Things That Could Happen

 * China could invade Taiwan. One reason that they had to refrain was that they need the trade relationship with the U.S., that reason has been burned down. Another reason to strike now is that the U.S. President is weak and that the U.S. national security establishment is incompetent (and hasn't had time to learn how to do its jobs as it is busy tearing apart the federal government).

If a response isn't decisive, it could be a fait accompli before the U.S. could act. And, the U.S. may have alienated allies like Japan and South Korea in that fight with its trade war.

Suppose it happened like that. It wouldn't be at all good for Western values or the global or U.S. economy. But, it would pretty much deflate all justifications for the immense amount of the U.S. defense budget, especially of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps, that is devoted to defending Taiwan.

* The U.S. trade war with China also undermines any incentive for China to refrain from providing military support to Russia. This could decisively shift the state of the Ukraine War, where attrition is eating away at Russia.

* On the other hand, the imminent global recession that Trump has triggered has already caused oil prices to fall from $80 a barrel to $63. This undermines oil autocrats all over the world, and brings U.S. oil producers, who are high cost producers, close to shutting down their wells, and dramatically reduces their profits. In the case of Russia, which receives the lion's share of its foreign exchange from oil sales, this squeezes their economy and their ability to finance the Ukraine War going forward, greatly.

* Trump has gone so far afield on areas like the Ukraine War and tariffs from what Republican elected officials and his base supports, that, Congress might rein him in, or members of Congress might decide not to run for re-election since they are undermining their own policy objectives, much of Ken Buck from CO-4 did in advance of the 2024 election, creating open seats that could help flip Congress.

* It doesn't take much of a shift in public opinion between now and November 2026 for the GOP to be absolutely crushed in the mid-term elections, and giving Democrats the power of the purse to undermine him. Single handedly destroying the economy, creating immense inflation and unemployment, alienating every ally that the United States has in the world, spurring mass bankruptcies from individuals and businesses, and destroying the U.S. tourism industry is the kind of thing that just might do that. 

Trump votes are people whose views are heavily shaped by their personal experiences rather than by abstract ideas or predicted outcomes, and they are likely to have a lot of highly negative personal experiences between now and November 2026.

Political defeats for Republicans in a Pennsylvania vacancy election and Wisconsin, and greatly reduced margins of GOP victory in two Florida Congressional seat vacancy elections at least suggest that this could happen. Trump's tariffs are not polling well and voters are blaming him for them. Trump was already in the negative zone in his approval ratings before the wildly unpopular tariffs. Post-tariffs he's already taken a several percentage point hit in his approval rating even though most people haven't experienced the price increases that they will cause first hand yet. A perception that Trump is no longer Teflon could also embolden GOP rebels in Congress.

* The trade war may cause quite a few contracts from our allies to buy F-35s from Lockheed to be canceled, doing immense harm to this major U.S. defense contractor.

* I don't see any way that Elon Musk and Tesla escape the death spiral that they have brought upon themselves by producing the Cybertruck riddled with quality control problems and design flaws, by overpromising investors, and by destroying the brand with the environmentally conscious consumers who want to buy EVs with his pro-Nazi positions and role in DOGE. If Tesla stock falls another 42%, which is well within the range of possibility, Musk loses his entire stock in the company to a margin call. His political activity has also undermined Starlink. He's playing related party transactions with Twitter, whose value he's already destroyed. SpaceX might survive, but it doesn't take many high profile rocket explosions for that company to be undermined too. 

If Musk's mismanagement and connection to Trump are his undoing, that could prove a cautionary tale to other billionaires about the costs of buying into MAGA. Must has already seen his personal net worth decline more than $120 billion so far this year.

* Trump's shock and awe strategy may have worked at first, but as court orders finding his Executive Orders to be illegal accumulate, even if SCOTUS reverses some of them, and he runs out of new proposals to push, he may lose steam. Also, he is fighting on so many fronts. The tariffs undermine business interests. He has basically declared war on every college, university, and K-12 school in the country. He has attacked basically the entire federal civil service and all of its unions and is weakening the very bureaucracies that are the source of his power in the process. He has attacked a large share of Big Law law firms. He has tried to bully every country in the world with tariffs. He has taken on everyone who supports medical research. He has tried to rattle big businesses to become racist and anti-women and anti-gay and anti-trans and anti-science. He has put the federal judiciary in his sights. At some point, all of these powerful interests may decide that they're sick of being afraid and turn on him, even if he tries to dangle tax cuts in front of them. Tax cuts only have value in an economic climate where you can actually make a profit.

Trump is fighting those battles with a group of political appointees hand picked to be bad at governing who are charged with undermining their respective departments and agencies. Nothing he has done has encouraged the rank and file civil servants who would have to implement his policies to be loyal to him as opposed to deliberately undermining him at every turn.

Trump will get no back up or support from state and local government officials in blue states and blue cities.

Politics is a team sport, and if you alienate every potential ally you might have, at some point, people aren't going to be afraid of you anymore. He's trying to bolster his clout now with claims that he can run for a third term, but his legal argument isn't very credible and none of that matters if his approval ratings continue to sink with independent voters. When he's a lame duck with undermined departments and agencies to implement his objectives, at some point, disgruntled factions in the GOP may turn on him and break ranks.

In an extreme scenario, one could imagine the GOP splintering entirely, leaving us with an interim three party system, and if the GOP vote in Congress and in the 2026 election were to be divided, the Democrats could gain supermajorities and actually impeach him and convict on the third round of impeachment charges. It's a non-linear function. We start with very close to a 50-50 status quo. But if the GOP side of that 50-50 split splinters to say a 35-15-50 split, then the comparatively united Democrats could sweep at lot of moderately safe Republican seats, for at least one two year session of Congress.

And, I would think that if Democrats seized that power for even one term, they would be much more ruthless than they have been in the past about measures that would tip the balance, like packing the U.S. Supreme Court (which has never been more unpopular), granting statehood to D.C. and Puerto Rico (at least), ending the filibuster (although with Trump in office, that is less of a priority), and tightening up election laws and laws on judicial review of executive branch actions. Even if the Democrats can't manage that, they could at least shut down the tariffs, tear away a huge amount of Trump's power over spending, and might even impeach some lesser egregiously bad officials like RFK, Jr.

What will happen? 

I don't know. I'm not making predictions. I'm simply considering possibilities in a time of immense uncertainty. But we could see the Trump Administration implode politically.