Letter to Trump: make peace and rebuild America’s industrial base
This article first appeared on The American Mind, a publication of the Claremount Institute think tank, and is republished with permission.
Dear President Trump:
Congratulations on your November election victory. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have left you with a strategic disaster and a fragile economy, but you have put forward a program to keep the peace and restore economic growth. Here are some ideas that may help in your efforts, followed by more specific proposals:
- Inflation is closer to 8% than the official “3%” after figuring in higher interest costs to consumers. Biden started this inflation by running record budget deficits and the Federal Reserve made it worse by increasing the interest burden on consumers. You must educate the American public on this reality and get the right people in place to fix it.
- The federal budget deficit is 6.4% of GDP, “larger than any deficit in records going back to 1930 except the years around World War II, the 2008 financial crisis, and the pandemic,” according to the Tax Foundation. Federal interest costs have doubled and now cost as much as defense. Get people on the Fed board who understand your economic agenda.
- Our woke education system is a disaster and has betrayed working-class kids. We can’t fill skilled jobs in manufacturing because high school graduates lack basic math skills. In the short term, state community college systems and work-study apprenticeship programs can help. Create a federal-state initiative for public-private partnerships in manufacturing skills, and ask Governor Ron DeSantis to head it.
- Vice President-elect J D Vance offered a workable peace plan in September to end the Russo-Ukrainian war. Give him a big role in handling the
