Donald Trump, speaking to a raucous crowd in Arizona on Thursday, laid out some big economic plans. His plans are typically ambitious, encompassing the taxation-that-is-theft as well as interest rates, energy, and a host of other things.
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Of course, it’s easy to promise, and promising the voters to act on their behalf is how a politician gets elected. Donald Trump is anything but a typical politician, but this part he has down pat.
Here’s the thing: if former President Trump manages (we hope) to Grover Cleveland himself into a non-consecutive second term, he’ll need a Republican Congress to achieve a lot of these things.
For taxes: Marginal income tax rates, capital gains tax rates, and estate tax rates, all are set by statute. That means Congress has to act to lower tax rates, and to make lowered rates permanent – although nothing is ever really permanent in matters of this kind. This isn’t something Trump can do with an EO; he needs a friendly House and Senate.
Interest rates: While interest rates to some extent are always reacting to market pressures, the basic rate and the trends are due to the actions of the Federal Reserve. The President appoints the members of the Board of Governors but has relatively little influence on this independent quasi-government body. The best way to drive interest rates down is to enact policies that reduce inflation and increase economic growth, and there are many tools the executive has for that, but for others – like taxation – again, he needs Congress.
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Regulations: Now here the Executive Branch can pull some levers. Many of the various alphabet agencies – most of which are not authorized by the Constitution, but that’s another story – are under the direction of the Executive Branch. In my decades in regulated industries, medical devices, and biotech, I saw many times how a change in administration changed the regulatory agency’s (FDA, in my case) priorities and inspection/compliance strategies. Hopefully, a president dedicated to deregulation would be able to lay down the law to these agencies that so frequently overstep, and who are so frequently forgiven for it.
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Major reforms, major efforts, and major changes will require more than just the stroke of a pen on an executive order. To regain any direction in the ship of state, we need not only a Republican president but a Republican Congress. The Supreme Court is, for now, in as good a shape as we can expect – and we can hope with all our hearts that Kamala Harris never has the chance to appoint a Supreme Court Justice.
We’re already hoping for Donald Trump to win the election in November. Yes, there are Republicans who don’t care for Trump, and there are some who would have rather seen a different candidate win the primary. But the primary is over. Trump is our man. He has to win. We need to bend every effort to win, and not only that, to ensure that his electoral coattails are long and broad. Only then, with the White House, the House, and the Senate in the hands of people who believe in free-market economics and individual liberty, will a renewed President Trump have much chance of fixing any or all of the mess Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have left this abused republic in.
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The alternative to Donald Trump is, frankly, unthinkable.