Are U.S. presidents who lose both chambers of Congress really lame ducks? Never underestimate any U.S. president!
Don’t rush to argue with me just yet!
Let's first see what the previous “lame duck” did.
Obama lost the House in his first term and the Senate in his second.
He lost both chambers. In his final two years, did he lie low? Did he become a lame duck?
No. Instead, he used executive power to the fullest.
In December 2016, a presidential memorandum indefinitely halted oil and gas development in the Arctic.
Note: it wasn’t an executive order, but a memorandum.
Later, Trump tried to revoke it, but a federal court ruled it invalid—
What a president does unilaterally can’t necessarily be undone unilaterally by the next president.
The Paris Agreement didn’t go through the Senate treaty process; it was signed directly as an executive agreement.
A program deferring deportations was announced, covering more than five million undocumented immigrants.
The program was later blocked by the courts and never took effect.
But he had already tested the limits of executive power.
The Iran nuclear deal bypassed Congress.
He never consulted Congress at any point in normalizing relations with Cuba: opening up tourism, easing restrictions on remittances, reopening the embassy—and becoming the first U.S. president to set foot in Havana in 88 years.
He left the next president with a fait accompli and walked away.
Remember, Obama was a conventional politician.
Even a conventional politician could get all this done.
Now imagine someone unconventional taking over.
Will he do less, or more?
First, let’s look at what’s been taken away from him.
Legislation: reduced to zero.
New laws have to pass Congress.
Investigations, subpoenas, impeachment—the Democrats’ power will increase substantially. Conviction takes two-thirds of the Senate, which they can’t get, but they can still make life miserable.
Judicial nominations can be delayed or rejected.
Appropriations and the debt ceiling become bargaining chips.
Now look at what he can’t be stripped of.
Executive orders: tariffs, trade, immigration—one stroke of a pen, no Congress needed.
Commander in chief: deployments, operations, sanctions—the decisions are his.
The pardon power: personal authority Congress can’t touch.
Veto power: overriding it takes two-thirds in both chambers, and the Democrats are nowhere near that.
He can declare a state of emergency.
Even the Iran war is like this.
The Democrats are calling for it to end, but how does it end?
A ceasefire takes just one order from him.
Lifting sanctions and unfreezing assets? The basis is the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. It goes through the Treasury Department—another stroke of the pen.
The only way Congress can block it is with legislation after the fact—which he can veto. Overriding that takes two-thirds.
In other words:
He can make peace with Iran unilaterally, and Congress can’t stop him.
That’s the real risk in the Iran question.
It’s not that he can’t do anything. It’s that he can do too much.
Neither party would accept the petrodollar simply slipping away like this.
But whether they accept it or not, the key isn’t in Congress’s hands.
And then there are the next two months.
The new members of Congress don’t take office until January 2027. For these two months, Congress is still Republican.
During this window, Trump will rush to do three things.
First, confirm a batch of nominees.
Judges and executive branch officials—approved by a simple majority and locked in.
Second, a budget reconciliation bill, which doesn’t need 60 votes.
What will he put in it? Most likely, he’ll raise the debt ceiling in one go to cover the rest of his term.
The ceiling is now $41.1 trillion. The debt is already $40.199 trillion, leaving just over $900 billion.
TD Securities calculated that at the current rate of spending, it’ll run out around September 2027.
I’d previously placed the debt-ceiling showdown around then.
If this goes through, the bomb won’t be defused—it’ll be defused early.
The market isn’t pricing in the debt ceiling right now, so even if it passes, there won’t be an immediate rally.
But it would wipe out the tail risk for the second half of 2027.
Third, supplemental defense appropriations plus agricultural aid, to shore up his base for 2028.
He also has three things he can do himself: more executive orders, broad pardons to protect his allies, and filling vacancies in the executive branch.
And there’s one more thing that’s easiest to overlook: China.
In the two years after Obama lost both chambers, arms sales to Taiwan resumed, freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea began, the TPP brought in twelve countries, and antidumping, countervailing-duty, and Section 337 investigations hit record levels.
Taking a hard line on China is where the two parties overlap most.
The only differences are how far they go and when. This has nothing to do with party affiliation.
Historically, midterm elections are often followed by a one-to-two-week repricing period.
That repricing period is also a harvesting window.
A lame duck is lame in the legs.
Not in the pen, not in the military, not in that signing stamp.