Remember when the leader of the National Party made sure everyone could see his MAGA hat in the background? Not even Winston Peters would be so foolish now.
September 2026 is a long, long way from peak Trump January 2026.
In Trump’s first two years Trump did everything he could to break and remake core United States institutions. He and his team enjoyed great success. Grant him that. The legacy of his movement continues in successful far right movements from Australia to the United Kingdom.
But here we are. China’s leader Xi Jinping will meet with President Trump this Thursday and Friday. China now holds a far stronger position in global trade than the US, has dominance in specific industries, continues to trade with Iran and Russia, and shows little impact from the oil price and petroleum shortages.
In January he decapitated Venezuela and forced control of its thick sour crude oil. In September Cuba is at its weakest point in a century but Trump is no longer moving to regime change.
This week, the United States, Denmark and Greenland signed a defence pact which, far from ceding the entirety of Greenland to the United States as Trump had repeatedly sought earlier this year, instead largely clarifies the 1941 and 1951 agreements.
Over the last month, rather than controlling Iran by attacking without warning in partnership with Israel, the war has widened beyond the Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea. The US military has on multiple fronts including the destruction of many of its Persian Gulf bases, the denial of tactical support for Saudi Arabia, and inability to win any of its stated goals, been proven far weaker than expected.
Last year President Trump vowed to make the United States the global crypto capital and roll back oversight. Bitcoin’s price has nearly collapsed.
Last year President Trump projected that sweeping tariff policies would immediately stabilise costs and secure the sovereignty of US economic production. Instead of revitalising manufacturing, most firms have created new supply chain work-arounds. Canada and other US trade-reliant countries are now making their own plans. And NZ is doing just fine on all key exports.
In Trump’s big 2025 policies against immigration, he’s certainly had policy success by deporting nearly 600,000 people. But it’s also made things worse for years because his approach has stripped three times that number of Temporary Protected Status and other programmes, which will clog the system for years. It has also put otherwise rock solid Republican mid-western seats in political danger.
In early 2026 and still to this day Trump has supported unregulated Artificial Intelligence development, and hyper data centres across the US. There are now major political movements in the US and elsewhere successfully leading the charge against them both.
While Trump’s Republican Party has control of White House, Senate, House of Representatives, a majority of governorships, and arguably the Supreme Court, absolute legislative dominance in late 2026 is now tempered by internal party friction and self-induced political wounds.
Collectively within the US the impact of his policies are now so unpopular the Republicans are now at high risk of losing majorities in both Senate and Congress in November, overturning a huge Trump-led Republican wave in 2023. Across the world new alliances have formed beyond Trump’s influence.
Trump and the Trumpist movement is by no means dead but its power is diminished and there are many signs that he and his supporters are now successfully resisted.
It’s not over. But Peak Trump is a good start.