What is Terminal Impact in debate?

A terminal impact is where the argument stops. Instead of "GDP falls," it’s what falling GDP does to people: unemployment, poverty, health outcomes. Terminalizing means following the chain to that endpoint. Two arguments with identical intermediate claims can land very differently depending on how they’re terminalized, because judges weigh people, not percentages. In practice, terminalize every contention when you write the case, and do it again in summary when you weigh.