With Donald Trump back in the White House, the Democratic Party is facing something bigger than just another Trump presidency. It is facing a vibe shift. You could see it in the video of Trump and former President Barack Obama chuckling together at the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter. You could see it in Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing his decision to roll back fact-checking on his social media platforms. And you can see it in Trump’s favorability ratings, which is edging toward an all-time high.
As all of this suggests, the national mood is nowhere near what it was when Trump took office for the first time. There is no widespread sense that Trump is an illegitimate president who failed to capture the popular vote and was aided in his election by a network of Russian hackers. One reason for this is the margin of his election victory. He beat Harris in the popular vote as well as the electoral college, and made deep inroads with minority voters.
“Trump is no aberration.”
Maybe, then, Trump is no aberration. Maybe he is exactly what liberals spent so many years telling us he wasn’t: normal.
Engagement with a normal president necessitates a different approach from the Democratic Party. In 2017, the name of the game was “resistance.” Massive rallies denounced the president as a sexist fiend who was declaring war on American norms. This time, protests were barely an afterthought at the inauguration. So if Democrats don’t simply resist the new president, what’s the alternative?
They must start by recognizing that much of what Trump built his campaign brand around—from denouncing Washington’s corruption to securing the US-Mexico border to reshaping our trade relations with other countries to ending wars—has a real constituency across the country. And to the extent he’s willing to back up his populist rhetoric with populist action, Democrats should be willing to step up and work with the administration and its allies in Congress to get things done for the American people.
Doing so will come with a couple of benefits. For one, Democrats can avoid being branded as a rejectionist faction unwilling to work with the incoming president, a posture that could help swing-state Democrats in places like Georgia as they approach the 2026 midterm elections. But more importantly, Democrats have the opportunity to make real progress in areas where they claim to also want reforms, rather than waiting (at least) four years just to get anything done.
The first obvious area where cooperation makes sense is trade and industrial policy. In 2016, Trump’s criticism of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other trade deals helped him win over former Democratic voters in the key Midwestern states that landed him in the White House. Once in office, he more or less made good on his rhetoric. NAFTA was renegotiated, resulting in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership was shelved, which garnered applause from some in the labor wing of the Democratic Party.
In 2024, Trump has even loftier trade goals. He’s floating the idea of broad-based tariffs aimed at boosting American manufacturing and curtailing foreign rivals like China. These tariffs have come under fire from virtually everyone in the economics profession, who argue that they will backfire and result in higher prices and economic chaos for American consumers.
By engaging with Trump on trade and industrial policy, Democrats have an opportunity to distance themselves further from the neoliberal economics that directed their party’s policies for so many years. As the Biden administration’s partial embrace of Trump’s economic nationalism showed, tariffs and protectionism don’t have to be all-or-nothing. Trump and Biden, despite their bitter political rivalry, found areas of agreement. Both imposed large tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, which is the main reason why our legacy automakers haven’t had to fear being run out of business by low-cost competition from BYD and other Chinese giants.
Democrats who are interested in strengthening American manufacturing can offer their expertise to the administration and work with it in crafting both executive trade policy and legislative proposals that promote strategic support for key industries.
Another area for collaboration is expanding the child tax credit. During the 2024 campaign, Trump and JD Vance campaigned on restoring an expanded child tax credit that would deliver $5,000 per child to families. Kamala Harris also endorsed this idea, although her proposal differed in some details, and other Democrats have also voiced support for it.
The biggest legislative package of 2025 will be the renewal of the Trump-era tax cuts. In 2018, those tax cuts were passed along partisan lines. But this year, Republicans will be legislating with a razor-thin House margin. This offers Democrats the opportunity to bring their votes to the table to move the tax package if Trump makes good on his pledge to expand the child tax credit. It also would enable Democrats to work with GOP populists to move other policies that could make sure the tax code is fair for ordinary people and doesn’t privilege the very wealthy, such as retaining the cap on State and Local Tax (SALT) deductions.
