The State of the Union address is one of the great set-pieces of the American political year. But, like most set-pieces, its ceremonial status is rarely matched by its real-life political consequences.
It is a measure of how expectations have been recalibrated in the era of Donald Trump that, despite a lengthy address littered with falsehoods and unsubstantiated claims, Tuesday’s speech has been broadly welcomed for its restraint. That tells us as much about the current political climate as anything uttered from the podium.
Nobody will be surprised by Trump’s braggadocious claims to have presided over an economic renaissance. But members of his own party, fearful of a Democratic wave in November’s mid-term elections, will continue to fret about the yawning gap between presidential rhetoric and voter sentiment on the economy. Having been propelled to victory in 2024 by voters who believed he would prove a better economic steward than his Democratic opponent, he now finds himself languishing in the polls. Voters say their priorities are not his priorities.
Trump did not, as some had feared, harangue the Supreme Court justices in attendance who had ruled his tariffs unconstitutional. Those tariffs remain the central plank of his economic strategy, and while he insisted he retained the power to reimpose them without congressional approval, the claim’s hollowness was evident to most of those present.
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More divisive was his aggressive justification of immigration enforcement, deflecting criticism by redirecting his fire at Democrats. Polls do show public support for rigorous deportation policies, but they also reveal deep unease with the tactics being deployed by federal immigration officials in cities such as Minneapolis.
Four years to the week since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Trump pointedly declined to voice support for Kyiv but pointed with pride to the fact that European countries now bear the full cost of military aid. And those seeking clarity on American intentions toward Iran, where US forces have been massing in the largest regional build-up since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, will have been disappointed.
Most striking was the absence of any mention of China, Washington’s principal adversary, despite the tariffs ruling delivering a further blow to an already misfiring strategy towards Beijing.
Trump closed by looking forward to the 250th anniversary of American independence. “The first 250 years are just the beginning,” he declared. It was a note of providential optimism more characteristic of his predecessors than of the man himself. Whether it reflects a president coming to terms with constitutional constraints, electoral realities and the limits of international power remains, for now, a very open question.
