As President Trump travels to Alaska to meet with Russia’s Putin tomorrow, Mr. Trump has the wind at his back.

Make no mistake about this: Right now, Mr. Trump is the most powerful head of state and political leader on the planet Earth.

Even people that don’t like him, if they have any brains at all, should be willing to concede this point.

In little more than half a year, Mr. Trump at home has passed an enormous piece of legislation with pro-growth tax cuts, lowered business regulations, reopened the fossil fuel spigots, closed the border, launched a worst of the worst deportation program, and refunded the defense budget.

With a master stroke he is restoring law and order in the nation’s capital. He’s ending the woke culture including DEI, antisemitism, ESG, and debanking.

Promises made, promises kept. 

But there’s more — much more.

Mr. Trump is completely reordering the broken world trading system with moderate tariff rates here at home, and forcing lower tariff rates abroad, market openings for our businesses, including an ambitious plan to attract direct private investment, and a sovereign wealth plan using trade surpluses from our unfair competitors to help America onshore and rebuild new American factories in various strategic areas throughout the economy.

Instead of a retaliation-based global trade war, the dealmaker-in-chief has with only one or two exceptions reordered world trade through peaceful agreements.

But then his presence on the world stage far outstrips even his trade dealmaking.

He obliterated Iran’s nuclear capabilities, he backed Israel to the hilt, he is creating an ever widening Abraham Accords system in the Middle East, and he’s brokered a number of smaller, but still strategic, peace deals.

One of his best peace deals is with NATO and the European Union, where he has come away with a 5 percent of GDP defense commitment, a huge trade deal, and the kind of friendly relations that a lot of folks never thought possible.

Now he’s going to sit down with Mr. Putin to hammer out a cease-fire in Ukraine, and who knows, perhaps even a peace deal with Russia.

Yet in typical Trump fashion, he has said out loud that if Mr. Putin is not serious, he will suffer severe consequences.

It’s the same carrot and stick Mr. Trump has successfully used in so many other spheres.

When the two of them sit down at the table at Anchorage, Alaska, tomorrow, they will not sit as equals.

Mr. Trump is walking into this summit as a man of peace, the peacemaker-in-chief. Mr. Putin comes in as the man responsible for this bloody, horrific war still dragging on. 

The framing is simple — Mr. Trump equals good, Mr. Putin equals war. And the whole world is behind Mr. Trump and against Mr. Putin.

This is a huge moment for Mr. Trump because the Russia-Ukraine war has, up to now, been his most vexing problem.

If Mr. Putin underestimates Mr. Trump, though, as so many politicians have, he will find himself and his country paying a high cost.

Not only is Mr. Trump the best known person on the planet, not only is he the most powerful person on the planet — he is, despite all of his critics, the most popular person on the planet.

And the combination of those three elements is why, one way or another, he’s going to succeed in solving this problem. Just as he has solved all the others.

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business Network.