Here’s what Trump has promised to do in a second term
Editor's Note: CNN's What Matters newsletter connects the dots of the ever-changing political landscape. Click here to sign up for free.
Former President Donald Trump has won the 2024 presidential election, CNN projects. Here's what he has promised he’d do upon his return to the White House.
Trump has vowed to reverse many of the policies enacted since he left office. President Joe Biden’s sweeping climate change agenda and new restrictions on guns and protections for transgender people would all be on the chopping block in a second term, he has said.
Throughout his campaign, Trump routinely shared plans to pick up where his administration left off on many of his first-term priorities. He has promised to finish building the wall between the US and Mexico that he first promised in 2016, remove all undocumented individuals, implement more tariffs on imports and increase American energy production.
His quest to pick up new support also led him to dangle promises tailored to specific audiences. At one stop in Las Vegas, for instance, he vowed to eliminate income taxes on tipped wages. Trump also floated ambitious but vague ideas to position the US for the future by embracing flying cars, promoting cryptocurrency and promising to build 10 new "Freedom Cities.”
At the same time, a desire for vengeance ran through his third presidential bid. Trump has planned retribution against the systems, institutions and people he believes have wronged him. He and his allies have suggested Trump in a second term could unleash the Justice Department on his political enemies, purge the federal government of disloyal bureaucrats and consolidate power in the executive branch.
Economy
Trump has promised to extend the cuts from his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, notably the TCJA’s individual income tax breaks. The former president has also talked about reducing the corporate tax rate to 15%, from 21% – but only for companies that make their products in the US.
“I will make the Trump tax cuts the largest tax cut in history,” the former president said earlier this year at the Black Conservative Federation’s Honors Gala in South Carolina. “We’ll make it permanent and give you a new economic boom.”
I will make the Trump tax cuts the largest tax cut in history.”
In September, Trump said he would push for legislation that would end taxes on overtime pay.
“That gives people more of an incentive to work," Trump said at a rally in Arizona. "It gives the companies a lot, it’s a lot easier to get the people.”
This summer, during a campaign stop in Las Vegas, Trump also pledged to end taxes on tips, a move targeted to appeal to hundreds of thousands of people working in the city.
The former president has also promised to stop taxing Social Security benefits. He has yet to outline a proposal to replace the lost revenue, which could harm the popular entitlement program, as well as Medicare and the federal budget.
He has also proposed a government efficiency commission as a way to reduce government spending and announced that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has agreed to lead it. The commission will “develop an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months,” Trump said in September remarks at the Economic Club of New York.
The former president has also announced plans to get rid of the $10,000 limit on state and local tax, or SALT, deductions that he signed into law as part of his 2017 tax cuts. Reversing this cap would largely affect higher-income people in high-tax blue states who itemize their deductions.
In an early October speech, Trump promised to make the interest paid on car loans fully tax deductible. He also vowed in an October video to end the double taxation on Americans who live abroad. This move could stop some Americans living abroad from having to pay taxes to both the US and to the country where they live. He has not provided details on how such relief would work.
Trump has also pledged to repeal Biden’s tax hikes, “immediately tackle” inflation and end what he called Biden’s “war” on American energy production. He has promised to rescind all unspent funds from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which put in place a wide array of climate measures and funneled about $80 billion over 10 years to the Internal Revenue Service.
In an effort to address housing affordability, Trump has floated a ban on mortgages for undocumented immigrants, claiming that they push up housing costs. CNN has reported that undocumented immigrants, however, make up a tiny portion of the mortgage market.
To help “working Americans” catch up on credit card debt, Trump promised in September to temporarily cap interest rates on credit cards at 10%. The average credit card rate is just under 21%, while the average rate on retail store cards is a record high 30.45%.
At a late October rally in New York City's Madison Square Garden, he also said he would support a tax credit for family caregivers. He has not outlined details about who would be eligible, how large it would be and whether the cost would be covered.
Trade
In February, Trump pledged to impose “stiff penalties on China and other trade abusers.”
“It’s called you screw us, and we screw you,” Trump said at a South Carolina rally.
