A Year of Trump 2.0: Strategy Report Card

It’s been exactly a year since January 20, 2025, when Donald Trump was sworn in for Term 2.0 as President.

Today we’ll look both back and ahead. We’ll consider key events from the past 365 days, and what we can expect could happen next.

And right up front: If any modern American President has ripped away the political Band-Aids and exposed the raw, bleeding, longstanding, unhealed, infected, suppurating, malodorous wounds of the Republic, it’s Trump.

One year ago today: President Trump sworn in. Image courtesy ABC News.

Strap in… Let’s hit the highlights and figure out how to make some money.

The Trumpian Tornado

Love him or hate him, Trump is sui generis. Yes, he’s a former reality TV star, but no, he’s definitely not from Political Central Casting. You’ll hear no Beltway bromides from this guy.

With Trump, America finally has a president who governs from the viewpoint that the post-World War II global order is over. He gets it that, since the 1990s and end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been buried beneath an avalanche of bad policies emanating from Washington, D.C., aka “the Swamp.”

Collectively, for two generations the country painted itself into a geopolitical, strategic, cultural, demographic, political, economic, financial, industrial, military corner. And looking ahead, we’re probably screwed as a nation, absent change that will have to be tumultuous.

Indeed, looking ahead, the next decade will decide who runs the world for the next century.

That is, if the next cycle of history isn’t another so-called “American Century,” it sure as hell won’t be led by the insipid Western Europeans, with their Davos, nanny-state view of some bizarre, control-freak New World Order. No, it’s more like the planet’s surface will be reshaped by China, but don’t discount a rising Caliphate either.

Which brings us back to Trump, a human tornado. He’s energetic, instinctual, and makes fast decisions. He strikes from every direction, often unpredictably. You don’t want to be the proverbial double-wide when Tornado Trump drops onto your issue while bearing a grudge. Hey, you might not even want to be a brick outhouse when Trump draws his bead.

Kindly and gently, with a grandfatherly voice, he’ll make a telephone call to a child dying from cancer. Then he’ll order B-2s to fly across half the world to drop bombs down the ventilation shafts of a nuclear weapons refinery.

Trump said he’d close the Southern border, and he did; it’s now sealed tighter than a drum. He said he’d stop drug-runners and then applied military-grade intelligence and combat power to blow up their speedboats. Along these lines, he gave Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and his wife one chance to escape to a third country with bags of loot, and now the obstinate duo are housed in a federal holding cell, awaiting trial that could send them to prison for life.

Trump asked nicely, but Maduro chose the hard way. Courtesy Arise.TV.

Meanwhile with Trump, it’s “Big and Beautiful.” There’s Mar a Lago, to be sure. Or his focus on acquiring shiny, new, red, white and blue Boeing 747s to serve as the next generation of Air Force 1. Or fixing up the formerly decrepit Kennedy Center or building a ballroom annex that the White House sorely needs when you’re honest about it.

America’s future White House Ballroom Annex. Courtesy ABC News.

Hey, Trump likes nice things and makes no secret of his desire for top-shelf items. Clearly, an aura of opulence is part of his identity. At the same time, though, Trump’s identity includes mixing with normal people such as grocery store clerks, steelworkers, and railroad maintenance guys in Western Pennsylvania mill towns.

I’ve met normal people who’ve met the man, and – for example – when Trump walks up and asks a heavy equipment operator about digging a pipeline trench, it’s because Trump is genuinely interested in how equipment operators dig pipeline trenches.

More broadly, Trump likes and admires people who possess useful skills. Maybe they’re oil drillers, welders, or concrete finishers; or perhaps they’re transplant surgeons or F-22 pilots. He respects the ability to do things. Plus, he never flies in or out of a location without lining up with the cops, firefighters and EMTs for handshakes and photos. Trump is many things, but lazy and sleepy he ain’t, unlike… well… yes.

Much of politics is predictable, of course. Recall how Trump kicked off Term 2.0 with that mind-boggling, state visit spectacle in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Then came the Royal blowout when he visited King Charles at Windsor Castle. No shock, really, with all that foreign pomp and circumstance; it’s typical Trump.

On the other side of the political ledger, Trump screwed up big-time, early-on, when he failed to demand Senate recess appointments for many of his nominees to innumerable offices. Even now, a year into tenure, much of the Trump administration remains unmanned, except by the perma-bureaucrats.

Another global upheaval came in April, when Trump carpet-bombed nations across the world with massive tariffs. Immediately, this tanked the stock market, so the administration reversed course and scrambled like old Fran Tarkenton (still around, age 86!). Another way to say it is that Trump’s tariffs became a gambit for a string of so-called “deals” with nations across the world.

Trump announces tariff schedules. Courtesy USA Today.

For Trump, tariffs will raise revenue. But it’s also about protecting favored U.S. industrial sectors to help America rebuild its hollow manufacturing sector. And now we await a decision from the Supreme Court, to see if Trump must pay it all back.

Later in 2025 Trump pushed tax reform, which included more of his signature effort to help U.S. industry reboot manufacturing. And no, there’s nothing easy about incentivizing a moribund, financialized, legacy superpower to recover from decades of deindustrialization.

On the defense (or “war”) side, consider Trump’s instructions to the Pentagon to fix what’s broken, which was quite a bit. Indeed, Afghanistan 2021 speaks for itself. It’s a long list, everything from “guys in skirts,” to “shipbuilding-shipbuilding-shipbuilding,” and up the line to a “Golden Dome” missile defense system, which requires… Greenland (see below).

