On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump promised lower taxes, lower prices and a stronger economy in his second term.

On Day One of his second term, Trump signed a flurry of executive orders — including a regulatory freeze pending an administration review and a directive to members of his administration to assess trade relationships with Canada and China and Mexico — to try and move some of his goals forward. But delivering on those and other promises will take additional steps, and in many cases, the support of Congress. 

Here are five ways a second Trump administration could impact your finances.

The White House did not immediately respond to requests from CNBC for comment.

One wildcard is tariffs. There are a range of views on how Trump will use tariffs and the impact those tariffs will have on prices. Tariffs are paid by businesses buying the goods and some of the cost is typically passed to consumers. 

During the campaign, Trump promised a 10% across-the-board tariff on all imports, a 25% tariff on all goods from Mexico and Canada and a tariff of up to 60% on products from China. Trump’s Day One order to assess trade relationships puts an April 30 deadline on those reviews.

“We view Trump’s decision against announcing new tariffs on his first day in office as evidence of the ongoing internal debate over how best to implement the duties, not as a sign of plans to significantly scale back or withdraw his campaign pledges to impose new duties on foreign goods,” Beacon Policy Advisors wrote in a research note.

During his confirmation hearing last week, Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary Scott Bessent told lawmakers to think about tariffs in three ways: as a remedy for unfair trade practices, a revenue raiser and a negotiating tool. He pushed back on Democrats who said tariffs will mean higher prices for consumers.

“China, which is trying to export their way out of their current economic malaise, will continue cutting prices to maintain market share,” Bessent said. 

Unless Congress takes action, trillions of tax breaks are scheduled to expire at the end of the year, including lower tax brackets. More than 60% of taxpayers could see higher taxes in 2026 without extensions of provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or TCJA, according to the Tax Foundation.

Extending those provisions is a heavy lift amid concerns over ballooning federal debt. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal budget deficit is expected to rise to $1.9 trillion this year, adding more onto the $36.2 trillion in outstanding debt.

TCJA provisions will cost an estimated $4 trillion dollars over the next 10 years, according to a budget model by Penn Wharton. Trump also promised to eliminate taxes on tips and Social Security, which would drive the price tag exponentially higher. That puts a lot up for negotiation as lawmakers debate spending and taxes this year. 

“Fiscal pressures are going to weigh harder on the debate than they did the first time around,” Erica York, a senior economist and research director at the Tax Foundation, said at CNBC’s Financial Advisor Summit in December.

Experts predict one of the key battles will be over the state and local tax deduction, also known as SALT.  Under current law those deductions are now capped at $10,000. High-tax states like California, New York and New Jersey all have top tax rates above 10%, so changes there would be meaningful for many taxpayers who itemize deductions. Putting that cap in place freed up an estimated $100 billion a year in the federal budget, helping offset other cuts. 

The maximum child tax credit was also doubled under the TCJA, from $1,000 to $2,000. On the campaign trail, Vice President JD Vance said he wants to increase the credit to $5,000. Trump has said he supports the credit, but has not specified an amount. Both are costly in budget terms. 

To keep Trump’s campaign promise to protect Social Security and Medicare, cuts to other health care programs become a way to fund tax proposals. House Republican lawmakers have identified $2.3 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, according to a document made public by Politico.

Subsidies to lower the cost of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act are also at risk. Without an extension by Congress, the subsides expire at end of 2025. Some individuals could see their premiums significantly increase. Because policy changes under the budget reconciliation process are limited, some analysts expect those subsidies to run out.

“It’s unfortunate because there are any number of compromises that could be crafted to better target the subsidies in exchange for extending them and stabilizing the market,” said Kim Monk, a partner at Capital Alpha Partners. 

People with credit card balances could benefit if Trump makes good on his proposal for a temporary 10% cap on credit card interest rates. Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said on Thursday he was drafting legislation to do exactly that. The catch: If enacted, experts say, it could also make it harder for people to get credit.

While analysts say a cap is unlikely, the attention to the issue puts it on the watch list.

“It means there is risk that Trump could intervene with credit card policy even if it is not a draconian interest rate cap,” said Jaret Seiberg, a financial policy analyst at TD Cowen.

With President Donald Trump back in the White House and Republicans in control of Congress, experts worry that a number of student loan programs may now be in jeopardy.

