Trumpmaganomics

Pictured: President-elect Donald Trump rings the opening bell on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange on December 12, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The new economic policies of President-elect Donald J. Trump promise to include his campaign pledge to "Make America Great Again." Just a few months ago, commentators were assessing that the Biden administration's greatest ambition was "managing America's decline." What a difference a day makes: November 5, 2024. Trump, a businessman, appears to have a good grasp of most domestic and foreign policy issues that greet him at the stable door. He has already been overflowing with ideas -- such as refusing to allow a hostile Communist China to control the Panama Canal, as it presently does; and aligning more closely with Greenland and Canada to provide the northern hemisphere a stronger foothold to safeguard its security and prosperity and that of the Free World.

In securing America's financial future, Trump's maganomic policies appear to turn on three points:

• Making American not just energy independent again, but energy dominant. Making use of the "liquid gold" America has under the ground would not only enable Americans to buy just about everything at a lower cost than, as now, unnecessarily relying on expensive imported oil for manufacturing and for transporting goods and oneself. Using American energy could at the same time undercut the price of oil exported by America's adversaries, such as Russia, Venezuela and Iran, and make them less able to conduct wars and other mischief.
• Offering generous tax and other incentives, and removing obsolete regulations, to ignite the economy's "animal spirits" so that more companies would relocate to America. Once again, "Made in America" would become the hallmark of excellence, affordability and abundance. What other country protects its businesses, workers and investments more comprehensively than the United States? The country is not just a haven for jobs and productivity, but also ensures that America will no longer naively misplace its trust in countries that intend to replace the current world order and, at whim, potentially deprive Americans of medicine, computer chips, and other necessities.
• Lowering taxes for everyone while trimming excess fat from unwarranted expenses. This plan does not of course mean depriving the less fortunate of their safety net or demolishing social security. What the plan does mean is that Americans will be able to keep more of their hard-earned money to decide themselves how they would prefer to spend it. At least US citizens would know that the taxes thy are compelled to pay would fund projects they actually want or need, instead of vaporizing for "shrimp on treadmills," "hamster fights" or more than $1trillion each year – greater than the entire proposed US defense budget of $849.8 billion -- just to pay interest on the more than $36 trillion national debt. The US government, according to CNBC, each year wastes more than $247 billion, adding that "The problems mainly stem from the way our government tries to solve an issue, according to critics," and quoting Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste:

  "In the private sector, if somebody is doing something, they see what they're trying to do or sell and then determine how to do it and how much it will cost... In the federal government, everything is 'Go spend more money' and if that doesn't work, it's 'Go spend more money.'"

A fourth point, potentially the next great breakthrough that would further revolutionize how we all live, is of clean energy produced by nuclear fusion. It is already being developed in China, and in the US by entrepreneurs such as Sam Altman and Elon Musk. The sun "produces energy through nuclear fusion by fusing hydrogen nuclei into helium, releasing vast amounts of energy. In the core of the Sun, where temperatures reach around 15 million degrees Celsius, nuclear fusion occurs." On Earth, nuclear fusion, environmentally safe, is produced in nuclear reactors or tokamaks, at temperatures of more than 100 million degrees Celsius. Small reactors, when fully developed, will be able to provide clean, inexhaustible energy for electric vehicles and nearly all energy uses:

"If appropriately utilised, nuclear fusion energy is the answer to the world's power crisis problem. It is clean and produces a minimal amount of nuclear waste as compared to fission reactions. In addition, the fuel for fusion, Deuterium, and Tritium, are also readily available in nature. Thus, scientists are hopeful that fusion will be a viable alternative power source in the coming centuries."

It is important, through private development or through public-private partnerships with the US government, not to let Communist China develop this critical sector ahead of the US.

The secret ingredient of Trumpmaganomics, it appears, is one word: growth. Instead of trying to decide how best to slice a finite pie among 320 million people, why not make the pie bigger? That way, everyone can have a bigger slice of it. Growth provide an incentive for everyone to make a pie or invest in a pie: instead of being punished for success by taxes, you can be rewarded with the great American Dream. The "golden goose" not only enables you to keep most of what you earn, but brings countess others to the table by creating jobs. If you are smart, you will offer a generous profit-sharing plan to everyone with whom you work. That way, they too have a stake in assuring the company's success.

It is really not that complicated – unless one wants it to be. Capitalism may not perfect – there will probably always be "inequality." With growth, however, there is the high probability that vastly more people will end up on the affluent side than on the destitute one. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, people in Stalinist Russia could see that even the poorest Americans had a car! Capitalism, reportedly, has pulled more people out of poverty than any other system (here, here, here and here). Give Trumpmaganomics a chance. The next millionaire or billionaire might even be you.

Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.