Donald Jefferson Seward Trump

Definitely, Trump has a different way of doing things. As noted, he’s a tornado, and not always coherent. He drives many people kind of nuts, an angle which he seems to enjoy.

Meanwhile, despite expectations of quirky Trumpian behavior, and even despite safety briefs, tight seatbelts and shoulder straps, Trump sometimes shocks and shakes things up in ways that surpass preconception.

For example, during Trump’s inauguration speech, he came seemingly out of the blue and declared that the U.S. should recover the Panama Canal and eventually take over Greenland. Huh? I sure didn’t recall those zingers from the 2024 campaign trail.

Then again, every politician keeps a few ideas up the old sleeve during an election cycle. As an aside, compare Trump and his rhetoric about Panama and Greenland with newly installed Mayor Mamdani of New York, who neglected to mention during his campaign that he wanted to stage a Bolshevik Revolution once in office in the Big Apple. (Another discussion for another time.)

In his 2024 campaign, Trump kept his key messages tight and disciplined: fix immigration, fix the economy, impose tariffs, control inflation, fight crime, pull the country back from social dislocation. Those were the basics. And no, Trump didn’t occlude the political airspace with matters of geostrategy; there was no talk of Panama or Greenland.

Then again, 2024 was unlike the life and times of the 1890s and early 1900s, when building a Panama Canal was an actual issue of national debate; and hey, it got built.

Best book ever on Panama Canal. Courtesy Amazon.com.

But then over many decades of the 20^th century, subsequent generations of American politicians forgot the importance of that key work of national construction, of that irreplaceable national asset. Indeed, foolishly, they “gave it away” as the saying goes. And even worse, at the moment Trump took his oath last year, it was not inaccurate to say that Panama and the eponymous Canal was under the thumb of China; it’s an issue that Trump has worked to remedy.

Then there’s Greenland, which in terms of square miles is about 25% larger than Alaska, acquired in 1867 by President Andrew Johnson and his dynamic Secretary of State, William Seward. And while we’re measuring metes and bounds, Greenland just edges out the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, a key accomplishment of President Thomas Jefferson.

Relative size: Greenland vs. Louisiana Purchase. BrilliantMaps.com.

In this sense, acquiring Greenland would be (or should we say, “will be”) a geopolitical coup. That is, Trump is a twice-elected president and naturally destined for the history books.

But… for The Donald to put Greenland under a U.S. flag? For the Orange Man to nail down the northeastern sector of the North American continent, and expand America’s waterfront along the Arctic? Well, that’s history above-and-beyond. Expansionist. Manifest Destiny. And the mapmaking, military and resource possibilities for the future are wide open. Don’t think small, okay?

But what of the quaint Kingdom of Denmark, some might ask? What of the view that Trump is trashing a long-time ally, while fracturing NATO solidarity, and all the rest of the arguments contra Greenland annexation? (It’s a long list.)

Well, this returns to that point I noted above, about Trump pulling off the old, crusty, smelly Band-Aids and revealing deep, unhealed wounds. At root, Trump highlights how the post-WWII world is over-over-over, and how America must redefine its future national interests and quit living in its long-lost past.

Another way to say it is that, with Denmark, NATO, Europe in general – and with much else; a long list – many problems that people associate with the mere presence of Herr Trump are not of his making. He just showed up to highlight the previous bad decisions, and bluntly to point out that the country must fix things.

For example, there’s a strong case to be made that NATO long ago outlived its purpose, namely defending Western Europe from the former Soviet Union; a need that vanished into the mists in the early 1990s when that Red Empire imploded.

Don’t just take my opinion on it. Because as far back as 1951 no less than General Dwight Eisenhower (not yet elected U.S. President) stated, “If in ten years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project (NATO) will have failed.”

And here we are today, a couple of lifetimes later. And NATO still functions as a costly political-military alliance, complete with massive bureaucracy and innumerable, well-compensated sinecures. While the U.S. pays the lion’s share.

Relative defense spending comparison from 2024. Courtesy NATO.

Meanwhile, the past quarter century has been a time of heedless NATO expansion directly to Russia’s borders, tantamount to an invasion of Russia’s long-declared “near abroad.” In fact, these advances were a cassus belli behind Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

And to make things worse, even with NATO’s full backing of Ukraine, it’s clear that neither Ukraine nor NATO can defeat Russia, and the war grinds on with not even Trump able to wind it down.

Like I noted above, we’ve had a year of Trump the Tornado. Both abroad and at home, he has ripped off the Band-Aids, and for some odd reason many people don’t like what they see.

Okay… and now…

What a Year; Let’s Discuss Money

When Trump was sworn in last year, the price of gold was $2,760/oz.; at one point in the past few days, it’s over $4,750: up over 72%.

Stream-rounded gold nugget, about 5 oz. BWK photo; courtesy Alaska Mint, Anchorage.

A year ago, silver was $30/oz.; now, it’s over $95: up about 216%.

A year back, platinum was $947/oz.; today it is over $2,440: up about 157%.

And when Trump took Oath 2.0, copper was just over $4.00/lb.; now, it’s just shy of $6.00: up about 50%.

These numbers reflect many things: lack of supply due to long-term under-investment; growing demand from industry; weakening of the dollar due to macroeconomic and geopolitical issues.

And the numbers also serve as clues about where to invest for the near, medium and long-term; namely, hard assets like metals, and energy plays despite current downsides to a macro-commodity like oil. The trend in place now shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.

With that, I’ll call it quits for now.

Thank you for reading, and best wishes as 2026 unfolds.