Remember the old quip about economists? “That’s all very in practice,” they say, “but how does it work out in theory?” Nobel laureate Paul Krugman of the New York Times is a splendid example of that sort of folly. On the evening of November 9, 2016, Krugman skirled that the election of Donald Trump would precipitate economic Armageddon. “If the question is when markets will recover,” he said, “a first-pass answer is never.” How could they recover since the nation had just elected an “irresponsible, ignorant man who takes his advice from all the wrong people,” that is to say, he didn’t take advice from people like Paul Krugman.
Reality check: the day Krugman wrote that, the market closed at 18,589. In the last few days the Dow broke 50,000.
All the accredited experts have been wrong about Trump. He came back to office last year on a platform of common sense. They don’t teach that at Harvard. But in the real world it works like magic. Just a few days ago, the jobs report for January came out. “Unexpectedly,” the economy added 130,000 jobs. The green-eye shade chaps predicted 55,000. Another bright light: the government lost about 42,000 employees: that’s 42,000 paychecks that taxpayers will not have to pick up going forward. The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.3 percent – a number that, when translated into English, means close to full employment. Inflation rose just 0.2 percent in January, and fell to 2.4 percent on an annual basis.
The jobs report “strengthens the case for higher US Treasury yields and a rebound in the dollar over the coming months,” Jonas Goltermann, a senior economist at Capital Economics wrote. Can someone get Jerome Powell on the phone for me? Trump’s aggressive deployment of tariffs was supposed to wreak havoc on the economy. All the experts said so. But growth was 4.4 percent in the third quarter of 2025 and is estimated to have been above 5 percent in the fourth. Wow. More misery for the doomsayers. More goodies for the middle class.
Until Donald Trump swept back into office, the left in this country wielded an implacable one-way ratchet to torment the populace. “Affirmative action,” DEI, climate hysteria, smothering regulatory excess: the people in charge delighted in making people’s lives more burdensome.
Government has been run this way for many decades. Occasionally, a Republican would get into office and attempt to tamp down the administrative state. The left didn’t mind because whatever modest reforms were effected could be undone in a nonce once the “right people” got back into office. They never lost their one-way ratchets. That was a major reason that government always got bigger, that the left’s hobby horses never went away, that the regulatory environment became ever more stultifying and surreal. Men in women’s bathrooms? It’s mandated by Title IX or whatever, my friend. Cars that turn off and restart at every stoplight? We have to save the environment, you peasant, and where is your mask and vaccination affidavit?
Trump has smashed the left’s one-way ratchet. It can’t get purchase anymore. It just doesn’t work.
It was some 30 years ago that the philosopher Harvey Mansfield observed that “Environmentalism is school prayer for liberals.” That gospel has been a key part of the Obama-Al Gore church militant. Armageddon was just around the corner, Comrade: the seas were rising, the ice caps were melting and fossil fuels were going to kill us all.
Donald Trump has finally put paid to that incontinent hysteria. The commentator Robert Bryce once observed that what the world needs now is cheap, abundant energy, period, full stop, end of discussion. Common sense told us that what we needed were not more wind mills and solar panels, but more coal, gas, and oil.
Chris Wright, Trump’s Energy Secretary, has obliged. Coal is beautiful again. Fossil fuels are all the rage. And just a few days back, Lee Zeldin, Trump’s EPA Secretary, did the impossible. He just cashiered Obama’s so-called “endangerment finding” of 2009 which led to new and costly emissions standards for automobiles and other vehicles. He also canceled Joe Biden’s order that all cars be electric by 2030. Those silly start-stop systems in cars? On the chopping block.
Are you worried about “affordability”? That was another stick anti-Trumpers were trying to beat Trump with. But Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, said that getting rid of these auto regulations would save taxpayers about $1.3 trillion by making cars cheaper to build. She estimates savings of more than $2,400 per car or truck. The eco-nut scam that is the Green New Deal will soon be just a bad memory. The price of gas has plummeted in recent months. Not only are people driving more, but since lower energy costs means lower prices all around, the cost of living is leveling off or coming down.
Here and there you will find little pockets of nervous anti-Trump pols planning for their big comeback. It’s the same old band: unhinged Democrats and “elevated” conservatives like Mitt Romney and Mike Pence. I suspect that Glenn Youngkin, the former governor of Virginia, will find a place among their number. But I think their plots are for naught. True, were the Dems to win the midterms they would instantly impeach Trump and go on the warpath against his supporters. But they are not going to win the midterms. Trump’s boldness combined with his common sense agenda are doing too much good for too many voters. Trump has moved the Overton window. Trumponomics is working. He is making America great again and the people like it.
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