor at the conservative Daily Signal, said doomsday predictions about Trump’s tariffs have not panned out.
“Tariffs, they claimed, would cause a recession. But for the first time in a long time, real wages are rising for working Americans,” Devlin said.
Epstein gave Trump a B.
Devlin gave Trump an A.
On foreign policy, Trump repeatedly suggested he could end the war in Ukraine, but that has not materialized. Trump’s other diplomatic efforts have, however, been met with praise.
“He’s put out eight wars, moved us light years ahead of where Biden was in the Middle East, and is securing the Western Hemisphere by squeezing out the communist dictators in Venezuela and Cuba,” Epstein said.
Devlin said Trump’s threats of military strikes on Iran, which the president has said are aimed at forcing the country to negotiate over its nuclear program, did not jibe with a message of peace.
“Two driving foreign policy issues of the 2024 campaign, brokering peace in the Russia-Ukraine war and an end to the conflict in the Middle East, remain elusive,” Devlin said. “And the president seems on the verge of a war with Iran that would likely make an American pivot away from the Middle East unachievable by the end of his term.”
Epstein gave Trump an A.
Devlin gave Trump a C+.
Central to Trump’s campaign was economic prosperity. Trump vowed to ease inflation and boost domestic energy production. Recent government data show inflation has indeed eased but that it remains a point of concern.
Trump has also pointed to tax cuts enacted under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a sweeping tax and spending law signed in July 2025, as a success tied to his agenda.
Epstein said the economy is “headed in the right track” but that Trump has not fully addressed the concerns of an “anxious public.”
Elizabeth Pipko, a Republican National Committee spokesperson, said economic growth under Trump has been “robust.”
“Inflation has gone down, gas prices have fallen significantly, wages are rising, and the progress made in one year has far surpassed what anyone could have predicted,” Pipko said.
Pipko gave Trump an A.
Epstein gave Trump a B+.
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