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In my latest for @AmerCompass & @amconmag I review Trump's policy record and issue a warning to conservatives: beware embracing or disavowing the Trumpian program wholesale.
What was the Trump program exactly? Let's take a closer look... /1 http://americancompass.org/essays/the-potpourri-presidency
What was the Trump program exactly? Let's take a closer look... /1 http://americancompass.org/essays/the-potpourri-presidency
The Trump track record was marked by conflict and contradiction in some domains, but real progress in others. Broadly speaking, the administration pursued 4 different agendas:
Promoting Workers
Supporting Producers
Regulating Wisely
Recycling Playbooks
/2
Promoting WorkersSupporting ProducersRegulating WiselyRecycling Playbooks/2
The Trump administration showed a clear and consistent commitment to policy reforms that advanced the prospects of less-skilled American workers in the labor market. In particular, it ramped up federal workforce development efforts and expanded apprenticeship offerings. /3
Through immigration policy, the administration also sought to boost the prospects of less-skilled American workers by reducing foreign workers’ access to the labor market and curbing employer abuses of visa programs. /4
The Trump administration also sought to help American firms who could provide those jobs, pursuing policies aimed at deterring unfair foreign competition and boosting domestic investment and innovation.Nowhere was this focus more evident than in Trump's trade policy. /5
While Trump did take some steps to restore critical supply chains and support R&D in frontier technologies, the actions were, in hindsight, half-measures that moved in the right direction but didn't make up enough ground. /6
Deregulation has been standard GOP fare, but Trump took a nuanced approach. In some areas, he pursued an aggressive deregulatory agenda. Environmental regulation is a particularly illustrative example. /7
But more often, Trump sought to slow the pace of new regs, streamline the process in existing regs, or emphasize different types of rules. Consider health care, where the admin issued new regulations aimed at lowering prices and increasing transparency. /8
Many of the Trump admin’s biggest policy misses seemed to draw upon a satirical version of the GOP playbook, siding uncritically with “the market” or “choice” or “smaller gov't” regardless of outcome. The admin's approach to financial markets stands out in this regard. /9
... As do the Trump budgets' proposed cuts to safety-net programs. /10
In hindsight, the Trump agenda was shaped by underlying paradoxes: a collision of good ideas, inadequate personnel, and tone-deaf political judgment produced good policies in some cases, bad ones in others, but rarely a coherent strategy or meaningful inflection point. /END
Read the full "What Happened" to better understand the forces that shaped the Trump agenda and its outcomes, featuring essays by @rachelbovard on personnel, @JuliusKrein on ideology, and @oren_cass on the economy. https://americancompass.org/collections/what-happened/
And read my essay @amconmag, too: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-potpourri-presidency/
