To understand the coming collision between President Donald Trump and a Democratic Congress, one must first discard the textbook formulas of US governance. The United States is about to witness a political experiment for which there is no modern precedent: a purely transactional populist, entirely unmoored from traditional ideological orthodoxy, forced to share power with a legislative branch unified in partisan hostility. The conventional wisdom predicts immediate, paralysing gridlock.
That is a misreading of the terrain. Trump does not view politics through the lens of conservative dogma or constitutional restraint; he views it through the lens of the deal. Consequently, his governance will not be characterised by passive stagnation, but by an aggressive, volatile mix of transactional bipartisanship and raw executive unilateralism.
Domestically, the ideological lines will blur. For decades, the Republican Party was defined by its commitment to limited government and free markets. Trump has spent a decade dismantling that consensus.
Confronted with a Democratic House of Representatives and a Democratic Senate, he will feel no tribal loyalty to standard conservative policy. Instead, expect him to seek out areas of populist overlap. When it comes to massive infrastructure spending, protectionist trade policy and aggressive state intervention to protect domestic manufacturing, Trump is often closer to the Democratic centre-left than to the ghost of former President Ronald Reagan.
He will dare the opposition majorities to vote against legislation that pours millions of dollars into their districts or levies tariffs that protect their blue-collar constituents. It will be an unholy, ad hoc alliance — issue-by-issue, fleeting, and transactional — designed to deliver the optics of victory for both a populist president and a vulnerable congressional majority. Where such transactions fail, however, the venue will shift from the legislative chamber to the administrative state controlled by the executive.
Trump will not accept the traditional boundaries of a divided government. If necessary, he will govern by decree. Executive orders, emergency declarations and expansive interpretations of federal statutes will be deployed to bypass a stubborn Capitol Hill.
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