Trump: Promises vs Reality

Each promise gets one of three verdicts, like a traffic light: kept, partly kept, or not kept. A promise is kept when the outcome he promised happened, and partly kept when a real but smaller version of it did. It is not kept when it didn't happen, when the result was the opposite of what he said, or when half of the promise was broken outright. We judge each by the measure he set himself, using government data wherever it exists. Where something outside his control played a part, like a war or a court ruling, we say so. And we haven't picked promises by how they turned out: some he has clearly kept.

Every quotation is checked against the recording. We left out promises he didn't make clearly. Asked in 2024 whether he would declassify the Epstein files, for example, he said he would "go a long way toward that one", which is a hedge rather than a promise.¹

"Starting on day one, I will seal the border and stop this horrible migrant invasion that is destroying our country." — Donald Trump, campaign rally, Wilmington, North Carolina, 21 September 2024¹

On this one, the numbers moved further and faster than almost anyone predicted. Far fewer people are now trying to cross the border with Mexico illegally. The Border Patrol counts the people it catches crossing. From October 2025 to September 2026, it caught fewer than a hundred thousand: 98,708, by the government's preliminary count, the lowest in its history. Over the same twelve months two years earlier, under the Biden administration, it caught 1.5 million. Arrests rise and fall with the number of people trying, so the fall means far fewer are trying. The government doesn't publish how many cross without being caught, and these figures are preliminary. But by his own measure, this promise was kept.²³

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Verdict: kept.

"The Republican platform promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country. Even larger than that of President Dwight D. Eisenhower from many years ago." — Donald Trump, accepting the Republican nomination, Milwaukee, 18 July 2024¹

Deportations are up sharply. In the first nine and a half months of the year that ended in September, Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed more than 356,000 people. At that pace, the full year comes to between about 458,000 and 485,000. That would be the most formal deportations in a single year on record, and about 70% more than in Joe Biden's last full year, when ICE removed 271,484.⁴⁵⁶

But he set the bar himself: larger than Eisenhower's. In 1954, the US government recorded more than 1.1 million removals and returns, most of them people sent back across the border with Mexico. Historians question how accurate that count was, but it's the government's own figure. This year's total is less than half of it, and short of the million a year that ICE has set itself as a target.⁶⁷

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A record for formal deportations, with two years still to go, but not yet the bar he set himself. Verdict: partly kept.

"So, when I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on day one." — Donald Trump, press conference, Bedminster, New Jersey, 15 August 2024¹

Prices didn't come down. In the twenty months since he took office, prices overall have risen 6.1 per cent: groceries 3.5 per cent, and housing 5.6 per cent.⁸

And they're rising faster now than when he arrived. Inflation, the rise in prices over twelve months, was 3 per cent when he took office. In September, it was 3.7 per cent.⁸

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Part of the recent rise comes from the war with Iran, which he launched with Israel in February and which pushed up fuel prices, as we'll see. But prices were rising before the war began. Verdict: not kept.⁹

"We will cut your energy prices in half within, mark it down… And you can get very angry at me if we don't do it. Within 12 months, your energy prices will be cut in half." — Donald Trump, campaign rally, Wilmington, North Carolina, 21 September 2024¹

He gave himself twelve months. At most, he said at another rally, eighteen. That time ran out in July.¹

Before the war, petrol had fallen a little. In the week before the strikes on Iran, a gallon cost $3.07 on average, 4 per cent less than when he took office. Electricity, though, had already risen more than 5 per cent. Since the war began, petrol has risen 44 per cent, to $4.42 a gallon in the week of 19 October, and electricity is now up almost 10 per cent since he took office.¹⁰⁸

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The administration says prices will fall once the war ends. But nothing was cut in half, before the war or since. Verdict: not kept.¹¹

"So this is the first time I've said this… when I get to office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips." — Donald Trump, campaign rally, Las Vegas, 9 June 2024¹

This became law in July 2025, in the tax and spending law he called the One Big Beautiful Bill. But in a narrower form. Workers can now deduct up to $25,000 a year of tips from the income they pay income tax on. The deduction shrinks for people earning more than $150,000, and it ends after 2028. Tips are still taxed for Social Security and Medicare. And more than a third of tipped workers earn too little to pay income tax at all, so the change gives them nothing.¹²¹³

Most tipped workers who pay income tax will pay less of it. But tips are still taxed. Verdict: partly kept.