Under his proposed “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act,” the former president said if other countries impose tariffs on the US, the country would impose “a reciprocal, identical” tariff right back.
It was the same pledge Trump made in a campaign video in 2023: to impose the same tariffs that other countries may impose on the US on those countries. The goal, the former president said then, is to get other countries to drop their tariffs.
It’s called you screw us, and we screw you.”
As part of a larger strategy to bring jobs back into the US, Trump also said he would implement his so-called “America First” trade agenda. By setting universal baseline tariffs on a majority of foreign goods, the former president said Americans would see taxes decrease as tariffs increase. His proposal also includes a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods and stop China from buying up America and US companies from investing in China.
Trump also said in February that he would consider imposing a tariff upward of 60% on all Chinese imports. He has also called for adding a tariff of at least 10% on all imports from all countries. At an August campaign event in North Carolina, he suggested that the across-the-board tariff could be as high as 20%.
In September, Trump floated a 100% or 200% tariff on cars made in Mexico. He claimed this would stop Chinese companies from building auto plants in Mexico as a way to avoid US tariffs, which he could impose by executive action.
Trump has also repeatedly expressed interest in ending the federal income tax, pointing to the late 19th century, when the US relied on tariffs to fund federal spending.
“When we were a smart country, in the 1890s … this is when the country was relatively the richest it ever was. It had all tariffs. It didn’t have an income tax,” Trump said in late October.
Earlier in October, Trump announced that if he wins the White House again, he would invoke the six-year renegotiation provision of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which was signed into law in January 2020 as a replacement for NAFTA.
The former president has particularly focused on China, vowing in a January 2023 campaign video to restrict Chinese ownership of US infrastructure such as energy, technology, telecommunications and natural resources. Trump also said he would force the Chinese to sell current holdings that may put national security at risk. “Economic security is national security,” he said.
Immigration
Trump made immigration and the border a central campaign issue, successfully pressuring Republicans to reject a major bipartisan border deal earlier this year and making a trip to the southern border in February, where he touted his previous hard-line immigration policies.
In a Des Moines Register op-ed published roughly a week before winning the Iowa caucuses in January, Trump vowed to use the “Alien Enemies Act to remove known or suspected gang members, drug dealers, or cartel members from the United States.”
“We will shift massive portions of federal law enforcement to immigration enforcement — including parts of the DEA, ATF, FBI, and DHS,” he wrote.
In a video posted on Truth Social in late February before his border visit, Trump also promised to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
We will shift massive portions of federal law enforcement to immigration enforcement — including parts of the DEA, ATF, FBI, and DHS.”
In October, Trump said he would use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to create a federal program to expedite the removal of undocumented gang members. He also warned that "if they come back into our country, they will be told it is an automatic 10-year sentence in jail with no possibility of parole.” CNN has reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement already deports individuals who pose a national security or public safety threat once ordered removed by an immigration judge.
Later that month, Trump promised to create a “compensation fund” for victims of crimes committed by migrants by using assets seized from gangs and drug cartels.
Also in October, during a rally in Arizona, Trump promised to hire 10,000 new Border Patrol agents, provide a 10% salary raise and offer a $10,000 retention and signing bonus. His comments came months after Senate Republicans, at his urging, blocked a bipartisan border measure that would have cleared the way for more Border Patrol agents.
Separately, this summer, Trump proposed “automatically” giving green cards to foreign nationals who graduate from US colleges — comments that break from his efforts to curb both legal and illegal immigration while in office.
After the Israel-Hamas war began last October, Trump also promised to terminate the visas of “Hamas’ sympathizers.”
“We’ll get them off our college campuses, out of our cities and get them the hell out of our country, if that’s OK with you,” he added.
Drug cartels
The former president has also made waging “war” on drug cartels a priority for his second term. Trump said in his November 2022 campaign announcement that he would ask Congress to ensure that drug smugglers and human traffickers can receive the death penalty for their “heinous acts.”
Trump also vowed to “take down” drug cartels by imposing naval embargos on cartels, cutting off cartels’ access to global financial systems and using special forces within the Department of Defense to damage the cartels’ leadership.
