The New Deal is the title that President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave to a sequence of programs and promises he initiated between 1933 and 1938 with the goal of giving relief, reform, and recovery to the people and economy of the United States during the Great Depression. Dozens of alphabet agencies (so named because of their acronyms, as with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)), were created as a result of the New Deal. Historians distinguish between the "First New Deal" of 1933, which had aimed at short-term recovery programs for all groups in society, and the "Second New Deal" (1935–36), which aimed at a more radical redistribution of power away from big business and toward coal workers, farmers, and consumers. Historian William Leuchtenburg concluded in 1963 that the Second New Deal was designed not to destroy capitalism but to "discipline business" and "bolster unionization, pension the elderly...give relief to the needy, and extend a hand to the forgotten man." It was made for people to get jobs again because of the stock market crash.

Opponents of the New Deal, complaining of the cost and increase in federal power, ended its expansion by 1937 and abolished many of its programs by 1943. The Supreme Court ruled several programs unconstitutional (some parts of them were however soon replaced, with the exception of the National Recovery Administration). There are several New Deal programs still in operation, some of which still exist under their original names, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The largest programs still in existence today are the Social Security System and SEC - the primary regulator of publicly traded U.S. firms.

The New Deal represented a significant shift in political and domestic policy in the U.S., with its more lasting changes being increased government control over the economy and money supply; intervention to control prices and agricultural production; the beginning of the federal welfare state; and the rise of trade unions. The success and effects of the New Deal still remain a source of controversy and debate amongst economists and historians. Historian David Kennedy commented in 1973 that "debate about the New Deal's historical significance, its ideological identity, and its political, social, and economic consequences has ground on for more than half a century. Roosevelt's reforms have become an unavoidable touchstone of American political argument, a talisman invoked by all parties to legitimate or condemn as the occasion requires, an emblem and barometer of American attitudes towards government itself."

In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide. The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs, work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal programs reminded them of alphabet soup.

By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and social affairs of the nation.