Well, there are a lot of factors here that I expect would be factors, both increasing and decreasing what he does over the course of the term.

• Right now, the Republican Party has a trifecta, and thus even GOP legislators who are not very happy with aspects of Trump are going to be very loathe to have fights with Trump, because this trifecta lets it pass lots of legislation that the Democrats would otherwise block; getting in a fight with Trump could mess that up. The incentives there will decline over the course of the term, since they’ll have increasingly gotten through the legislation that they want; Trump being happy becomes less-important.

• A major reason for Trump doing well in the presidential election was public unhappiness with inflation under Biden. Major global tariffs would also tend to drive up prices, and Republican legislators are not going to be happy about that, even aside from recession issues. I’ve seen both Republican and Democratic legislators commenting on the fact that this would probably be politically-damaging to the Republican Party; that’s probably a source of pushback.

• One threat that Trump has frequently made is to endorse a primary election competitor to a Republican legislator who doesn’t get along with them. This meaning something is contingent on Trump’s endorsement bearing weight, which requires sufficiently-high public approval of Trump in the district. If Trump takes unpopular actions, that endorsement matters less.

• Just because you don’t see a lot of Republican legislators arguing with Trump doesn’t mean that it’s not happening, quietly. The Republican Party has good political reasons to keep disagreements behind closed doors. Mike Johnson has made a number of statements about how he has had an extremely difficult job dealing with people getting along; he’s an interface between the House and the White House.

• What happens at midterms is going to be, I think, consequential. The Republican Party has good political reasons not to jam sticks in Trump’s wheels as long as he at least keeps things within bounds, and certainly not to do so publicly. The Democratic Party has good political reasons to constantly visibly jam sticks in Trump’s wheels. If the Democrats take the House in 2026, they have a lot of room to do things like initiate inquiries and demand information that they just don’t have right now.

• Late in the term, Trump is going to care less about popularity; that’s why Presidents tend to do politically-controversial pardons right at the end. So he might be willing to take some particularly controversial actions at the end.

• Late in the term, Trump is going to have a harder time making changes that last, because it’ll be easier to just reverse them or slow them from having effect. Trump laying off people at the beginning of his term is hard to reverse; said laid-off people probably aren’t going to just stick around for four years hoping to get their job back. If he does so three months before leaving office and his successor doesn’t like that, they’re probably largely just going to be rehired. So he has a hard time making lasting actions at the end.

• Trump’s tariff policy is based on a very weak legal structure. Normally Congress sets tariff policy, not the President, but Congress passed a law some decades back that permits the President to impose tariffs in emergencies. Trump proceeded to declare that fentanyl was an emergency and then started declaring that he’d throw up tariffs left and right. Whether or not the tariffs on even Mexico have any real basis in addressing fentanyl is questionable. Tariffs on Canada on fentanyl grounds are extremely questionable, as very little fentanyl enters the US from Canada, and tariffs on most of the world are even more decoupled from that. There’s a pretty strong argument that he’s got no legal authority there, and the only reason that he’s able to do it is because Congress hasn’t taken action against it. Congress can, if it wants, simply terminate the emergency he declared, at which point his power also evaporates (and has some more-forceful options as well, like taking issue at the Supreme Court with whether-or-not his use of that power is actually in line with even the declared emergency, or, if a supermajority in both the House and Senate want, simply entirely terminating the Presidential authority to impose tariffs at all, and then override a Presidential veto). The Senate already had a bipartisan bill pass about terminating the emergency over the Canada tariffs; last I looked, it was expected to fail in the House — that is, this is a public statement rather than aiming to force an end — but it’s a shot across the bow where the Senate is taking issue with some of his tariff policy. Trump’s ability to take action on tariffs is deeply dependent upon Congress choosing not to involve itself. I’m skeptical that Congress will accept global tariffs, even if Trump wants them, and Congress has pretty straightforward routes to avoid them. My guess is that Congress has probably communicated some things about what it’ll actually accept to Trump.

• Speaking even more-broadly, if it actually comes to some kind of real arm wrestling…the President has very extensive direct control over a large organization with millions of people, the Executive Branch. That’s what makes him powerful. But the reason that he has virtually all of that power is because Congress gave it to him in the past (“we authorize the President to have this much money to create a department and then tell it what to do”). Congress can take it away, and with a supermajority in each house, override Trump’s veto of such legislation. Even in areas where the Constitution very explicitly gives a power to the President, like commanding the military, Congress has written legislation to limit ways in which he can act, like the War Powers Resolution:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution

  The War Powers Resolution requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, with a further 30-day withdrawal period, without congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United States. The resolution was passed by two-thirds each of the House and Senate, overriding the veto of President Richard Nixon.

  During Trump’s first term, Congress passed legislation that disallowed the President from removing sanctions on Russia without going back to Congress and getting an okay.

  Hypothetically, I imagine that Congress could probably impose a lot of restrictions on Trump, or even shift direct authority over Executive Branch departments to itself; it has, in the past, created a small amount of the bureaucracy that reports directly to Congress.

  My guess is that the Republican Party does not want to see any kind of an arm-wrestling scenario like that, though, as it’d be really politically bad. It’d instead warn behind closed doors that it might be willing to do that, and ward off things reaching that point. Hell, the Democratic Party doesn’t want things reaching that kind of point either. But my point is, Trump’s got real constraints on what he can do. He cannot just go ignore Congress.

That’s mostly talking about constraints on Trump’s power. So, there’s a broader question here: will Trump continue to say outrageous things? My guess is almost certainly yes. He’s shown no interest in stopping doing so for either of his terms, and kept doing so right through his first term, so I doubt that that’s going to go anywhere.

EDIT: Looking at the executive orders and correcting an error above, the emergency that Trump declared to justify the global tariffs was a separate emergency from the one that he declared over fentanyl.