Under the spell of Trumpian populism, the Republican Party has increasingly become hostile to fiscal responsibility and free markets.
The president’s signature policy, the use of tariffs, is not only a tax on American businesses and consumers but an invitation to cronyism and corruption. With President Donald Trump’s tariffs leaving open the possibility of carve-outs, it demands businesses engage with politicians to plead their case for a reprieve from arbitrary tax increases. This is not how our system should work.
Global trade has made Americans richer, and able to access more goods more cheaply than ever. And yet, Trump views trade as a zero sum game in which unnamed “globalists” rip-off America through some unknown and unarticulated process. Such conspiratorial and nonsensical thinking is an attack, pure and simple, on the free market.
Trump’s confused thinking about trade is what has prompted many of his own officials and many in his party to say the most bizarre things. This includes Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying that not only can Americans expect increased prices, but that “access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream.” Right, because it’s up to some bureaucrats and politicians to tell us to enjoy our higher prices.
It also includes the miraculous claim of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt that “Tariffs are a tax hike on foreign countries that, again, have been ripping us off. Tariffs are a tax cut for the American people, and the president is a staunch advocate of tax cuts.”
This confused thinking from the White House indicates that either Trump and his team don’t understand how anything works or they do but they are lying because they have so little respect for people cheering them on.
Sadly, few Republicans are standing up against this nonsense. Time magazine recently reported that Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has tried to encourage his colleagues to defend trade amid Trump’s economic protectionism.
“The public feels like free trade has sold us out,” Paul reportedly explained to his colleagues, “but Americans are richer because of it.”
Paul has yet to draw renewed ire from the president for his defense of free trade, but this seems like an inevitability.
This is what Rep. Thomas Massie, also from Kentucky, recently faced from the president after Massie opposed the recently enacted continuing resolution locking in Biden-era spending through September.
For all of the outcry about the minor trims to federal spending by the Elon Musk-led DOGE, Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress have remained committed to adding trillions to the national debt. Notably, the Trump-backed continuing resolution didn’t even lock in the supposed spending cuts identified by DOGE, another point raised by Massie.
In response, Trump attacked Massie, compared him to former Rep. Liz Cheney and called on Republicans to primary him in the most articulate way he could.
“HE SHOULD BE PRIMARIED, and I will lead the charge against him. He’s just another GRANDSTANDER, who’s too much trouble, and not worth the fight. He reminds me of Liz Chaney before her historic, record breaking fall (loss!),” he wrote on Truth Social.
“It feels just like 2020 …. When I was the only one to oppose the CARES Act,” Massie said. “The president threatened me …. Then what happened? The spending bill caused all this massive inflation that we see now.”
Alas, there are few Republicans willing to buck the president on these and many other issues. Though the GOP has long disappointed in actually backing these up, we’d like to someday see the GOP return to being a party of limited government, free markets and free trade. It is currently heading down the path of big government and protectionism. Is that what so-called conservatives really want?
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