How an unrestrained Trump would govern in a second term

If he wins the November election, Trump would return to the White House unburdened by ever having to appear on a ballot again, with more conviction about his vision for the country and more knowledge about how to execute it. The cabinet secretaries and White House aides who once beat back—and sometimes quietly worked to undermine—his most radical ideas would be replaced by loyalists eager to push his agenda even further. And he could reap the benefits of a Supreme Court whose conservative majority he enshrined.

In Milwaukee this week, after narrowly escaping an assassination attempt, Trump cut a relatively subdued figure, absorbing the applause of attendees and listening to the prime-time lineup of a largely drama-free convention. On stage, and in the meeting rooms and panel discussions on the sidelines, delegates and Trump allies spoke about a potential second term as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reshape the country.

“It’s the dream of a century," businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, a former presidential candidate who has thrown his support behind Trump, told delegates.

Ramaswamy said Trump has a rare opportunity, thanks to the Supreme Court, to rein in government bureaucracy and shut down the “administrative state," which conservatives blame for standing in the way of their agenda. While Trump tapped three justices during his four years in office, Amy Coney Barrett, his final pick for the high court, was seated just months before the end of his term.

Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, which is spearheading Project 2025, an expansive effort to prepare for a second term, said he thinks former President Trump has “learned a lot" over the past few years. “I think this is going to be an administration that is very efficient," he said.

Populism and protectionism

In speeches, on his campaign website and in the official Republican platform, Trump has outlined a broad agenda for a second term that echoes themes of nationalism, populism and protectionism. He has called for hardening U.S. borders, deporting millions of immigrants living in the country illegally and imposing stiff tariffs on allies and adversaries alike. He has questioned the value of international institutions, praised strongman foreign leaders and criticized U.S. support for Ukraine’s war against Russia.

Less of a focus for Trump and his team are the core tenets conservatives have embraced for decades: free markets, strong international engagement and reining in deficits. Trump presided over four straight years of rising annual deficits, signing bipartisan budget agreements that boosted federal spending. While the newly approved Republican platform calls broadly for cutting spending and eliminating costly regulations, it doesn’t lay out a plan for addressing the deficit.

Trump’s running-mate selection of Sen. JD Vance (R., Ohio)—a younger, more intellectual avatar for the former president’s brand of economic populism and suspicion of foreign entanglements—signals his intention to supercharge, rather than modulate, his transformation of the GOP.

The Republican Party of today is almost unrecognizable to some longtime GOP officials, who have accused Trump of abandoning the core tenets of Reaganism. (Trump has said his record as a conservative is “far greater than Ronald Reagan.")

Trump’s party “doesn’t believe in fiscal discipline. It believes in isolationism. It believes in picking winners and losers in the marketplace. And it doesn’t appear to feel that evil in this world should be confronted straight on with force," said former Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.), a Trump critic who backed Nikki Haley during the primary. Gregg hasn’t decided how he will vote in November but he said he won’t vote for President Biden.

Gregg and other Trump critics are an increasingly isolated segment of the party. At this week’s convention, there were scant signs of dissent. Even some of Trump’s former opponents—Haley, who was governor of South Carolina, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—praised him during high-profile speaking slots at the event.

Anna Kelly, a Republican National Committee spokeswoman, said Trump “delivered once with lower costs, fairer trade deals and a secure border, and he will do it again when he is elected on Nov. 5."

‘I am your retribution’

As he has pivoted toward the general election, Trump has at times tried to sand down some of his hard edges and emphasize more moderate positions that break with conservative orthodoxy. He scaled back the size of this year’s party platform, softening tough language on abortion and removing a line describing marriage as between a man and a woman. He told Bloomberg Businessweek in a recent interview that he has no plans to seek retribution against his enemies, despite pledging to supporters last year, “I am your warrior, I am your justice and, for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution."

Trump has previously promised to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden, something Vance recently said he supports. He has pledged to pardon the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters at the U.S. Capitol. And he has said he would overhaul the Justice Department and instruct it to investigate everything from online censorship to left-leaning state attorneys general.

During his four years in office, senior officials sometimes successfully persuaded Trump not to follow through on his instincts, and in some cases went even further. Gary Cohn, a top Trump economic adviser, once removed a letter from the then-president’s desk to prevent him from terminating a bilateral trade deal, according to an account earlier reported by journalist Bob Woodward.

But few people who have worked for Trump think he could be persuaded to hold back in a second term. “There wouldn’t be any hesitation to act on some of his more controversial ideas," said Sarah Matthews, a former Trump White House spokeswoman who stepped down following the Jan. 6 riot. “It’s just going to be a bunch of yes men and yes women."

