By Richard A. Schulman
Vice-president Kamala Harris, the California progressive and unelected Democratic presidential nominee, will have to defend President Joe Biden’s legacy, especially in her capacity as border czar. It’s not a pretty legacy. Former President Donald Trump, for his part, will have to overcome an over-confident choice of running mate in Senator J.D. Vance, pit bull to the nation’s cat-women and childless. Trump would have an assured chance of winning if Vance were to resign as Trump’s veep candidate and be replaced by former Ambassador Nikki Haley.
American Pit Bull Terrier. Author: https://www.flickr.com/people/geoggirl/
Deterrence lost
During the Biden-Harris administration, US defense capabilities deteriorated relative to US foes. After Biden’s Afghanistan retreat, US deterrence visibly declined, both in Ukraine and the Mideast. The Biden-Harris Democrats continued former Democratic President Barack Obama’s policy of currying favor with Iran, despite the fact that it and its proxies were and are killing both Americans and US allies. The US Navy, which was able to protect worldwide sea lanes before Biden, now can’t protect even one or two Mideast sea lanes from a minor Iranian proxy, the Yemen-based Houthis. While the Democrats slept, China and Russia built superior missile and air defense systems.
Biden, as a deliberate matter of policy, allowed the southern US border to be overwhelmed with illegal immigrants. He gave Vice-President Harris a single responsibility: to do something about the border mess he himself had created. As Border Czar she did nothing but an occasional photo op.
Hostility to Constitution
Meanwhile her party has become hostile to a Constitution that doesn’t produce the outcomes Democrats want. They oppose limited government, support executive rule, seek to eliminate an independent judiciary, and to undermine traditional, secure voting. Democrats favor government censorship, are hostile to religion, and consider lawfare a valid use of government.
Progressives want to kill the 2017 tax cuts and expand taxes on corporations and the wealthy, allowing the government to appropriate private funds that would otherwise be productively invested. They burden taxpayers with ever-increasing federal debt and interest charges. They are hastening the nation toward bankruptcy and a collapse of the dollar.
Harris Dems’ inflationary Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)
Democrats passed, with no Republican support, the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and other scientifically indefensible “green” subsidies and expenditures, principal beneficiaries of which are Russia and China.
Rather than ending monetary instability, they support Keynesian, post-Keynesian, and Modern Monetary Theories of deficit expansion and inflation.
Trump’s MAGA Republicans
Do Trump’s Republicans do better? In defense matters, Trump has not committed to a badly needed US military buildup. He and his veep choice, J.D. Vance, are instead keen on exiting Ukraine to Vladimir Putin’s benefit and putting the rest of Eastern Europe, including the Baltic states, at risk. Trump has also refused to commit the US to the defense of Taiwan. The first is a big win for Russia’s revanchist dictator; the second could encourage China to start WWIII.
Trump pledges to close US borders to illegal immigrants (a plus) but without expanding legal immigration, maybe even contracting it (a negative). He promises to expel all illegal immigrants. This, Congress is unlikely to approve and is probably economically and humanely unworkable, especially for those who came here before the Biden administration.
Good judicial appointments
Trump can’t be depended on to significantly reduce the size of government. He does credibly promise to reduce the power of some regulatory agencies but not Lisa Khan’s FTC, so cherished by his running mate, J.D. Vance. Trump’s appointment of conservative justices in his first administration, however, was an excellent contribution to limited government. Trump is also likely to continue appointing originalist justices and protecting the judiciary from Democratic attempts to destroy its constitutional independence.
Continued budget busting and pile-up of national debts is likely to continue under a second Trump administration, however, just as in the first.
A new Tariff of Abominations
Trump’s proposal for a 60% tariff on Chinese imports and 10% tariffs on all other imports, including from allies, will be much more damaging than Biden’s protectionism. Trump’s tariffs will be a tax on the American consumer. They will provoke trade wars with allies and inflation at home. They will hurt low-income Americans the most and severely damage US foreign policy. Trump doesn’t seem to have learned any more economics since he ludicrously claimed during his first administration that Mexico will pay for the wall and that China would pay for the tariffs on its exports to the US.
Importantly, however, Trump can be depended on, assuming he can muster congressional majorities, to kill the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and other scientifically unfounded “green” subsidies and expenditures. That would be a huge victory for the US and a blow to the IRA’s main beneficiaries, China (wind, solar, and EVs) and Russia (oil).
Trump did once try to place on the Federal Reserve Board an independent-minded monetary expert, Judy Skelton. Establishment economists and Senate Democrats blocked her appointment. Trump, however, is likely no more partial to an independent Fed than Biden.
Alongside the defects, two key virtues
In sum, Trump must be reckoned a partial progressive regarding (1) his poor or undefined national defense commitments; (2) his all-out protectionism; (3) his limited interest in reducing a bloated US fisc, especially if it involves touching Social Security and Medicare; and (4) his likelihood of producing inflation and continued deficits. That said, he does have two major virtues over the left-progressive candidates the Democrats are most likely to choose: (1) his opposition to the IRA and the rest of the green agenda and (2) his record of appointing jurists who follow the law rather than seeking favored outcomes regardless of the law.
Beyond the November election, however, the US will need better candidates and a better party than the present Trumpian one. Americans must replant in US soil a classical liberal third party like the ones that the Founders, Lincoln, Coolidge, and Reagan governed by. That will either be a revived Republican Party or a new party altogether.
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