Voters in November were faced with a simple question: Are you better off now than you were four years ago? The answer was a resounding “NO.” Clearly, despite the drama, the policy successes of the first Trump administration still resonate strongly with Americans. Indeed, Trump’s first term boasts a remarkable record: economic vibrancy, American strength on the international stage, border security, and protections for family, religion and individual liberty.
Building on this foundation is the best path toward restoring American security and prosperity. However, the 2.0 version of President-elect Donald Trump displays a worrisome willingness to diverge from the time-proven conservative principles that marked his first term.
The 2.0 version of President-elect Donald Trump displays a worrisome willingness to diverge from the time-proven conservative principles that marked his first term.
Today’s GOP is being courted by a populist ideology more akin to that of Bernie Sanders than Ronald Reagan — predicated on protectionism, isolationism, government intervention to provide circumstantial appeasement, embrace of union bosses and an abandonment of the pro-life cause. If the voters are indicating they were better off four years ago, it seems counterintuitive to walk away from the successful strategies of Trump’s first term.
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There are, to be sure, reasons for excitement among conservatives as Trump retakes the White House. Chief among them are economic revival and border security. These were the most important issues for voters in the 2024 election, and Trump’s schema for addressing them is drastically different from the Biden-Harris disaster of the last four years.
Under the previous administration, prices rose more than 22% overall and real wages fell by 1.3%. Kamala Harris’ campaign promises of socialist-style price controls and nonsense claims about “price gouging” clearly did not restore voter confidence. Additionally, in a study produced for the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, Casey Mulligan, former chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers, showed Biden’s overbearing regulations cost American households around $10,000 each. The Biden administration’s spending has been so reckless that the Congressional Budget Office now estimates the federal debt will be $7.2 trillion higher by 2031 than its projections from four years ago.
American voters believe Trump will be more effective in extinguishing inflation and protecting them from higher taxes. One of the clearest and simplest steps Trump and Congress should take to stimulate economic growth is to extend the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TJCA). A hallmark of the Trump-Pence administration, the TCJA created a revenue boom that massively outperformed CBO projections, despite a global pandemic. The tax cuts also gave Americans more of their hard-earned wages back, increasing real median household income by more than $6,000 over two years. Small businesses were freed from the shackles of overregulation, and the reduction in the corporate tax rate allowed American businesses to be globally competitive.
Economic advancement can also come through unleashing American energy, a cause which Trump campaigned on vociferously. The Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act has been a categorical disaster. Not only has it crippled innovation and distorted markets with haphazard subsidies, but it has also cost $1.2 trillion more than its supporters originally claimed. Supplanting the IRA with domestic energy production will bolster the labor market and provoke a much-needed uptick in domestic manufacturing.
To address voters’ concerns about the southern border, Trump should resume his first-term policies to stop the uncontrolled influx of drugs and crime into the United States. Weapons, fentanyl and humans are being trafficked over the southern border at soaring rates. The new administration should move swiftly to eliminate Biden’s disastrous “catch and release” policies, finally put an end to sanctuary cities by declaring them ineligible for federal grants, and mobilize immigration enforcement to protect American citizens from migrant violence.
American voters believe Trump will be more effective in extinguishing inflation and protecting them from higher taxes.
Measures like these are resonant of Trump 1.0. They are continuations of proven success, and they harken back to the prosperity and safety the American electorate is seeking. Concern arises in the realms where Trump plans to diverge from this track record. Voters may find that Trump 2.0 renounces much of what they remembered from four years ago.
National security was one of the strongest contrasts to the Biden-Harris record. Unfortunately, Trump’s transition has featured alarming appeasement of Chinese causes. Trump joined the Biden administration in opposing a merger of U.S. Steel at the behest of union bosses, thus jeopardizing thousands of blue-collar jobs, an agreement that would have made American manufacturing much more globally competitive and provided steel manufacturing parity against our communist foe. Moreover, Trump has performed a full about-face in his approach to TikTok, switching from rightly acknowledging it as a national security threat to advocating the Supreme Court overturn the law of the land. While Trump’s domestic economic program has much to commend, his trade agenda is deeply troubling. The undeniable benefits of extending the TCJA would be nullified by his proposed global unilateral tariffs, which would make basic consumer goods, like groceries and school supplies, immensely more expensive. The guiding principles for U.S. trade policy should be ensuring fair competition, open markets and a level playing field, not inflicting real economic pain on American citizens for the sake of appeasing arbitrarily chosen industries. The most striking example, however, of the GOP’s wandering off course is the disavowal of the pro-life movement. Trump’s approach to abortion is now marred by total apathy; the Dobbs decision is being leveraged as an excuse to sit idly while hundreds of thousands of babies conceived in blue states never survive the abortion industry. Trump’s nominee for the head of Health and Human Services, outspoken abortion advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has a careerlong opposition to the pro-life cause. Yet, Senate Republicans seem poised to reject the unborn for the sake of party obedience. If Trump does not course-correct and return to the pro-life resolutions of his first term, the pro-abortion vestiges of the Biden-Harris administration will endure. Governmental interference in market activity is historically a trait of the left. Sadly, Trump seems open to incorporating it into his second term. Ultimately, Trump has the map to success from his first administration. Americans expressed their frustration with the ridiculous excesses of the Biden-Harris regime, and Trump’s first stint in the White House stands out clearly as the preferred alternative. Should he choose to ditch this winning record and dive into a populist abyss, it is possible that much of the damage inflicted by the Biden-Harris administration will remain unresolved; or, in some cases, be made worse.
Marc Short
Marc Short served as Chief of Staff to Vice President Mike Pence and as Assistant to the President and Director of Legislative Affairs at the White House for President Donald J. Trump. As the legislative affairs director, he worked to successfully pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and shepherd through the nomination of hundreds of nominees, including Justice Neil Gorsuch. 
