A big feature of Trump's 2024 campaign was the prices seen by the American people at fuel pumps and in the supermarket. 

Though he can claim some success, inflation has hardly seen a significant slowdown over his second term so far - with latest figures for December at 2.7%, slightly below the 2.9% in December 2024 under Biden. Both are well above the Fed's 2% annual target.

Nonetheless, inflation dropped to the lowest rate in over four years last April, dipping to 2.3%, before steadily rising again.

Touting the latest figures, Trump claimed that "inflation is defeated", but what Americans have been feeling in their wallets may be a different story.

Inflation remains particularly high for electricity (6.7%), which may hit those heating their homes through the cold winter.

Food inflation is also above average, notably meat, fish and eggs, which are on average 3.9% more expensive than before Trump came to power; in addition to dining out, which remains 4.9% higher than the previous year.

Americans are also spending more than ever on healthcare - $5.3trn in 2025, compared to $4.9trn the previous year. 

The "One Big Beautiful Bill" announced widespread cuts to Medicaid, the US health insurance programme for low-income Americans. 

Heather Hurlburt, chief of staff to president Biden's trade representative, pointed to Trump's promises to introduce tariffs and remove restrictions on oil drilling as examples of fulfilled promises.

She told Paste BN: "So if you judge it by that standard, he's been really successful. However, if you judge him by the things that the address promised Americans would have - prices are not down, inflation is not down, manufacturing is not up, standard of living is not up."

On tariffs, Ms Hurlburt said that they had not brought about the spike in inflation that many of Trump's critics had warned about.

But have they brought "massive amounts of money pouring" into the US Treasury, as he promised in his inauguration speech?

Tariff revenue, if annualised for the whole of 2025, has been estimated at around $330bn.

"It is a large amount of money," Ms Hurlburt says, noting that it is lower than it might have been due to various exceptions granted under the tariff regime.

Upon taking office, Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border and dispatched thousands of troops there to help secure it.

A huge $75bn has been allocated for immigration enforcement, including an unprecedented budget for ICE, the controversial agency that has seen a surge in activity.

Encounters at the border with Mexico are now at their lowest level in years, dropping from 96,033 people in December 2024, to just 11,710 in February, the first full month of Trump's presidency.

Numbers have hovered around 10,000 in each month since then.

On deportations, Trump's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims to have deported more than 622,000 people in 2025, while ICE's own publications set the number much lower, at around 352,375 - with no figures available for deportations by border patrol.

While the true figure likely lies somewhere between the two, deportations are likely to be higher under Trump, but not by much; with 597,450 people deported in 2024 under Biden, when looking at removals and enforcement returns.

The DHS also claims that nearly two million immigrants have left the US voluntarily since January 2025, known as "self-deportations", with incentives like $1,000 in cash and a paid flight.

The picture is murky because there is no specific definition of a deportation, and the US uses several different metrics for people departing - voluntarily or otherwise - not all of which have been regularly published.

Under the Biden administration, there was a focus on detaining criminals, with these immigrants 10 times more likely to be detained by ICE.

Trump vowed to begin the process of deporting "millions and millions of criminal aliens", but just one in four people detained in immigration detention have a criminal conviction, latest ICE figures show.

"He has kept that immigration focus and message absolutely at the centre of his administration," Doris Meissner, formerly chief of immigration under president Bill Clinton, told Paste BN.

Not only that, but in areas where he is perhaps not as successful, Trump "always falls back on a deeply anti-immigrant and immigration message".

Ms Meissner, now a senior fellow and director at the Migration Policy Institute thinktank, says the president has "unleashed a range of actions around the mass deportations initiative that are unprecedented".

Asked if his actions on immigration had changed America forever, she said: "I think that's the big question.

"At some levels it is not irreversible, but there's not an on-off switch."

It was an odd sight in January this year. Trump, standing in the gilded Oval Office, holding one of the world's highest honours: the Nobel Peace Prize.

