The Washington Examiner reports that President Joe Biden, after months of unsuccessfully trying to sell voters on the term “Bidenomics,” has largely abandoned that effort and has instead decided to attack “MAGAnomics.”
We know what Reaganomics was. We generally know what Obamanomics was. We even have a pretty good idea what Bidenomics is. But what is MAGAnomics?
Here is how the Ronald Reagan Foundation explains Reaganomics: “Cut taxes, get control of government spending, and get the government out of the way so that the entrepreneurial spirit of the American people could be unleashed. Despite skeptics labeling his plan as ‘Reaganomics,’ President Reagan remained resolute, recognizing that empowering individuals with financial resources and investment incentives would lead to job creation, inflation control, and reduced interest rates.”
Bidenomics—which is basically Obamanomics on meth—takes the exact opposite approach: Increase taxes, vastly expand government spending, and put the government in the way of entrepreneurs in an effort to push the economy in the direction progressives think it should be going.
MAGAnomics is much harder to pin down.
That’s because both Reaganomics and Bidenomics—like Obamanomics, and for that matter, Xinomics—are guided by certain fundamental beliefs about individuals, economics and the role government can and should play in business, the economy and our lives.
Donald Trump, who is the only standard for MAGAnomics, really has no such fundamental principles other than what he calls “America First.” His various proposals seem to be guided mostly by gut-level instinct or whatever notion he thinks will play well with his populist base.
While he supported the Republican tax cut proposal in 2017, he also vastly increased federal spending. And apparently plans to do so again if elected president.
Republicans have been looking for ways to get a handle on entitlement spending, especially welfare, Medicare and Social Security. It was Reagan, after all, who signed the last major Social Security reform legislation in 1983. But Trump wants to take Medicare and Social Security off the table.
Reagan—and generations of free-market conservatives both before and after him—generally supported free trade. Trump has called himself “Tariff Man,” and has promised to impose a slew of new tariffs (which are taxes) if elected.
Ironically, his last tariff exploits not only didn’t “drain the swamp,” but made Washington swampier, because thousands of companies hired lobbyists and poured money into the system to persuade bureaucrats to exempt them from the Trump tariffs and/or to impose tariffs on their competitors.
Conservatives have long wanted to get the government out of education. Trump has proposed creating a free, online university, paid for by the government taxing university endowment funds.
The point is that MAGAnoics is not based on any consistent or coherent set of principles or beliefs, past or present. That means any policy could become part of MAGAnomics if, and only if, Trump wants it.
December 5, 2023