Donald Trump’s first 100 days have reshaped the American presidency and global relations with the United States. Time called them “among the most destabilizing in American history,” leaving “even many supporters stunned.”
Moments like the January 6 pardons or the number of deportations have had legal betting markets available on them. CFTC-regulated platforms like Kalshi and PredictIt and unregulated crypto platforms like Polymarket have offered prediction markets on Trump’s most controversial moments.
Here are 10 of the biggest Trump moments traders could bet on that sum up the first 100 days of Trump’s second term.
Renaming Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America
Price Highlights: The odds of Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico opened at 24% on Polymarket, but rose as he continued to embrace the idea in the days leading up to his inauguration.
Analysis: On Jan. 20, his first day back as president, Trump signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Initially lambasted as a joke, the Gulf of America got its own holiday on Feb. 9.
The executive order renamed the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Denali to Mount McKinley. As one of the executive orders he signed at a rally, this was an early culture war victory for the president and set the tone for his administration.
Pardoning the January 6 protesters
Price Highlights: In November, Kalshi traders gave Trump a 75-80% chance of pardoning “any January 6 protester.” The price steadily rose until he pardoned everyone facing charges related to the attack on the Capitol.
Analysis: During his Inauguration Day signing event, Trump pardoned every January 6 protester. On Jan. 6, 2021, protesters stormed the Capitol building in an effort to stop Congress from certifying the votes confirming Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
Trump falsely attributed his 2020 loss to fraud even as fellow Republicans condemned his role in stoking fears about election fraud leading up to the attack on the Capitol. As Meridith McGraw reports in her book Trump in Exile, casting doubt on the 2020 election results was among his most profitable campaign messages. The heroism of the January 6 protesters became a foundational myth for his base, and Trump made good on his campaign promise to pardon all those involved with the attack.
Annexing Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal
Price Highlights: Kalshi traders thought Trump had a roughly one-in-seven chance of controlling at least part of Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal during his second term. His odds have fallen to about 3% leading up to his 100th day in office.
Analysis: Even before Trump took office for the second time, he weighed the merits of annexing Greenland, making Canada the 51st state, and retaking control of the Panama Canal. They were all early signs of Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy.
Greenland is a holdover from his first term, when he became enamored with the sea routes and mineral deposits opening under the melting ice. The idea for Canada’s annexation grew out of Trump’s obsession with the trade deficit. Trump argued that if Canada “can’t surivve as a nation wihtout treating us unfairly in trade, then [Canada] should become a state.”
Finally, Trump took issue with increased fees American ships, like all other countries, experienced passing through the Panama Canal. Ricardo Hausmann at the Harvard Kennedy School argued that the U.S. isn’t being treated unfairly but “it’s that the U.S. is not being preferentially treated. I would argue that’s what Trump doesn’t like.”
Trump has not made meaningful progress on any of these issues. Greenland is pushing for independence from Denmark, and Canada’s conservative party’s fortunes flipped once anti-Trump and anti-American sentiment took a prominent role in the election.
Trump has celebrated the sale of two Panama Canal ports to a consortium run by U.S. investment firm BlackRock. However, the U.S. government still does not control any part of the canal.
Nominating controversial Cabinet members
Price Highlights: PredictIt’s Cabinet markets on Trump’s most controversial nominees forecasted confirmation votes by 50 to 54 senators. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s confirmation market, pictured above, was the closest. Vice President J.D. Vance had to break the Senate’s tie to confirm him.
Analysis: Several of Trump’s Cabinet nominees were among the most discussed figures in recent memory. They included Hegseth, whose multiple scandals with the messaging app Signal could lead to his departure shortly after the 100-day mark.
Tulsi Gabbard and Robert Kennedy, Jr. were two other close Senate votes. Gabbard’s lack of intelligence experience and previous citations of Russian state media sources concerned senators who had to vote whether to confirm her as Trump’s Director of National Intelligence. Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism, long-debunked claims about autism, and embrace of “alternative medicine” also concerned senators about his qualifications to become the secretary of Health and Human Services.
Other nominees, like Scott Bessent and Lori Chavez-DeRemer, received bipartisan votes. Treasury Secretary Bessent received 68 votes, and Chavez-DeRemer got 67. No one came close to Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s 99 votes, though. He was the only unanimous Cabinet secretary vote the Senate gave to a Trump nominee.
Trump’s mix of traditional Republicans and those well outside the comfort zone of many senators gave his Cabinet nominations the kind of high drama he covets in his media coverage.
Cutting federal spending with Elon Musk and DOGE
Price Highlights: Despite optimism that Musk could cut almost $300 billion in early February, Kalshi traders think government spending will only decrease by about $1 billion from Q4 2024 to Q4 2025.
