President Donald Trump’s populist economic program faced voters in the midterms, and the verdict was brutal. Democrats emerged with their biggest congressional majorities in decades after voters resoundingly rejected a platform riddled with contradictions.

Republicans have several colorful ways to describe the outcome. Former President George W. Bush once used “a thumpin’,” former President Barack Obama chose “shellacking,” and retiring Sen. Thom Tillis called this result “an ass-whooping” on CNN last week.

The economic agenda known as Trumponomics stitched together corporate and income tax cuts, tariffs, mass deportations, deregulation, aggressive artificial intelligence development and vast data centers. It also put the federal government into strategic sectors as a shareholder while abandoning any serious commitment to deficit reduction.

That jumble proved politically toxic. The half cooked, overpriced stew cost House Republicans 44 seats and helped turn Kansas and Texas blue, leaving the party two years to salvage whatever it can from the wreckage.

Tariffs sit near the center of that reckoning. Largely abandoned by the United States in the middle of the 20th century, they returned in force under Trump in April 2025 as he called them “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.”

Trump repeatedly suggested tariffs could replace the income tax code. Republican supporters of free trade tolerated them as a tool for forcing foreign governments into negotiations, even while relationships with Brussels, Ottawa and Mexico City were sacrificed.

The Republican controlled Congress barely interfered with Trump’s trade war. Former Sen. Pat Toomey lamented last year that lawmakers had become a “non-participating bystander” on trade, while only a small House Republican faction joined Democrats in February to rebuke the tariff regime.

The Budget Lab at Yale estimates that tariffs now cost American families about $900 annually, with their average level at roughly 11%, the highest since 1942. Trump persisted despite their unpopularity and threatened Wednesday to double tariffs on Mexico over groups of migrants entering the United States.

As Trump moves into lame duck status, more Republicans may publicly resist blanket tariffs while preserving them for narrower circumstances. The party’s economic credibility in the 2028 election could depend partly on trading Trump’s tariff sledgehammer for something more precise.

Trump did secure another round of tax reductions through the One Big Beautiful Bill. The law eliminated federal taxes on tips and overtime pay through 2028 and maintained individual tax cuts that had been scheduled to expire from the original 2017 law.

Keeping existing individual cuts was difficult to market as a fresh benefit because voters already viewed them as the status quo. Still, Republicans may persuade some Democrats to renew the provisions covering tips and overtime, despite criticism from economists on both the left and right.

Those populist tax provisions polled consistently well, although critics noted their limited reach. In Nevada, where tipped employees represent a larger portion of the workforce than in other states, Democrats nevertheless flipped one House seat and retained the state’s other three.

The Iran war’s price spikes and Trump’s failure to resolve that conflict weighed more heavily on Nevada voters. The result showed that a popular tax provision was not enough to overcome broader economic and foreign policy concerns included in the electorate’s judgment.

Trump also lost support over immigration enforcement, a problem he acknowledged during last week’s “60 Minutes” interview with correspondent Ross Douthat. Images of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arresting nonviolent undocumented immigrants contributed to his losses, particularly among Latino voters.

Republican Sens. Roger Marshall of Kansas and Susan Collins of Maine demanded restraint in large scale ICE operations as their Senate contests intensified. Their calls for restraint did not save them, and both lost anyway.

Trump’s enthusiastic support for the enormous, energy hungry data centers fueling the artificial intelligence boom also collided with voters blaming those facilities for higher utility bills. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts captured the conservative backlash by accusing technology companies of trying to dictate terms to Americans.

“These tech companies have lorded over us and feel like they can jam down our throats whatever the hell they want, and you’re telling Americans, of all people, that you can do that?” Roberts told the Financial Times this week.

Trumponomics in its current form is headed for the political graveyard, though the Republican appetite for tax cuts is unlikely to disappear. If the party wants to win again, its next economic platform will need to bury much of the contradictory mess voters just rejected.