Trump’s allies dispute the contention that he would be unleashed in a second term, but they acknowledged that not having the political pressure of running for re-election would make it easier to enact changes. The Constitution limits presidents to two terms.

“He doesn’t have to worry about re-election," said Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.). “He can tackle some big problems, and it’s going to take a president with the courage of not worrying about re-election to tackle this problem."

Matthew Whitaker, a former acting attorney general in the Trump administration, said he expects there will be more people who want to be a part of a possible future Trump administration than after the 2016 election. He predicted a “lot less infighting" next time around.

Even as he attempts to soften his image, Trump has continued to make outlandish statements on Truth Social, his social-media platform. Earlier this month, he pledged, if elected, to jail so-called “election fraudsters," warning Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg to “be careful." Trump has falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential election, which he lost, was rigged.

The threat echoes comments he has made in public in recent years about punishing his perceived enemies, from media companies to the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The success or failure of a second Trump term will hinge in part on which party controls Congress. If Trump presides over a divided government, Democrats would be able to stymie many of his moves. But some Democrats worry that Republicans will take full control of Congress if President Biden, who is facing anxiety from within his own party following a halting debate performance, remains on the ticket. A July Wall Street Journal poll found that 70% of voters think Congress’s checks-and-balances function is essential for preventing a president from having too much power.

Lower taxes, fewer regulations

As he prepares for a second term, a handful of advisers have influenced Trump’s thinking, including his former trade chief, Robert Lighthizer, and his former budget director, Russ Vought.

Vought and other conservatives hope Trump will oversee one of the most consequential overhauls of the government in modern times, a bid to root out what the former president and his allies call the “deep state." They want to eliminate the independence of certain federal agencies, reduce protections for civil servants and wrest control of some authority over spending from Congress—all proposals that Trump has endorsed. It is part of a push to shrink the size of the government, snuff out perceived opposition to the presidential agenda within the bureaucratic ranks and shift power from federal agencies to the White House.

If he’s re-elected, Trump has promised to expand on the targeted tariffs that he used throughout his four years in office. He has proposed a 10% across-the-board tariff on imported goods as a way to punish other countries and protect domestic industries. And he has promised to impose even steeper tariffs on China. He has floated the idea of replacing the entire income-tax system with tariffs.

Trump wants to make permanent the soon-to-expire tax cuts from the 2017 law he signed, and he has called for lowering the corporate tax rate to 15% from 21%, a contrast with Biden, who wants to raise the corporate rate to 28%. Trump has said he wants to exempt tips from taxes, an attempt to appeal to Nevada’s service workers in the crucial swing state.

The former president has called for strengthening domestic manufacturing, lifting restrictions on U.S. energy production and overturning swaths of the wide-ranging climate law that Biden signed in 2022.

Outside advisers to Trump have in recent weeks pitched him on additional economic policy measures. Art Laffer, one of the founding theorists of supply-side economics, said he had recommended that Trump propose a 50% waiver of the payroll tax and 100% expensing of capital purchases for the first 18 months of his potential second term.

“So you make it very, very attractive for people to go to work, and you make it very, very attractive for employers to employ those people," Laffer said on Wednesday. “And you have a deadline so if you don’t do it now, you don’t get it."

Strong borders and weak alliances

On immigration, his signature issue, Trump has said he would oversee the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. He has pledged to end the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, which for more than a century has provided U.S. citizenship to children born in the country regardless of their parents’ immigration status. He has called for the death penalty for drug smugglers and human traffickers, as well as a naval embargo to prevent drug cartels from bringing illegal drugs into the U.S.

During the Republican primaries, the former president embraced a set of culture-war issues that have gained traction among conservatives. Among them: influencing school curricula, preventing doctors from providing medical interventions for young transgender people and ending diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Trump has articulated a noninterventionist foreign policy that centers in part on a reluctance to get involved in foreign entanglements. He has asserted, without evidence, that if elected he would end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. And he has repeatedly criticized NATO members in Europe for insufficient military spending.

The choice of Vance is a further indication of how Trump might come down on the longstanding divide in GOP circles between hawks and isolationists. Vance is a leading voice among Republicans opposed to sending funds to Ukraine and has expressed disillusionment with the foreign-policy establishment in Washington.

“With our victory in November," Trump said on Thursday night, “the years of war, weakness and chaos will be over."

Aaron Zitner, John McCormick and Vivian Salama contributed to this article.

Write to Andrew Restuccia at andrew.restuccia@wsj.com

This explanatory article might be updated periodically.