While Democrats continue debating how they will approach the new president, some in organized labor have already tasted the fruits of constructive engagement. The International Brotherhood of the Teamsters made the decision last September to sit out the presidential race, choosing to endorse neither candidate. But the neutrality was seen by the Republicans as a good sign for them, given the Teamsters’ recent support for the Democrats.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien also spoke at the Republican presidential convention and took meetings with the president-elect, in which he argued for his union’s agenda. The Teamsters have already scored some wins. O’Brien argued in these pages that Trump should pick Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a GOP lawmaker close to organized labor, as his Labor Secretary. And that’s exactly what Trump ended up doing. The Teamsters are also working closely with some Republicans in Congress, like Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, to move legislation that would safeguard union rights by, for instance, banning “captive-audience” meetings in which employers intimidate workers.
Although it remains unclear where the Trump administration will end up on labor issues—Trump’s nominations to the National Labor Relations Board will be pivotal—the Teamsters’ successful outreach offers a model to pro-labor Democratic lawmakers willing to work with Trump’s White House. While much of the institutional GOP—from think tanks to lawmakers in Congress—remains hostile to unions and to social welfare policies that could benefit families, the Trump era represents an opening for populists to gain a foothold. That’s why it would make sense for Democrats to work with Hawley and other Republicans who want to push their party to be more responsive to workers, who increasingly vote for the GOP.
Even in the thorniest policy areas, there is plenty of room for Democrats to wield influence by engaging with the new administration. If there’s one issue that Trump has made his name on, it’s reducing illegal immigration while also scaling back legal immigration. During Trump’s first term, the issue went sideways for him: Unpopular policies like family separation and the chaotic execution of his border-enforcement agenda left the country polarized, and Trump’s plans in this area stalled.
But now the shoe is on the other foot. Unprecedented abuse of the asylum system paired with effective GOP messaging has left the Democrats at a disadvantage. One way to move beyond this impasse would be to meet Trump in the middle. That could include supporting efforts to crack down on serious violations of the law by undocumented immigrants, reforming the asylum system to prevent abuses, and exploiting cleavages within the MAGA coalition between Trump’s Big Tech backers and his populist base to overhaul policies like the H-1B visa program. Sen. Bernie Sanders is already embracing the latter approach. And while civil-liberties advocates have pointed out that the Laken Riley Act has real flaws, the fact that a substantial minority of congressional Democrats were willing to support the bill or let it advance suggests that they are starting to see a need to bring immigration policy back to the middle.
Democrats can do all this while still retaining their support for Dreamers, undocumented people who were brought to the country as children, and supporting some pathway to citizenship for people in the country illegally. But they must also re-embrace the pro-worker stance that once defined the Democratic Party, insisting that our laws not be abused to allow an endless supply of cheap labor.
“If there’s anything Trump loves, it’s praise from his former enemies.”
Foreign policy is the executive branch’s prerogative, which means Democrats will have limited influence in this area over the next four years. But they won’t have zero influence. For one thing, they can support Trump nominees like Tulsi Gabbard (formerly a Democratic congresswoman) and Elbridge Colby, both of whom have a record of advocating for restraint and realism in foreign policy; they can also use their votes to support the international agreements and foreign aid needed to end conflicts like the ones in Ukraine and Gaza.
Before even taking office, Trump’s team has been engaging seriously on the conflict in the Middle East. His peace envoy Steve Witkoff reportedly helped win a breakthrough in ceasefire negotiations by leaning on Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. One Arab official claimed that Witkoff made more progress in one meeting than Biden’s diplomats did in months—suggesting that Trump was actually able to achieve what Biden had long said he wanted to do. Democratic progressives should encourage him to continue to apply real pressure to end America’s entanglement in endless wars.
Above all, the Democrats willing to find areas of agreement with the new administration should remember that if there’s anything Trump loves, it’s praise from his former enemies—and figure out how to use that fact to advance their agenda.