At an August campaign event in Arizona, Trump also vowed to impose a “10-year mandatory minimum sentence for anyone guilty of human smuggling, a guaranteed life sentence for anyone guilty of child trafficking, and a death penalty for anyone guilty of child or woman sex trafficking.”
Education
Trump announced plans in a September 2023 campaign video to close the Department of Education and send “all education and education work and needs back to the states.”
“We want them to run the education of our children, because they’ll do a much better job of it,” he added.
The former president has also promised to “put parents back in charge and give them the final say” in education. In a January 2023 campaign video, the former president said he would give funding preferences and “favorable treatment” to schools that allow parents to elect principals, abolish teacher tenure for K-12 teachers, use merit pay to incentivize quality teaching and cut the number of school administrators, such as those overseeing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
We want them to run the education of our children, because they’ll do a much better job of it.”
Trump reaffirmed plans to close the Education Department in a conversation on X with Musk in August, during which the tech billionaire proposed the commission to look for ways to cut government spending.
“This is where I need an Elon Musk. I need somebody that has a lot of strength and courage and smarts. I want to close up the Department of Education, move education back to the states,” Trump said.
Trump also said in that 2023 campaign video that he would cut funding for schools that teach critical race theory and gender ideology. In a later speech, Trump said he would bring back the 1776 Commission, which was launched in his previous administration to “teach our values and promote our history and our traditions to our children.”
The former president said he would charge the Department of Justice and the Department of Education with investigating civil rights violations of race-based discrimination in schools while also removing “Marxists” from the Department of Education. A second Trump administration would pursue violations in schools of both the Constitution’s Establishment and Free Exercise clauses, which prohibit the government establishment of religion and protect a citizen’s right to practice their own religion, he said.
Trump has also promised to fund free online classes with funds seized from private university endowments.
Health care
Last November, Trump promised to replace the Affordable Care Act, known colloquially as Obamacare, in a series of posts on Truth Social. A Trump-backed effort to repeal and replace Obamacare failed in 2017 after three Republicans senators joined with Democrats to vote against the bill.
“Getting much better Healthcare than Obamacare for the American people will be a priority of the Trump Administration,” he said.
“It is not a matter of cost, it is a matter of HEALTH. America will have one of the best Healthcare Plans anywhere in the world. Right now it has one of the WORST!,” he continued. He also doubled down on his vow during a speech in early January. But when asked during September’s debate with Harris about whether he has a plan to replace Obamacare, he replied, “I have concepts of a plan.”
Getting much better Healthcare than Obamacare for the American people will be a priority of the Trump Administration.”
Trump also vowed in a June 2023 campaign video to reinstate his previous executive order so that the US government would pay the same price for pharmaceuticals as other developed countries. Some of the former president’s pharmaceutical policies were overturned by Biden.
On the abortion issue, Trump said in April that he would not sign a federal abortion ban and has taken the position that laws should be decided by states.
“The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” Trump said in an April recording posted to his Truth Social platform.
Trump also said in May that he did not support banning birth control. He previously said that he was “looking at” contraceptives when asked if he supported restrictions.
In August, Trump announced plans to make either the government or insurance companies pay for in vitro fertilization treatments. He did not specify how the treatments would be paid for.
The former president also praised medical marijuana ahead of some states voting on the issue this fall. In a September social media post, he pledged that, if elected, he’d “continue to focus on research to unlock the medical uses of marijuana to a Schedule 3 drug, and work with Congress to pass common sense laws, including safe banking for state authorized companies, and supporting states rights to pass marijuana laws, like in Florida, that work so well for their citizens.”
In late October, Trump promised that he’d let Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has pushed vaccine conspiracy theories, “go wild on health,” suggesting his former political rival would take a role in his potential administration that would include policies related to food and medicine.
Gender care
“I will revoke every Biden policy promoting the chemical castration and sexual mutilation of our youth and ask Congress to send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states,” Trump said at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference last March.
