President Donald Trump’s populist economic platform was on the ballot in the midterms — and voters responded by handing Democrats their biggest congressional majorities in decades.
Republicans can pick their preferred flavor to describe the midterm romp: “a thumpin’” (President George W. Bush in 2006) or a “shellacking” (President Barack Obama in 2010) are both apt. Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., was spicier, calling it “an ass-whooping” on CNN last week.
Voters shot down Trump’s economic policy, referred to at times as “Trumponomics.” It’s an unusual mishmash of corporate and income tax cuts straight out of the Reaganite playbook, plus tariffs, mass deportations and an all-in approach to artificial intelligence development and data centers. It also includes Uncle Sam as a shareholder in strategic sectors, a practice more reminiscent of centrally planned economies. Deregulation? Sure, that’s also in there. Deficit reduction? Definitely not.
It was full of contradictions that amounted to selling a half-cooked, upcharged stew that repelled people once they tasted it. The marginally conservative Trumponomics ended up costing House Republicans 44 seats and made blue states out of Kansas and Texas. Republicans will spend the next two years picking what to save from the wreckage.
Start with the president’s enthusiasm for tariffs, largely abandoned by the U.S. in the mid-20th century until Trump brought them back full force in April 2025. He’s referred to tariffs as “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” and repeatedly mused about them replacing the income tax code. Free traders in the Republican Party swallowed them as the cost of bringing foreign governments to the table for trade talks, even if it meant sacrificing relationships in Brussels, Ottawa and Mexico City. The Republican-held Congress became little more than an ornament amid the havoc of Trump’s trade war.
Former Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., lamented last year that Congress had become a “non-participating bystander” on trade. Only in February did a small faction of House Republicans join Democratic lawmakers in rebuking the president’s chaotic tariff regime for the first time.
The Budget Lab at Yale estimates tariffs are costing American families about $900 per year at their current average level of about 11%, the highest since 1942. Trump hasn’t eased up on the tariff pedal either, even as polls showed their massive unpopularity with the public. On Wednesday, the president threatened to double tariffs on Mexico if it fails to prevent large groups of migrants from entering the U.S.
It was full of contradictions that amounted to selling a half-cooked, upcharged stew that repelled people once they tasted it.
With the president assuming lame-duck status, more Republicans may be motivated to publicly oppose blanket tariffs, while keeping them on the table for specific circumstances — like trading a sledgehammer for the scalpel going forward. Part of the GOP’s economic credibility in the 2028 election will depend on it.
Trump pulled off another round of tax cuts, most notably in the One Big Beautiful Bill that established no federal tax on tips and overtime pay through 2028. It also kept in place individual tax cuts scheduled to expire from the original 2017 tax law. The problem with the latter for Republicans is they weren’t able to package it as a brand-new benefit for voters. It was simply expected as the status quo.
Republicans, though, will likely be able to convince some Democrats to side with them on renewing no tax on tips and overtime pay, no doubt to the frustration of economists on the left and right. Those populist initiatives consistently polled well, even if they generated criticism due to their limited reach. In Nevada, tipped workers made up a larger share of the workforce compared to other states. It didn’t prevent Democrats from flipping one House seat and hanging onto the other three in the Silver State. Price spikes from the Iran war and Trump’s failure to resolve it weighed much more on voters’ minds.
The president also shed voter support for his handling of immigration, which he recognized in last week’s illuminating “60 Minutes” interview with correspondent Ross Douthat. Images of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arresting nonviolent undocumented immigrants surely contributed to Trump losing votes, especially among Latinos. It was particularly revealing that both GOP Sens. Roger Marshall of Kansas and Susan Collins of Maine demanded restraint in large-scale ICE operations as their Senate races heated up. Nevertheless, they lost anyway.
Trump is poised to go down as the first and final data center president. His vocal support of the warehouse-sized, energy-hungry facilities instrumental to the AI boom was always out of step with voters who blamed them for higher utility bills. The conservative reckoning on their approach to Big Tech is already well underway.
“These tech companies have lorded over us and feel like they can jam down our throats whatever the hell they want, and you’re telling Americans, of all people, that you can do that?” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts told the Financial Times this week.
Trumponomics in its current blend is on its way out. Some ingredients will stick around in a future Republican Party, like the inextinguishable zeal for tax cuts. The next economic platform to spring up from the GOP should bury a lot of what came before it if they hope to win elections again.
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