With significant tariffs back in the news and the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill, advocates of free trade, free markets, and limited government continue to find Trump 2.0 quite a roller coaster ride. While the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement prioritizes economic growth through deregulation and lower taxes, it can also be antagonistic towards free markets and limited-government conservatism.
Recognizing that Trump’s electoral influence and success derive primarily from cultural support rather than economic support can help us make sense of his administration.
Many people (this author included) find themselves cheering the administration one day and criticizing it the next. Recognizing that Trump’s electoral influence and success derive primarily from cultural support rather than economic support can help us make sense of his administration. I have highlighted the economic contradiction between pro-growth policies of deregulation, low taxes, and cheap energy, with the anti-growth effect of tariffs. But examples could be multiplied.
Small government conservatives can cheer this administration’s pro-business agenda while being dismayed at the cronyism and the market distortions created by aggressive industrial policy choices. The tension can be seen in Trump’s approach to the Middle East, where he simultaneously lifted one set of restrictions on semiconductors and then imposed a different set of cronyist terms.
The tension can also be seen in how Trump has proposed “fast-tracking” regulatory approval for big investment projects in the U.S., making it easier to build and invest, supports economic growth, but granting preferential treatment raises questions of legitimacy, fairness, and corruption. Trump’s approach to tariffs further demonstrates a kind of inconsistency. On the one hand, his administration has pursued freer trade for U. S. exports. On the other hand, he wants to raise trade barriers to U. S. imports. Furthermore, his tactics eschew frameworks and rules in favor of ad hoc negotiations and bilateral deals.
Although most pro-market folks have thrown their lot in with Trump, he does not seem to be driven by their concerns as much as he is driven by the concerns, even grievances, of blue-collar union workers and similar swaths of Americans who feel like they are losing their country to woke cultural and social forces; or who feel like they are “losing” to foreign economic competition.
The issues energizing many activists on the right are not economic but social and cultural. As one commentator notes, “the postmodern Left went for MTV and the Boy Scouts, while the major D.C. think tanks on the Right went for issues too distant from the lives of young people, such as the deficit, taxation, and regulatory policy.” When traditional conservatives or libertarians fail to speak to those social issues clearly and forcefully, the activists gravitate towards those who do. And the political results are striking.
Besides Trump, a large and influential coterie of Republican officials has tacked towards collectivism because of its cultural and social appeal. This includes figures like JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and Josh Hawley speaking favorably of labor unions. It includes those same figures criticizing free trade. And it extends to their support for antitrust criteria focused on size or market concentration rather than on consumer welfare.
Capital gains rates seem less pressing than whether one’s daughter will have to compete with biological males.
Finally, this shift on the Right along social and cultural lines shows up in defending the status quo when it comes to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It shows up in a shocking endorsement of raising the national minimum wage by Senator Hawley. While classical liberals may strongly dislike these policy shifts, we ought to understand their appeal.
Somehow or other, the Alt-Right (which tends towards collectivism) has successfully positioned itself around some of these most hot-button and powerful issues that people care about. Capital gains rates seem less pressing than whether one’s daughter will have to compete with biological males. Comparative advantage seems abstract, while being passed over for promotions or college acceptance based on arbitrary and ideological DEI criteria feels deeply personal.
Yet the free society championed by conservatives and libertarians alike in the late 20th century means far more than greater efficiency. It is the surest way to promote human flourishing. As the Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek wrote when facing similar challenges in the 1960s: “We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage.”
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