Trump added in a campaign video that he would issue an executive order instructing federal agencies to cut programs that promote gender transitions, as well as asking Congress to stop the use of federal dollars to promote and pay for gender-affirming procedures. The former president added that his administration would not allow hospitals and health care providers to meet the federal health and safety standards for Medicaid and Medicare if they provide chemical or physical gender-affirming care to youth.
Justice system
Trump has promised to use the Department of Justice to attack critics and former allies. In several videos and speeches, the former president also laid out plans to gut the current justice system by firing “radical Marxist prosecutors that are destroying America.”
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Trump said in June 2023 remarks. “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”
Trump said in a campaign video last year that he would reinstate a 2020 executive order to remove “rogue” bureaucrats and propose a constitutional amendment for term limits on members of Congress.
I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.”
To address what he labeled the “disturbing” relationship between technology platforms and the government, the former president said in a January 2023 video that he would enact a seven-year cooling off period before employees at agencies such as the FBI or CIA can work for platforms that oversee mass user data.
Trump added in multiple campaign releases that he would task the Justice Department with investigating online censorship, ban federal agencies from “colluding” to censor citizens and suspend federal money to universities participating in “censorship-supporting activities.”
In a September 2023 speech at the Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit in Washington, DC, Trump also touted plans to continue appointing conservative judges.
“I will once again appoint rock-solid conservative judges to do what they have to do in the mold of Justices Antonin Scalia; Samuel Alito, a great gentleman; and another great gentleman, Clarence Thomas,” he said.
Trump has also pledged to “appoint U.S. Attorneys who will be the polar opposite of the Soros District Attorneys and others that are being appointed throughout the United States.”
In a September 2023 speech in Washington, DC, Trump also announced that he would appoint a task force to review the cases of people he claimed had been “unjustly persecuted by the Biden administration.” Trump noted that he wanted to “study the situation very quickly, and sign their pardons or commutations on day one.”
It’s a move that could lead to potential pardons of many rioters from the January 6, 2021, insurrection – which he suggested he would do at a CNN town hall in May 2023.
At the Libertarian Convention in May, Trump also promised to release Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the online black market Silk Road who is serving a life sentence in prison for money laundering, drug trafficking and computer hacking. Trump declined to commute Ulbricht’s sentence during his presidency.
*Only promises on judge appointments and congressional term limits are similar to prior campaigns
Crime
Trump said in two February 2023 campaign videos that if “Marxist” prosecutors refuse to charge crimes and surrender “our cities to violent criminals,” he “will not hesitate to send in federal law enforcement to restore peace and public safety.”
Trump added that he would instruct the Department of Justice to open civil rights investigations into “radical left” prosecutors’ offices that engaged in racial enforcement of the law, encourage Congress to use their legal authority over Washington, DC, to restore “law and order” and overhaul federal standards of disciplining minors to address rising crimes like carjackings.
Addressing policies made in what Trump calls the “Democrats’ war on police,” the former president vowed in a campaign video that he would pass a “record investment” to hire and retrain police, strengthen protections like qualified immunity, increase penalties for assaulting law enforcement officers and deploy the National Guard when local law enforcement “refuses to act.”
The former president added that he would require law enforcement agencies that receive money from his funding investment or the Department of Justice to use “proven common sense” measures such as stop-and-frisk.
Foreign policy
Trump has continued his attacks against member countries of NATO, a European and North American defense alliance. At a South Carolina rally earlier this year, Trump said he would not abide by the alliance’s collective-defense clause and would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” if a member country didn’t meet spending guidelines.
“NATO was busted until I came along,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Everybody’s gonna pay.’ They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They couldn’t believe the answer.”
The former president has also previously pledged to end the war in Ukraine, though he’s offered no details on how he would do so. “Shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled,” Trump said at a New Hampshire campaign event last year, adding in another speech that it would take him “no longer than one day” to settle the war if elected.
NATO was busted until I came along. I said, ‘Everybody’s gonna pay.’ They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’”
Trump further addressed his strategy of stopping the “never-ending wars” by vowing to remove “warmongers,” “frauds” and “failures in the senior ranks of our government,” and replace them with national security officials who would defend America’s interests. The former president added in a campaign video that he would stop lobbyists and government contractors from pushing senior military officials toward war.
