WASHINGTON — When U.S. President Donald Trump stands before Congress on Tuesday to deliver the annual state of the union address, he’ll be defending trade and immigration agendas that have stumbled lately in the face of legal setbacks and grim polling.
“It’s going to be a long speech,” Trump said at a White House event Monday. “Because we have so much to talk about.”
This speech comes at a critical moment for the president. Trump’s approval rating is being dragged down by his controversial immigration crackdown — and on Friday the U.S. Supreme Court took away his favourite tariff tool.
This will be Trump’s sixth speech before Congress since he was first elected president.
Aaron Kall, director of debate for the University of Michigan, said Trump’s speeches have offered “a mixed bag in terms of the tone” — sombre and unifying at one moment, aggressive and insulting the next.
Kall pointed out that this year’s state of the union speech lands when the Republican party is on shaky ground with voters — and with midterm elections less than nine months away.
Recent polling has shown Trump’s approval rating plummeting among the independent voters who played a key role in handing him the White House in 2024. The president is underwater on domestic issues like immigration, the economy and jobs — previously areas of strength for Trump, Kall said.
Some Congressional Republicans have suggested the president has not been able to communicate effectively with Americans on the key issue of affordability. Trump has repeatedly called the issue a Democrat “hoax” and has insisted that prices are coming down — whether or not voters themselves feel it.
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who won election last year on an affordability platform, will deliver the official Democratic response to Trump’s speech.
Trump’s inaugural speech as president in 2017, which painted a bleak picture of what he called “American carnage,” was immediately overshadowed in the news cycle by his unsupported claims about the size of the crowd that turned out to hear him speak.
In his 2025 inaugural address, Trump spoke of a coming “golden age” and vowed that the United States would “flourish and be respected again all over the world.”
In the whirlwind year that followed, Trump’s aggressive and rapidly changing agenda shattered alliances, upended global trade patterns and challenged America’s foundational system of checks and balances.
The president’s tariffs and repeated threats of annexation have damaged the long-standing relationship between Canada and the United States. Canada could come up during Tuesday’s speech — Trump invited the United States Olympic men’s hockey team to watch the address following their Sunday win over the Canadian team.
The latest focus of Trump’s rage — the Supreme Court justices who took away his preferred tariff tool — are likely to be in the House chamber during Tuesday’s address.
In a 6-3 decision Friday, America’s top court concluded it was not legal for Trump to use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, better known as IEEPA, for his “Liberation Day” tariffs and fentanyl-related duties on Canada, Mexico and China.
Trump signed an executive order hours later to enact a 10 per cent worldwide tariff using Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act. The next day, Trump said he would be increasing the duty to 15 per cent — although no amendment to the executive order has been signed to put that into force.
Under Section 122, the tariff cannot go higher than 15 per cent and it will expire after 150 days unless Congress votes to extend it.
It’s not unheard of for Supreme Court justices to clash with presidents during state of the union speeches. Justice Samuel Alito famously frowned and shook his head as then-president Barack Obama criticized the court during an address to Congress in 2010.
Trump might put himself in a difficult position if he goes after the justices during his speech because his tariff policies are also very unpopular with voters, Kall said.
Attempting to justify the tariffs “will make a really tough speech even that more difficult,” he said.
Also hanging over the Congressional address is the U.S. military buildup near Iran. While Trump ran on a promise to end U.S. military interventions abroad, his second term has seen an expansion of such operations with attacks on Iran, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and Venezuela, along with the controversial campaign of bombing alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.
Trump is likely to boast about what he sees as his foreign policy accomplishments — but that also might be a difficult topic to navigate. The president has received pushback from all sides — including Republican supporters — over his interventionism and focus on foreign policy over domestic issues like the cost of living.
While a State of the Union address is supposed to lay out a president’s vision, Kall said he thinks this one will be like a typical Trump rally speech that lacks a unifying thread.
Kall said he also expects it to be long.
“Millions of people will watch,” he said. “You basically get one shot a year. This will be the final shot before the midterm elections. No other kind of speech or event’s going to get this kind of attention. So the stakes are really high.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 24, 2026.
— With files from The Associated Press
Kelly Geraldine Malone, The Canadian Press
