 "Head-on | Why Trump could face whitewash in next year’s midterm elections")
United States President Donald Trump’s global trade war won’t only disrupt economies and markets around the world. It could end the Republican Party’s slender majority in the two Houses of Congress in the November 2026 midterm elections. That would severely erode Trump’s policymaking authority for the rest of his presidential term.
Republicans hold a marginal 220-215 majority in the House of Representatives and a 53-47 majority in the Senate.
Both majorities could be under threat next November. The first indication of an anti-Republican, anti-Trump mood building in the country came recently in Wisconsin, a swing midwestern state that Trump had won easily in the 2024 Presidential election.
Susan Crawford, a liberal Democrat, swept aside her Republican opponent Brad Schimel, heavily financed by Trump confidant Elon Musk, by a 56-44 per cent margin to win the vacant seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. (In the US, unlike in other democracies, state Supreme Court judges face elections just like politicians.)
It was the most expensive judicial election in US history. The two candidates spent over $100 million (Rs. 860 crore) between them. Trump and Musk made the election a prestige issue: Musk donated $20 million from his personal fortune to fund Schimel’s campaign. Trump addressed a virtual rally to boost Schimel’s chances.
Crawford’s 56-44 per cent victory in elections where results are usually far closer revealed a decisive shift in public opinion on Trump and Musk.
Soon after the election result, sources told Politico, the respected online news site, that Musk would be leaving the Trump administration as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Impact Shorts
More ShortsMusk denied the Politico report in a post on X with two words: “Fake news”.
Musk has nonetheless become a deeply polarising figure in an already deeply polarised country. By targeting millions of government employees for termination, Musk has alienated both the Democratic and Republican base.
A significant portion of sacked government employees are traditional Republican voters. Targeting them could cost the Trump-led Republican Party key votes in the 2026 midterms in both Houses of Congress.
Trump’s trade war meanwhile has divided public opinion at home. The MAGA demographic endorses the all-out global trade war but saner heads in the Republican party are warning of a backlash.
Retaliatory tariffs by China and the European Union, America’s two biggest trading partners, will fuel food inflation and drive up prices of imports from cars to chemicals.
Aaron Blake recalled in The Washington Post last week that Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, today a Trump loyalist, tweeted this in 2016: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed and we will deserve it.”
Nine years later in April 2025, as stock markets crashed around the world, another Trump loyalist Senator Ted Cruz warned: “If we go into a recession, the 2026 (midterms) will be a bloodbath.”
Sentiment against Trump-Musk is turning not only on the ground but in America’s boardrooms too. Business leaders flocked to Trump’s inauguration in Washington’s Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025. They believed a business-friendly president would be good for tech innovation, boost the stock market and drive economic growth.
Less than three months later, the exact opposite has happened. Musk has antagonised Silicon Valley by picking fights with rival AI entrepreneurs. Trump’s tariff trade war has meanwhile led to a crash in the stock market. Recession in the US seems increasingly likely. Kelly Ann Shaw, a former White House trade advisor during Trump’s first term, said: “This is the single biggest trade action of our lifetime. This is a pretty seismic and significant shift in the way that we trade with every country on earth.”
The full economic consequences of Trump’s global tariff war will be felt during the 2026 midterm elections. If Trump loses control of the House of Representatives next November, his agenda will be crippled. The House can strangulate policymaking.
The Senate may drop from 53-47 to 50-50 in the midterms with Vice President JD Vance holding the tiebreaker vote. But Senate Republicans have at least two anti-Trump legislators (Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski) who could vote with the Democrats and hold up key presidential policies.
Russia and Gaza
Trump’s attempt to bring the Russia-Ukraine war to an end has meanwhile stuttered. The war in Gaza has intensified with Israel receiving a carte blanche from Trump to “finish the job”, whatever that means.
A foreign policy failure in Ukraine or Gaza does not play a major electoral role with isolationist-minded Americans. But inflation and recession are bread and butter issues that could upend Trump’s agenda even before he completes half his presidential term.
The break with Western Europe is both economic and geostrategic. Trump no longer considers the Atlantic alliance as a cornerstone of Great Power politics. For him China is an existential threat. By giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a long rope in the Ukraine war, Trump is trying to loosen the axis between Beijing and Moscow.
An alliance of China, Russia, North Korea and the Iran-led Shia Muslim world of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, even as the Global South comprising India, Brazil and other powers remain neutral, poses a challenge to the post-1945 US-led world order.
In an effort to wean China away from the Soviet Union, former President Richard Nixon in 1972 committed the original sin of opening the door for Beijing. China almost immediately began to steal US tech secrets. Over the next 40 years China’s GDP rose from $0.11 trillion in 1972 to $8.53 trillion in 2012 – a growth of 80 times in 40 years.
China’s GDP today is over $19 trillion. It no longer needs to steal US technology. In many areas like electric vehicles (EVs) it is miles ahead of the US.
Trump is trying to reverse Nixon’s geopolitical error on China made half-a-century ago. It may be too late.
The writer is an editor, author and publisher. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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