Written by: Vivek Mishra5 min readFeb 25, 2026 05:07 PM IST First published on: Feb 25, 2026 at 05:07 PM ISTDonald Trump, going into the State of the Union (SOTU) speech, was on the back foot due to the Supreme Court of the United States’ ruling on emergency tariffs, holding them illegal. In its entirety, the SOTU was an attempt to strike a balance between his quintessential pugnacity against restrictive institutional scaffoldings and bottlenecks constraining his style of governance, and his realisation that ramrodding through the highest seat of government may not be in the best interest of his political campaign just before the midterm elections in November this year. President Trump instead turned his aggression towards constructing a “winning” frame for his administration’s economic policies.Trump’s strong economic pitch, a cornerstone of his midterm agenda, was unmistakable when he claimed that the cost of major goods like eggs, beef, and fuel had fallen. While some would disagree with Trump’s claims, his own tone on inflation seemed calculated and far from an outright victory lap. On the agenda of healthcare, which has become a key point of criticism for the administration, especially as it attempts to replace Obamacare, Trump’s appeal to Congress to codify his own healthcare framework was on expected lines. The cost of prescription drugs, the overall health of the economy, and stock performance were all invoked by Trump to claim that all is well with the economy. However, various town halls across the US have shown voter frustration with the economy and the volatility of the stock market, despite its soaring trends.AdvertisementAlso Read | Diplomacy preferred, but won’t allow ‘biggest terrorism sponsor’ to own a nuclear weapon: Trump on Iran talksMuch of Trump’s rhetoric, in what is among the longest SOTU speeches by an American president, centred on how his administration was the catalyst for a “turnaround for the ages” in the past year of his second administration, bringing America back to a golden age. The gold medal won by the American hockey team in the 2026 Winter Olympics, in a classic contest defeating the Canadian team, provided the perfect opportunity for Trump to boast while honouring the team.As always, immigration was the issue around which battle lines were drawn between the Democrats and Republicans. With Trump challenging the Democrats to stand up if they agreed with his policy that the first duty of an elected official should be to protect American citizens and not immigrants, the Democrats remained seated in defiance, marking one of the most tense moments of the speech. This also underscored that the extreme position that the Trump administration has often taken on illegal immigration has not sat well with Democrats, especially in what Trump described as sanctuary cities.Trump’s speech also drew strong partisan lines between the Democrats and Republicans on the issue of voter fraud and the misuse of social welfare schemes. On the former, the policy of making proof of citizenship mandatory for voting became the pre-eminent pitch for Trump, an idea supported by Republicans to claim, among other things, that Trump would have clearly defeated Joe Biden in the 2020 election had such a policy been in place. In particular, Trump’s Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act is a proposed law that would amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to make “documentary proof of United States citizenship” mandatory to register to vote. On the latter, Republicans have been targeting the misuse of welfare schemes by sections of the Somali immigrant population in the state of Minnesota and have now gone hammer and tongs over the necessity of creating policies to prevent similar practices in other states.AdvertisementAlso Read | Trump repeats claim that his involvement ended India-Pakistan ‘war’Trump’s foreign policy agenda in his speech remained limited to American dominance in the Western Hemisphere, the possibility of negotiations with Iran, with a potential attack still looming large, and his claimed military success apropos Venezuela. Clearly, these remain at the forefront of American policy priorities abroad. From what became clear in his speech, the administration may just be as calculated with Iran as he was withyou may likeVenezuela in possibly not going the whole hog for regime change, but instead stopping at leadership change alone. It may be somewhat of a reprieve for the world to note Trump’s hint that the United States is currently negotiating with Iran, putting the risk of an immediate attack on the sidelines for the moment.Finally, Trump’s claim that he has settled eight wars, including the India-Pakistan skirmish in May last year, underscores the predictability of unpredictability associated with him, except this time he may have made it quite obvious that it was the Pakistani side that called for a ceasefire.The writer is deputy director, Strategic Studies Program, Observer Research Foundation