It's no secret that he had coveted the award for many years, angry that president Barack Obama had won one in 2009.

So was this an end to Trump's long quest for the peace prize?

Not exactly, because the framed golden medal he was holding wasn't his at all - and it speaks to his approach to the world over the past 12 months.

Instead, the prize had been presented to him by its actual winner, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, after the president had launched military strikes on her country and captured its leader.

Some would suggest these aren't the acts of a peacemaker.

But nonetheless, Trump has claimed to have ended eight wars or, as he put it in October, "averaging one a month".

"Credit where credit is due: brokering a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan is a genuine achievement," said Dr Theo Zenou, research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.

The two nations had been engaged in nearly 40 years of conflict over the disputed status of Nagorno-Karabakh before signing a peace agreement at the White House.

However, other peace deals Trump claimed to have engineered have been less successful, such as those between Thailand and Cambodia, or Rwanda-backed rebels and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Both conflicts have seen continued fighting.

Then, of course, there are the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, both of which have seen huge losses of life and humanitarian emergencies over the past 12 months.

This is despite him promising to solve the Ukraine war in 24 hours. Meanwhile, a fragile ceasefire exists in Gaza, but the deaths of Palestinians have not stopped.

"Trump has failed utterly to be a peacemaker," Benjamin Friedman, policy director at the Defence Priorities thinktank, told Paste BN. 

"His desire to make peace, while real, has not been matched by success, or even commitment, to the cause."

He said that Trump lacks the focus and patience to make peace in difficult circumstances, like Ukraine.

"That's very different from signing off on and taking credit for deals that are already done, more or less, and require little effort and political capital," Friedman added.

There's also the fact that despite pledging to end forever wars, Trump has shown a willingness to use America's military might for coercion and direct intervention.

This includes the seismic decision to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, and the audacious capture of Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro, not to mention his threats over taking Greenland.

The second Trump administration has conducted or been involved in 672 air and drone strikes over its first year, according to data from the ACLED conflict monitor.

This is nearly the same as the number carried out across all four years of president Biden's administration (694).

Trump repeatedly railed against what he saw as his persecution during the Biden years, decrying the attempts to bring him to court.

He spoke of a "witch hunt" against him, and in his inauguration speech vowed that the power of the state would never be used against political opponents.

But the data may tell a different story. At least 470 people, organisations and institutions have been targeted for retribution since Trump returned to office – an average of more than one a day, according to research by the Reuters news agency in November.

At least 247 of those were individuals or entities that were singled out by name, either by Trump himself, his appointees or in other filings.

High-profile names to have been targeted include former FBI director James Comey, Senator Mark Kelly and Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve.

The White House disputes the idea that the administration is out for revenge, instead describing investigations and indictments of political adversaries as valid course corrections on policy, necessary probes of wrongdoing and legitimate policy initiatives.

Within the robust language around immigration and foreign wars was a somewhat perplexing announcement.

Trump vowed to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the body of water south of Texas and north of southern Mexico - and did so swiftly by executive order upon being sworn in.

It had carried that name for more than 400 years.

Mexico has said the Gulf of Mexico name is internationally recognised and has been used as a maritime navigational reference going back centuries.

Google Maps now shows the new name to US users, while international users see "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)".

The Associated Press, which serves a global audience, elected to refer to it by its original name, while acknowledging the new name.

The White House informed the news agency that it would be barred from the Oval Office if it did not align its editorial guidelines with Trump's executive order.

Meanwhile, America's tallest mountain returns to its former name of Mount McKinley after another executive order by Trump.

Barack Obama had changed the name of the mountain in 2015 to Denali, its original native Alaskan name.

President William McKinley led the US during an expansionist era, adding Hawaii, Guam and Puerto Rico as territories.

With Trump's desire to possess Greenland now on full display, was this seemingly odd name change to a geographical landmark a clue about what was to come?