Analysis: Trump campaigned on reducing the federal government’s size. He tasked Elon Musk to make job and budget cuts through the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
DOGE has claimed to have saved taxpayers $160 billion, well short of Musk’s initial goal of $1 trillion. However, the Partnership for Public Service estimates the cuts will cost taxpayers $135 billion due to rehires and lost productivity.
Whatever the amount Musk and DOGE cut from the federal budget, the initiative remains one of the most defining legacies of Trump’s first 100 days.
Releasing new JFK assassination files
Price Highlights: Polymarket’s odds rose from a 24% chance of new JFK files to a 94% chance four days after Trump took office. After a false alarm, JFK file odds didn’t rise to the 90s again until the release was announced on March 17.
Analysis: John Kennedy’s assassination was not the first presidential assassination, but it was the first one to be broadcast on video to millions of homes in real time. Kennedy’s assassination has been the subject of countless conspiracy theories, and Trump’s release of unredacted JFK files fed his narrative that he would restore trust and competence in government.
The new files didn’t overturn the official account of Kennedy’s assassination. Historian Edward Miller found some “interesting tidbits” about CIA operations, but he remains convinced that the Warren Report was the correct version of events: Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy.
Increasing American tariff rates by several orders of magnitude
Price Highlights: Kalshi’s odds of Trump enacting large tariffs in his first year rose from about 15% in October 2024 to a steady 80% near his 100th day. The market defines “large tariffs” as an average weighted tariff of at least 6% by Q4 2025.
Analysis: In 2024, the average U.S. tariff rate was 2.5%. Trump has increased that number to 14.5%.
Trump spent his first 100 days imposing and removing large tariffs from different countries. He announced 25% tariffs against Mexico and Canada, then delayed them during negotiations. He used the threats of 50% tariffs to force Colombia’s president to accept deportation flights. On April 9, his 104% tariffs on China went into effect, then he lowered tariffs on most other countries to 10% while raising China’s tariffs to 125%.
The uncertainty has led to recession fears and questions about how global supply chains should be restructured – or whether they should be at all if many tariffs can be reduced or removed after Trump leaves office.
Ramping up deportations, with and without due process
Price Highlights: Kalshi traders initially forecasted almost 540,000 deportations in Trump’s first year. The forecast peaked at 700,000 on Jan. 21, but have since fallen to about 340,000.
Analysis: One of Trump’s signature campaign promises was to reduce crossing at the border between the United States and Mexico. In Trump’s first seven days, Border Patrol agents had 60% fewer encounters with migrants at the southern border than Biden’s final seven days.
Deportation expectations started high, but initial deportation figures are lower than expected. Scripps found that near Trump’s 100-day mark, Trump’s first year of deportations was lower than Biden’s final year.
These lower figures are despite the hasty deportations Trump has made. He deported a man from Maryland, who was cleared by a 2019 court order to remain in the country. Despite conflicting reports about his ties to MS-13, even the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” his return.
Trump’s deportation figures may rise throughout his four years in office, but his initial aggressiveness hasn’t translated to a mass deportation program.
Fighting with Ukraine instead of Russia
Price Highlights: Polymarket’s odds of the United States recognizing Russian sovereignty over captured Ukrainian territory opened at even odds, then hovered between 20% and 40% until creeping back to near-even odds at the end of April.
Analysis: From the start of his second term, Trump has catered to Russian interests more than previous administrations. His first phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin excluded Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky from initial discussions about how to end the war in Ukraine. Trump infamously called Zelensky a dictator in an Oval Office meeting, even though Russia began the war, and Ukraine’s constitution prohibits elections under martial law.
However, the end of Trump’s first 100 days could see a pivot away from Russia. While Zelensky has continued courting Trump, Putin has found ways to stall a ceasefire and has already broken ceasefire deals. Putin declared a three-day ceasefire on April 28, but Trump wants a permanent ceasefire. Trump’s increasingly harsh rhetoric against Russia could mark a turning point in his attitude towards the Russian dictator.
Proposing to displace Gazans to build “the Riviera of the Middle East”
Price Highlights: Polymarket traders give the United States a 9% chance of taking over Gaza in 2025, down from a brief spike of 21%, when Trump reiterated a “plan” for the United States to take over Gaza.
Analysis: On Feb. 4, Trump announced the United States’ intention to take over Gaza by “relocating” the 2 million Palestinians who live there. Trump mused that Gaza could be rebuilt into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” On Feb. 25, Trump reposted an AI video that showed him and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunbathing in a futuristic version of Gaza branded “Trump Gaza.” Trump seemed increasingly serious about committing ground troops to Gaza to remove Palestinians from the land and rebuild the Gaza Strip himself.
Trump backed down from parts of his initial “plan” and has not taken additional action toward that end. Still, his remarks attracted swift condemnation from Palestinian leaders and European allies, who could experience a new migrant crisis if Trump displaced the Palestinians in Gaza. Even in his tumultuous first 100 days, this was among Trump’s most destabilizing proposals.