In addition, Trump has said he would restore his “wonderful” travel ban on individuals from several majority-Muslim countries to “keep radical Islamic terrorists out of our country” after Biden overturned the ban in 2021.
New cities and flying cars
Trump said in multiple campaign videos that he would spearhead an effort to build so-called “Freedom Cities” to “reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people, all hardworking families, a new shot at home ownership and in fact, the American Dream.”
In his plan, the federal government would charter 10 new cities on federal land, awarding them to areas with the best development proposals. The former president said in a campaign video that the Freedom Cities would bring the return of US manufacturing, economic opportunity, new industries and affordable living.
In the March 2023 video, Trump added that the US under a second Trump administration would lead in efforts to “develop vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles for families and individuals,” not letting China lead “this revolution in air mobility.” The former president said these airborne vehicles would change commerce and bring wealth into rural communities.
Electric vehicles
Trump has promised to roll back new car pollution rules at the Environmental Protection Agency that could require electric vehicles to account for up to two-thirds of new cars sold in the US by 2032. Biden’s electrical vehicle-related policies, Trump claimed at a Michigan rally last September, “spell the death of the US auto industry.”
“On day one, I will terminate Joe Biden’s electrical vehicle mandate, and I will cancel every job-killing regulation that is crushing American autoworkers,” Trump added.
When pressed on whether he would keep Biden’s $7,500 tax credit for EV purchases, Trump told Reuters in late August, "I'm not making any final decisions on it.”
"I'm a big fan of electric cars, but I'm a fan of gasoline-propelled cars, and also hybrids and whatever else happens to come along," he said.
Energy
Trump has promised to reduce energy prices by increasing domestic production. In several campaign appearances, he has laid out plans to end delays in federal drilling permits and leases.
“We’re going to ‘drill, baby, drill’ right away,” Trump told a crowd of supporters in Des Moines, Iowa, during a victory speech after winning the state’s Republican caucuses in January.
At a South Carolina rally in February, he pledged to remove limits on American natural gas exports.
The Washington Post has also reported that Trump, during an April meeting at Mar-a-Lago, pledged to roll back some of Biden’s climate policies if oil executives raised $1 billion for his campaign.
As for other energy sources, Trump has also changed his tune on the expansion of offshore wind farms, which he had touted at the start of his presidency as part of a broader push to “unleash the forces of economic innovation to more fully develop and explore our ocean economy.”
In May, Trump described wind farms as “horrible” and accused turbines of killing birds and whales, adding that he would “make sure that ends on day one.”
Trump has also promoted US cryptocurrency mining, an industry that has grown significantly more reliant on fossil fuels. Bitcoin mining is energy-intensive because servers require enormous amounts of power to solve a complex series of algorithms to verify transactions in order to receive the cryptocurrency as a reward.
At a cryptocurrency conference in July, the former president promised to make it easier for cryptocurrency mining companies to operate in the US.
“If crypto is going to define the future, I want it to be mined, minted and made in the USA,” Trump said, adding that he would create a “strategic national bitcoin stockpile.”
He also vowed to fire Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, who has pushed to regulate the industry.
Second Amendment
“I will take Biden’s executive order directing the federal government to target the firearms industry, and I will rip it up and throw it out on day one,” Trump said at the 2023 National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action leadership forum last April.
The former president also promised in the speech that the government would not infringe on citizens’ Second Amendment rights. In May, he said would sign legislation forcing states to recognize a concealed carry permit from any jurisdiction.
Equity
“I will create a special team to rapidly review every action taken by federal agencies under Biden’s ‘equity’ agenda that will need to be reversed. We will reverse almost all of them,” Trump said in a campaign video.
Trump added in multiple campaign videos that he would revoke Biden’s equity executive order that required federal agencies to deliver equitable outcomes in policy and conduct equity training. Trump said he would also fire staffers hired to implement Biden’s policy, and then reinstate his 2020 executive order banning racial and sexual stereotyping in the federal government.