"The fifth pillar of my plan is to make the Trump tax cuts permanent." — Donald Trump, Economic Club of New York, 5 September 2024¹

The tax cuts from his first term were due to expire at the end of 2025. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the law that brought in the tips deduction, made them permanent. Most households keep paying less income tax than they would have, with the largest cuts in dollars going to the highest earners. The Congressional Budget Office, which costs laws for Congress, estimates the whole law adds about $3.4 trillion to government debt over ten years. He promised it, and it passed. Verdict: kept.¹⁴¹⁵

"I'm going to put tariffs on other countries coming into our country, and that has nothing to do with taxes to us. That's a tax on another country." — Donald Trump, campaign rally, Glendale, Arizona, 23 August 2024¹

A tariff is a tax on goods brought into the country. He kept his word on imposing them: the average tariff rose from about 2.5 per cent at the start of 2025 to about 11 per cent now.¹⁶

But who pays? By law, the tariff is paid at the border by the American company bringing the goods in. The question is how much of it they pass on. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found Americans paid nearly 90 per cent of the cost of last year's tariffs. A German research institute, the Kiel Institute, put it at 96 per cent.¹⁷¹⁸

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In February, the Supreme Court ruled six to three that most of the tariffs were illegal. He had imposed them under an emergency powers law, and the court found that law doesn't let a president set tariffs. The government owes about $35 billion in refunds, but they go to the companies that paid at the border, not to the customers who paid higher prices.¹⁹²⁰

The tariffs didn't go away, though. Other trade laws do let a president impose tariffs, within limits, and he used them: first a temporary 10 per cent tariff on almost everything, then new tariffs on imports from about sixty countries. So the average tariff is still about 11 per cent.²¹¹⁶

Tariffs: imposed. But a tax on other countries? Verdict: not kept.

"We will require all essential materials for our national security to be produced here in the United States, creating millions and millions of new manufacturing jobs." — Donald Trump, Economic Club of New York, 5 September 2024¹

When he took office, about 12,673,000 Americans worked in manufacturing. In September, it was 12,652,000: 21,000 fewer. Factory jobs fell through 2025, then began to recover, with 72,000 added since December. It's a start, but far from millions. Verdict: not kept.²²

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"That is a war that's dying to be settled. I will get it settled before I even become president." — Donald Trump, presidential debate, Philadelphia, 10 September 2024¹

He often promised to end the war in twenty-four hours. Nearly two years on, it hasn't ended. He has met Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, and talks have come and gone. On 21 October, Russia agreed to three-way talks between negotiators after the 10th of November, but Putin still refuses to meet Zelensky outside Moscow. The war goes on. Verdict: not kept.¹⁴²³²⁴

"They said, 'He will start a war.' I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars." — Donald Trump, election night, West Palm Beach, Florida, 6 November 2024¹

He can claim credit for one ceasefire. In October 2025, his plan for Gaza ended two years of all-out war there, in which Gaza's health ministry counts more than 70,000 Palestinians killed, and brought the release of all 20 living Israeli hostages. But a year on, the UN's humanitarian coordinator says the ceasefire exists in name only. Israeli strikes continue several times a week; Israel says they target threats from Hamas. The health ministry counts about 1,500 more Palestinians killed since the ceasefire began, and the UN counts about 1.77 million people, most of Gaza's population, still living in camps for the displaced.²⁵²⁶²⁷

But on the 28th of February this year, the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran. The war that followed killed Iran's supreme leader, closed the Strait of Hormuz to most shipping and sent fuel prices soaring. A ceasefire in April and an agreement in June both broke down. In June, he told NBC that he had never promised not to start a war. On election night in 2024, he did.²⁸²⁹

Verdict: not kept.

So, ten promises: two kept, two partly kept, and six not kept. On the border and the tax cuts, he did what he said. On deportations and tips, he went part of the way: record deportations, but not yet his own bar, and a tax break on tips, but not no tax. On prices, energy, factory jobs, tariffs, Ukraine and war, the facts so far don't match what he promised.

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Some of that wasn't his alone: the courts struck down his tariffs, and Congress wrote the tax law. The war with Iran was his decision, and so was what it did to prices. And some promises take longer than two years to judge. But these are the measures he set himself, in his own words.

On the 3rd of November, voters decide what they make of it. In our next explainer, we look at what's at stake in the midterms, and check what the Democrats are promising in the same way.