My last post, Donald Trump’s Mandate, stated that Trump’s basic mandate is to undo the Biden Administration’s biggest blunders: inflation, open southern border, and weak foreign policy.  The American people want a solution to these major problems.  That’s why Trump was elected, for all his personality flaws, instead of Harris.  How should he deal with these problems?  Consider:

• Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Trump has asked the two billionaire entrepreneurs, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to lead a massive effort to eliminate waste and inefficiency in the Federal Government.  The Manhattan Institute scholar, Brian Riedl, says that they should be able to trim several hundred billion dollars a year in such if they are serious about it.  This would make a serious dent in U.S. annual deficit spending now approaching $2 trillion. Shrinking our annual spending deficits is critical for a sustainable solution to the inflation problem.

  

• Closing the Southern Border. The first thing the Trump Administration will do is close the border to all new illegal entrants and require asylum applicants to remain in Mexico until their asylum request has been approved.  This will cut way down on attempts at illegal entry.  The other immediate action will be to expel all existing illegals with a criminal record.  Since the U.S. has a huge labor shortage overall, a program should be worked out for law-abiding illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S. indefinitely, perhaps with a temporary guest worker visa.  It would be economically disruptive to try to round up all illegals and deport them en masse.

  

• Identity politics and polarization.  The main cause of political polarization is the identity politics practiced by the Democratic Party. Trump did quite well among nonwhite voters this year.  For example, he won more than 20% of Black men and more than half of Hispanic men. This doesn’t mean the end of identity politics but it might be the beginning of the end.  After all, minorities care about the same quality of life issues (e.g. inflation, housing availability, crime) as everyone else.
• Foreign Policy. It is not clear what specific policies Trump will adopt in foreign policy but we can assume that he will be much tougher on our primary autocratic adversaries: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

Conclusion.  President Biden’s major policy mistakes (inflation, open border, weak foreign policy) led to Trump’s election and give him a huge opportunity to achieve a positive change in direction for our country.  Let’s hope he adopts the right policies to accomplish this.

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