President Nixon successfully negotiated a ceasefire with North Vietnam in 1973. His foreign policy initiatives were largely successful: his groundbreaking visit to the People's Republic of China in 1972 opened diplomatic relations between the two nations, and he initiated détente and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union.

On the domestic front, he implemented sweeping environmental reforms, including the Clean Air Act and creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the desegregation of schools in the deep South. He was reelected by a landslide in 1972. In the face of likely impeachment for his role in the Watergate scandal, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974.