Toting Up the Fiscal Damage of Trump’s First Year Back

Workers are facing higher healthcare and other household costs, while the rich enjoy huge tax cuts and ballooning wealth

By William Rice

Though it feels like much longer, Donald Trump just recently celebrated one year back in power. Because he uses chaos as a tactic, it can be hard to remember all the damage he and his Republican enablers have caused in those 12 months. But it’s essential to keep track. The breadth of destruction is wide so it’s helpful to focus on one area at a time. Following are some of the worst Trump tax-and-spending actions and omissions of the first year of his second term.

• Allowing Healthcare Costs to Explode

We’re about a month into a new year of astronomical healthcare-cost increases for millions of Americans. What happened is that enhanced premium tax credits that President Biden and congressional Democrats set up several years ago to help families buy health insurance on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchange expired at the end of 2025. Trump and his fellow Republicans had plenty of warning of what would happen—in fact, their refusal to extend the enhanced credits was the cause of the government shutdown last fall.

Workers and families face premium increases of tens of thousands of dollars a year. The great majority will not be able to afford it, so the uninsured rate—which has been falling thanks to the ACA—will rise. Already, as of early January, 1.5 million fewer people had signed up for ACA coverage as compared to the same time last year. One analyst expects that dropout rate to ultimately rise to almost five million.

• Doling Out Even More Tax Cuts to the Rich

On the 4th of July, Trump signed into law a huge tax-and-spending plan. The choice of Independence Day was ironic since the law did nothing to advance the freedom of the American people—instead it made economic inequality even worse. The top 0.1% highest income households will collectively pocket nearly $50 billion a year in tax cuts over the next decade. The bottom 40% will each get about 10 bucks—and that tiny payout will be quickly overwhelmed by the loss of public services (see below) that were cut to help pay for the tax cuts, and by Trump’s expensive and erratic tariff regime.

• Cutting Services Families Rely On

To partially pay for those high-end tax cuts—the rest of the cost went straight to the national debt—Trump and his GOP allies cut hundreds of billions of dollars from public services millions of families depend on to get by and get ahead. Healthcare, nutrition, clean energy: all took big hits in his “Big Ugly Bill.” Up to 15 million Americans may lose Medicaid coverage; up to four million might be kicked off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or be forced to subsist on less food; and the elimination of clean-energy tax credits will raise costs for American households by some $37 billion a year.

• Giving the Green Light to Rich Tax Cheats

No sooner had President Biden and congressional Democrats in 2022 restored adequate funding to a seriously depleted IRS—to ensure wealthy tax evaders couldn’t skate by and honest taxpayers would receive decent customer service—Republicans set about stripping that new funding away. The final piece of special enforcement funding was eliminated in 2025 under President Trump, who was also responsible for shutting down the Direct File system that saved taxpayers time, money and hassle.

• Presiding Over Rising Prices and Slowing Job Growth

Though he campaigned on cutting prices, under Trump certain key costs continued to quickly climb. The cost of healthcare, electricity, home insurance, natural gas and fuel oil all jumped between roughly 7% to about 11% in 2025. Meanwhile, the job market was the weakest in two decades.

• Paying Off Billionaire Contributors

One tiny segment of the American public is thriving under Trump: billionaires. Their collective net worth skyrocketed by over a fifth in 2025, rising from $6.7 trillion to $8.2 trillion. The 30 billionaire families who pumped $1.4 billion into the 2024 elections made out even better, with their fortunes growing by over a third, or just over $400 billion. Quite a return on investment.

That’s a lot of destruction for one year. And polling shows Americans are dissatisfied with the results. Watch this space for ongoing coverage of Year 2.