Trump Again Defines National Priorities. By Edward Ring.
Candidate Trump in 2016 raised issues Michael Anton adroitly summarized in “The Flight 93 Election” as “open borders, lower wages, outsourcing, de-industrialization, trade giveaways, and endless, pointless, winless war.” Making these neglected issues the themes of his campaign, Trump beat the odds and won the election.
These are now among the most public and polarizing issues in America. They may be unresolved, but they are now central instead of peripheral.
This time, Trump’s 2024 campaign website includes … deregulation, opportunity zones, fair trade, reshoring of industry, energy dominance, secure borders, reclaiming national sovereignty, war on drug cartels, law and order, military readiness, parents’ rights, ending censorship, election integrity, and more. Anyone questioning the coherence of Trump’s policy agenda is invited to read this list, which is long on specifics. …
In what he characterized as America’s next “quantum leap” in progress, Trump calls for a national contest for urban developers to submit designs for new “Freedom Cities,” with 10 winning designs to be allocated federal land for their construction.
Trump then enumerates several related goals, including calling for American industry to win the race to commercialize airborne mobility, revitalization of economically depressed regions by investing in the manufacturing assets we’re going to need as we disconnect from China, and initiatives to lower the cost of a car and lower the cost of a single-family home. Trump also wants “baby bonuses” to encourage a new baby boom in America. Finally, Trump says he would challenge the state governors to make cities and towns more livable and build monuments to American heroes. …
Trump is on to something. Every one of his goals is a driver of productivity and innovation, starting with new cities. …
What’s intriguing about this proposal is that at its core it is a libertarian notion — turning public land back over to the private sector. … How these cities planned to manage their transportation, energy, food, water, and waste management challenges could differ greatly, and how successful each of them would be could then become an instructive model for urban revitalization all over America….
Trump’s commitment to deregulation — clearly demonstrated in his first term — perhaps along with new and bipartisan antitrust legislation, could be the key to a new era of competition as major manufacturers and developers adopt new technologies to create 21st-century versions of the Model T concept: cars and homes that families with a single wage earner can nonetheless afford. …
A population crash in the United States is no joke. Our current replacement rate of 1.6 births per woman means that for every 1 million Americans today, there will only be 440,000 great-grandchildren. Put another way, if the time span of one generation averages 25 years, based on current birth rates, two-thirds of America’s total population will be wiped out within the next century. …
Trump’s other new priorities also should make it easier for young Americans to choose to have more children: creating room for growth in new cities, creating new job opportunities by reshoring manufacturing jobs, stimulating new technologies and boosting productivity with air mobility, and by making homes and cars affordable. …
There is a shared excitement created by beautifying America’s urban spaces, by making cities and towns more livable, and by building monuments to American heroes. It makes people feel like they’re part of something big and worthwhile. It is a unifying force with a natural attractive power completely missing from the leftist obsession to make “inclusion” a mandate. …
Trump is not only raising the core issues facing Americans today that no other politician has the vision or courage to raise. This is also the side of Trump that nobody acknowledges outside of his own supporters. Trump has indulged in sometimes overwrought counterattacks in the ongoing and perpetual campaign of character assassination against him. But nonetheless, he quietly and tirelessly worked for solutions during his entire presidency …
Donald Trump has again defined the territory over which [the presidential] contest will be fought, and for that, once again, he has done us all a tremendous service.
