As President Trump rolls out his economic program, there’s one question I haven’t seen asked much: What if it works?
Trump’s supporters are rooting for its success. His opponents, out of a mixture of envy and self-interest, hope it craters.
But what would actually happen if Trump achieves his aims?
The White House hasn’t released a single integrated document spelling out its economic plan. But based on the moves made so far, and comments from Trump’s top economic aides, the outlines of his goals are coming clear.
First, he’s looking to increase wages for working-class Americans, the core basis — though not, as we’ll see, the only one — for his tariff package.
Trump wants to encourage businesses to move manufacturing to the United States, and we have in fact seen quite a few announcements of major new investments since his tariff plans were unveiled.
More than 70 countries have already approached the White House to talk about mutual tariff-reduction deals, and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu zipped to Washington Monday to negotiate one in person.
Rolling back illegal immigration will also help boost working-class wages. People claim illegal aliens “do the jobs Americans won’t do,” but it’s more accurate to say they “do the jobs Americans won’t do at absurdly low wages.”
Progressives once appreciated this basic fact.
In 2008 Jared Bernstein, a longtime economic adviser to Joe Biden, wrote, “A surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people . . . to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need.”
Conversely, Bernstein explained, “One equally surefire way to short-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”
Years later, that’s exactly what the Biden administration chose to do.
The Congressional Budget Office projected last year that the Biden immigration surge would put downward pressure on wages for at least a decade into the future.
Trump’s immigration crackdown is meant to reverse that.
Trump also aims to make it easier to start, operate and expand businesses, and easier to hire workers (legal ones, that is), by easing up on federal regulations. That will boost employment and wages, as well as increase tax revenue.
And extending his 2017 tax cuts — as the Senate voted to do last week when it unlocked its budget “reconciliation” process — will also help working families.
Second, Trump is looking to reduce federal spending, deficits and the national debt.
In fact, his tariff proposals are already doing that — before they’ve even taken effect — by driving down interest rates on Treasury bonds.
The lower the interest rate, the smaller our debt payments, and the less in the way of tax increases or program cuts will be needed to bring the budget under control.
This is essential: The nation had been rushing headlong toward financial collapse.
Lower rates on Treasury bonds will also help tamp down inflation — which was spurred by the government’s reckless spending, first during the COVID pandemic and then under Biden.
That’s a huge boost to the finances of working families. So is the ongoing decline in mortgage rates, which accompanies the drop in Treasury interest rates.
Third, the president is choking off funding for the nation’s political, managerial, academic and media elites, even as he reduces their power and influence.
Elon Musk’s project has revealed just a slice of the various forms of grift and graft these groups have reaped, to the tune of billions — possibly trillions — over recent years.
Trump is ripping apart these insiders’ patronage networks, often involving the laundering of government funds through various think tanks, nonprofits and NGOs, built up over decades.
He’s putting their prestige and their phony-baloney jobs in danger, and their howls have only just begun.
Finally, Trump wants increased democratic accountability.
The decline of the “invisible government” of unelected bureaucrats, NGOs and the like will return power to elected officials, accountable to the voters — and Democrats hate that.
This weekend’s “Hands Off” protests were revealing: By telling the elected president to keep his “hands off” the government, they were really telling ordinary Americans to keep their hands off this bloated, unresponsive bureaucracy.
So what if Trump’s policies work?
We’ll see a fast-growing economy providing more jobs and better pay for Americans, especially working-class Americans.
The budget will move toward balance.
The “parasite class” of bureaucrats, academics, lobbyists and so on will have much less influence.
And the nation will stop pouring money into the pockets of unproductive hangers-on.
Which is why Trump’s critics aren’t afraid he will fail: They’re afraid that he’ll succeed.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
