In his speech to Congress on Tuesday night, President Trump presented America with a roadmap to prosperity. He managed to walk a tightrope on economic issues, simultaneously acknowledging the financial pain of families today while also delivering a hopeful message that “America is back” and on her way to a new golden age.
For four years, the White House and its media apparatchiks papered over the devastating effects of sharp rises in prices and interest rates. We were told to ignore our lying eyes and empty wallets, and to believe that Joseph R. Biden’s economy was nothing short of miraculous. The truth was just the opposite.
While the government spent, borrowed, and created money to boost various statistics like non-farm payrolls, gross domestic product, or equity prices, inflation ravaged family finances and the American dream of owning a home became unattainable. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, home ownership affordability hit a record low in Mr. Biden’s last month as president.
After four years of gaslighting, last night’s economic candor from Mr. Trump was refreshing, as he acknowledged the reality of the problems created by the radical left. Even better, though, was the fact that he laid out a plan to get America out of her economic doldrums, reinvigorate the middle class, and return to dominance on the world stage.
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To help end the current cost-of-living crisis, Mr. Trump is clearing the way for a surge in domestic energy production. While the Biden administration notoriously denied either permits or leases, while throwing up other regulatory red tape in the way of energy producers, Mr. Trump is fast-tracking new sources of reliable American energy.
Because energy is an input for every single product and service in the entire economy, reducing the cost of so ubiquitous an input will bring prices down everywhere, and increasing the supply of energy is exactly the right catalyst to reduce energy prices. That’s Econ 101.
But we forget that many products today are made directly from energy sources, like how natural gas is used to make synthetic fertilizer. By increasing natural gas production, Mr. Trump will reduce its price and bring down the price of fertilizer, which is one of the costly components in food production. Thus, ramping up American energy production will result in even lower prices for consumers.
But taxpayers need additional relief, having suffered the equivalent of nearly a $5 trillion tax hike from inflation. That’s why Mr. Trump has not only asked Congress to make the 2017 tax reform permanent, but to go even further and provide additional relief for all taxpayers, in all income brackets.
Along with this call for lower taxes, Mr. Trump also reiterated his pledge for less government spending. He highlighted many examples of how the Department of Government Efficiency under Elon Musk has already saved taxpayers billions of dollars. But he intends to go much further.
He called on Congress to cut spending enough so that the federal government would have a balanced budget for the first time in three decades. Since government spending is the ultimate cause of nearly all our economic ills today—like high prices and high interest rates—drastic reductions in government spending would be like putting the private economy into overdrive.
Additionally, Mr. Trump has pledged to cut burdensome regulations, slashing red tape to allow businesses legitimate room to thrive and employ more Americans. For any new regulation proposed, Mr. Trump promises to cut 10. That’s a refreshing change after the Biden administration cost the average family thousands of dollars in regulatory costs.
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Reducing taxes and regulations are part of the carrot-and-stick approach that Mr. Trump intends to use to bring production and jobs back to America. The stick is tariffs.
Mr. Trump recognizes that tariffs can accomplish many goals at once. They’re a bargaining chip, they raise revenue for the government, they shift some of the tax burden onto other nations, and they provide an incentive to make things in America and employ Americans.
Mr. Trump is masterfully wielding the American consumer’s purchasing power like a weapon on the world stage, making other nations reduce their own tariff and non-tariff barriers. If our markets are open to foreign producers, then their markets should be open to our exporters too—that’s truly free trade.
Additionally, Mr. Trump is forcing concessions from Mexico and Canada to stop the flow of deadly drugs like fentanyl into America. In that sense, it’s less of a trade war than a drug war.
While Democrats refused to stand or clap for such a roadmap to prosperity, including over $1 trillion of investment in America secured in less than two months, they cheered for billions of dollars wasted in the Ukraine on a forever war.
Nevertheless, Mr. Trump’s political capital may be sufficient to carry the day without any Democratic support, and that’s another reason to be hopeful about America’s second golden age.
This piece originally appeared in The Washington Times on March 5, 2025