Trump to defend his U-turn on Ukraine and Elon Musk’s cuts in Congress

“TOMORROW NIGHT WILL BE BIG. I WILL TELL IT LIKE IT IS!” Donald Trump said on his social network, Truth Social, of his appearance Tuesday before Congress, which will be in joint session. As it is the first such speech of his second term it is not considered a State of the Union address, but it carries the same paraphernalia and solemnity. Trump, after likening himself to a monarch, is pushing the limits of executive power and, at the same time, clashing with the judiciary. Now, after a month and a half as the 47th president, he is facing a legislature that he needs to carry out his policies. His appearance coincides with his change of foreign policy regarding Ukraine, to which he has suspended military aid, amid cutbacks and layoffs in the administration led by Elon Musk, and at the beginning of the trade war with his neighbors.

The U.S. president recently called Volodymyr Zelenskiy a “dictator” and blamed Ukraine for the Russian invasion. Trump will deliver his speech in the midst of the hangover from the mistreatment of the Ukrainian president in the Oval Office with his vice president, J. D. Vance, acting as his attack dog.

Just four days after that unprecedented episode in front of the media, which Trump called “good television,” his foreign policy remarks will receive special scrutiny, especially after having suspended military aid to Ukraine. Trump continued to insist Monday that Zelenskiy does not want peace. Many Republicans in Congress have internalized the role of the United States as “leader of the free world” and are aware that the aggressor is Russia and that Europeans are the allies.

The Trump who is delivering his first speech of this mandate is very different from the one who went to the Capitol eight years ago. Back then, he had won the elections by surprise, he was trying to learn the mechanisms of exercising power, and he had not yet renounced some ideas that had been established among Republicans for decades. In his speech on February 28, 2017, part of Trump’s drift was already apparent. “We strongly support NATO, an alliance forged through the bonds of two World Wars that dethroned fascism, and a Cold War that defeated communism,” he said. Already at that time he was calling for greater economic efforts from the other NATO members, but without questioning who the United States’ allies are.

Now, U.S. support for Ukraine is up in the air. “You’re either going to make a deal or we are out,” Trump told Zelenskiy in the Oval Office. Tuesday’s speech will be an opportunity for the president to outline his policy on the Ukraine war. Trump promised during the campaign that he would end it on day one (or even before taking office), and Zelenskiy’s warning that the war could still be very long is like a red rag to the U.S. president, as he demonstrated on Monday.

Trump will speak in Congress on the day set for the entry into force of 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, but until the last moment there was uncertainty about whether they would actually be applied, as well as another 10% on China. In his first speech as president, eight years ago, Trump said: “I firmly believe in free trade, but it must also be fair trade.” In that speech he only uttered the word “tariffs” once, and he did so to complain about those imposed by other countries on American products.

Now, uncertainty over tariff policy is already hurting the economy. While Trump will boast about the investment commitments of some big companies (as he did eight years ago), the economy is losing steam. Inflation expectations have soared, consumer confidence has fallen, the trade deficit has widened, and companies have warned of the impact on their revenues, margins, and profits of supply chain disruptions and higher commodity prices. Just this Monday, Trump made his latest announcement without providing much detail: tariffs on agricultural products starting April 2.

Beyond tariffs, the main sources of unrest on the domestic front are the massive layoffs of federal employees, the freeze on spending, and the cuts undertaken by Trump, his ally Elon Musk, and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Several Democratic representatives have invited officials to the session who have been fired as part of those cuts. There are also some members who have announced that they will not attend the joint session as a gesture of protest against Trump.

One of the unknowns is whether Musk will attend the speech and where he will sit, if he does. The joint session will be co-chaired by House Speaker Mike Johnson and Vice President J. D. Vance, in his capacity as Senate President. They will be two friendly faces behind the president, as in the first half of his first term. Then, with the Democratic victory in the 2018 midterms, Nancy Pelosi was elected House Speaker. In Trump’s last State of the Union address, in 2020, Pelosi conspicuously tore up her copy of Trump’s speech from the podium.

Even as Trump has encroached on Congress's powers and is trying to strain the constitutional seams, he needs the legislature for a major part of his agenda. The president wants to extend and expand the 2017 tax cut that expires at the end of this year. He also needs the legislature to raise the debt ceiling. For now, Republicans have closed ranks to vote in favor of a budget plan that lowers taxes and spending, but without specifying which expenses to cut.

Trump also wants Congress to give him more resources to fight illegal immigration. The president has scored one of the great successes of his first weeks in office in this area: the number of illegal immigrants crossing the border has plummeted, according to official figures. Xenophobic rhetoric, threats of mass deportations, surveillance measures, and Mexico’s collaboration have allowed the flow to dry up, although the numbers had already been declining for months. As eight years ago, when his obsession was to build a “great wall” on the border with Mexico, part of his speech will also focus on immigrants. It is quite a paradox that the motto of his speech is the renewal of the American dream, the dream of a land that welcomed immigrants of all origins.

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