POLITICS: How Trump must push his ‘American reset’ into 2026

It was the year of the reset.

On foreign policy, economic policy and immigration policy, President Donald Trump in 2025 took a system that had been working against the American people and started the hard process of turning it back toward putting Americans first.

Trump doesn’t view these three areas as separate entities, but as a nexus whose aims must reinforce each other.

His fight against Venezuela, for example, is as much about protecting Americans from drugs and halting the influx of migrants as it is about removing the illegitimate Maduro regime.

His tariffs on Mexico were equal parts about protecting our auto market and protecting our border.

His complex agenda brought many successes, some failures — and important lessons to carry into 2026.

Trump’s tariffs especially were a crucial tool in his reset effort.

After he declared “Liberation Day” on April 2, the global economic elite lost its collective mind.

Wall Street went into a tailspin.

The liberal media went berserk.

Expert economists declared the end of the world as we know it.

We were told inflation would explode, global trade would end and the stock market would never recover.

None of that happened.

Instead, the tariffs brought trillions of dollars of commitments from the Middle East and elsewhere to reshore manufacturing and build factories here in the United States.

They got American cars into the Japanese market.

They forced Mexico to police its side of the border, bringing illegal crossings to zero.

They made Pfizer reshore pharmaceutical manufacturing and give American patients most-favored-nation pricing for medications, instead of charging us extra for drugs developed with our taxpayer dollars.

Contrary to the experts’ doom and gloom, we end the year with record-breaking stock market yields, inflation at its lowest since 2021, and GDP growth at a robust 4.3%.

In a massive redistribution of wealth, American corporations and China ate the majority of the tariffs, paying a greedflation tax of over $200 billion into the treasury.

Lesson learned: Tariffs work as both carrot and stick to achieve multiple goals.

In 2026, Trump must build on that success to ink trade deals with Canada and India, bringing down the cost of food, furniture and housing.

And if the Supreme Court strikes his tariffs down, Trump can’t shrink from using alternative paths to keep them on track.

But the experts did get one thing right — and Trump should be willing to own up to it.

They laughed when Trump said he’d end the war in Ukraine on Day 1.

I thought he had a good shot at getting it done, quickly if not immediately. I was wrong.

I believed Vladimir Putin was looking for an off-ramp, that what he really wanted wasn’t to absorb all of Ukraine — an impossible task given his resources — but a commitment from the West that Ukraine would not join NATO.

Trump did exactly that, and more: He’s made it clear that NATO membership for Ukraine is off the table, he’s declared that Crimea is part of Russia, and he’s gotten President Volodymyr Zelensky to make key territorial concessions.

And still, the Russian bombing continues.

In his meeting with Trump this week, Zelensky said Ukraine and the United States are “90% agreed” on the 20-point peace plan that will end the war.

I’m praying that’s true. I never thought the bloodshed would still be going on there a year into Trump’s term — and clearly, neither did he.

Trump’s desire to bring an end to the carnage comes from a sincerely held horror of war, but like every other part of his agenda, it’s also inseparable from America’s needs: freeing our taxpayers of foreign burdens, keeping our military out of an unthinkable fight and addressing the cost of energy here at home.

Lesson learned: This negotiation will take time, and Putin feels no urgency to end the conflict.

He’s using his cruel willingness to keep feeding the killing machine as just another piece of leverage, and Trump must treat it as such.

In 2026, the president will continue fighting two wars.

One is a global trade reset that maintains American dominance and restores the dignity of the American working class.

The second is a foreign-policy reset designed to re-prioritize Americans’ well-being.

Achieving those goals requires bold action, often flouting the received wisdom of so-called experts — and sometimes, admitting when you’re wrong.

Batya Ungar-Sargon is the author of “Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women” and hosts “Batya” on NewsNation.