At-risk programs include the U.S. Department of Education’s new repayment option for borrowers — called the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan — and the Biden administration’s more lenient bankruptcy policy.

Meanwhile, House Budget Committee Republicans are floating proposals that would reduce or eliminate more student loan programs, including the Biden administration-era rules that made it easier for borrowers to get debt relief when they’re defrauded by their schools, Politico reported last week.

Consumer advocates are worried for borrowers based on Trump’s comments about student loan relief on the campaign trail. At one rally, he called the Biden administration’s debt forgiveness efforts “vile” and “not even legal.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

More than 40 million Americans carry federal student loans, and the outstanding debt exceeds $1.6 trillion, according to higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.

Here are the programs experts think are most at risk under the Trump administration.

Republican attorneys general in Kansas and Missouri, who led the legal challenges against SAVE, argued that President Joe Biden was essentially trying to find a roundabout way to forgive student debt after the Supreme Court blocked its sweeping debt cancellation plan in June 2023. Due to those legal actions, the plan has been on hold since last year.

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The plan is unlikely to survive a second Trump term, Kantrowitz said.

“There are several methods the Trump administration could use to kill the SAVE repayment plan,” he said. “They could abandon the defense of the repayment plan in the pending lawsuits.”

“They could issue new regulations to revoke the repayment plan,” or Congress could pass a law to do away with the plan, Kantrowitz added.

Currently, SAVE enrollees are excused from making payments while the plan is tied up in the courts. That reprieve may soon end, too, experts said.

For decades, student loan borrowers found it next to impossible to walk away from their federal student debt in bankruptcy. The Biden administration changed that.

In the fall of 2022, the Department of Education and the Department of Justice jointly released updated bankruptcy guidelines to make the bankruptcy process for student loan borrowers less arduous. The Biden administration’s updated policy treated student loans like other types of debt in bankruptcy court, experts said.

Trump is likely to rescind that guidance, Kantrowitz said.

“There may be more of a scorched earth approach to opposing all attempts to discharge federal student loans in bankruptcy,” he said.

However, Malissa Giles, a consumer bankruptcy attorney in Virginia, said she was hopeful that the guidance will remain in place.

Still, her concern is that many jurisdictions will have new assistant U.S. attorneys, “and we may see a shift in the approach based on changing politics and pressures of more Republican-aligned U.S. attorneys.”

For now, she said she was being more conservative in what student loan bankruptcy cases she took on.

Among the recent ideas floated by House Budget Committee Republicans is the partial repeal of the Biden administration’s Borrower Defense regulations, which made it easier for borrowers to get their debt excused when their school engaged in misconduct.

The GOP members are also reviewing reforms to Public Service Loan Forgiveness, including the possibility of “limiting eligibility for the program,” according to the document obtained by Politico.

They’re also considering eliminating the student loan interest deduction. That tax break allows qualifying borrowers to deduct up to $2,500 a year in interest paid on eligible private or federal education debt. Before the Covid pandemic, nearly 13 million taxpayers took advantage of the deduction, according to Kantrowitz.

For the 2025 season, you can use IRS Free File if your adjusted gross income, or AGI, was $84,000 or less in 2024.

You calculate AGI by subtracting certain tax breaks from your total, or gross income. The figure will be line 11 on the front page of your 2024 tax return.  

While there are guided Free File options for anyone who made $84,000 or less for 2024, each partner has different eligibility, depending on your age, income, state residency and military status.

Some partners also offer free state tax returns, Hugo said. You can browse all eight partners here.   

The program also offers Free Fillable Forms, which is the electronic version of a paper-filed return, for taxpayers at all income levels.  

There are eight software partners for 2024 filings and each must accept the most commonly used tax forms and schedules, Hugo explained.

Some of these include Schedule A for itemized deductions, Schedules B and D for investment earnings and Schedule C for self-employed filers, among others.  

The program opened on Jan. 10 and taxpayers can e-file returns prepared through Free File partners starting on Jan. 27, according to the IRS.  

During the 2024 season, Free File processed 2.9 million returns through May 11, a 7.3% jump compared to the same period in 2023, according to the IRS.

“This program continues to be a valuable resource for eligible individuals looking to file their taxes for free through this unique program,” Werfel said. 

Although the agency launched Direct File, its own free tax filing service, the IRS in May announced an extension of the Free File program through 2029.

“It’s kind of like a hidden gem in the forest,” said Hugo. “We just need more people to know about it.”