 Originally published on Substack.
President Trump’s State of the Union speech of a record 108 minutes last night had something Washington too often forgets: confidence. After years of Americans being told to lower expectations, it was refreshing to hear a president speak as if this country can still build big things, lead the world, and win the future. That tone matters. Americans are tired of being scolded by technocrats while their bills climb. They want to hear that the country is capable again. But here’s the hard truth: a confident tone is not a governing strategy. If the goal is rising living standards, the next step has to be less government interference, not new versions of it. Too much of what passes for “action” in Washington is still about pulling levers, picking winners, adding controls, and expanding federal “help” that quietly raises prices and limits choice. Classical liberals, like me, have warned about this for a reason: the levers don’t make people freer. They make people dependent. The best version of this presidency—and the best version of America—is a future-first agenda with one true north star: let people prosper. If you want the whole framework in one place, start with my policy guide. Keep America leading on innovation The speech signaled that the United States should stay on offense in innovation, especially on AI. That is the right instinct. America doesn’t win by copying Europe’s regulatory mindset. We win by letting entrepreneurs scale, compete, and deliver products that make life better and cheaper. That consumer-driven approach is why I’ve pushed an innovation-first approach instead of politicized crackdowns on success. Call out broken systems—but fix them the market way It’s also good to acknowledge what voters already know: the economy isn’t “rigged by accident.” Too many industries are distorted by government-created barriers and entrenched middlemen. Calling problems out is useful. The danger is when the “fix” becomes another layer of bureaucracy that never goes away. Government rarely shrinks itself. It multiplies. What was missing: the future-first, classical liberal playbook 1) Spending discipline should be the opening line, not an afterthought Washington cannot keep running up massive tabs and pretend it isn’t part of the cost-of-living squeeze. Excessive spending distorts markets, pushes up borrowing, raises interest costs, and entrenches inflation expectations. It also turns every other priority into a gimmick fight because lawmakers refuse to address the root. This is why the real threat is not that Americans keep too much of their own money. The real threat is that government spends too much of everyone’s money. That’s the core point behind spending-driven debt and why sustainable budgeting needs to be the baseline. If you want a practical model, look at how fiscal guardrails work in the states and why they matter for stability. I’ve laid that out in sustainable budgeting and in the case for a serious federal reset like the responsible budget. A future SOTU should say this plainly: we will cut and cap federal spending growth, eliminate budget gimmicks, and make prosperity possible again by letting the private economy breathe. 2) Tariffs are taxes—even when they sound tough A future-first agenda doesn’t tax Americans through tariffs and call it strategy. Tariffs are taxes. Taxes raise prices. They hit families at checkout and hit producers through higher input costs. Then politicians act shocked when prices rise and growth slows. If the goal is abundance, you don’t choke supply chains with border taxes. You cut domestic barriers to production. That’s why I keep hammering the simplest truth in economics: tariffs raise costs. I’ve also warned how tariff escalations create uncertainty and squeeze working households in trade-war reality and why politicians keep failing the basics of Econ 101. A pro-worker trade policy is not “tax the things you buy.” It’s “make it easier to produce here”—permitting reform, energy abundance, lower regulatory costs, and predictable rules. 3) Tax cuts should be broad, neutral, and sustainable—not swapped for hidden taxes Broad-based income and corporate tax cuts can lift work, investment, and wages. The key is broad-based. Targeted carveouts and special breaks aren’t prosperity. They’re politics. But even good tax cuts fail when spending restraint is absent. If Washington refuses to control spending, tax cuts become temporary and debt becomes permanent. That’s why tax reform without restraint isn’t reform—it’s a short-lived headline. And no, tax cuts should not be “paid for” with higher tariffs. That’s not relief. A serious future SOTU would commit to a simple order of operations:
4) Healthcare reform should empower patients, not import price controls Healthcare is expensive because patients aren’t treated like customers. Prices are hidden, incentives are distorted, and middlemen dominate the rails. That’s why the continued attraction to “Most Favored Nation” drug pricing is a red flag. MFN is price control—importing foreign government benchmarks into U.S. pricing. Price controls may look like “savings” on paper, but the real cost shows up later as weaker incentives to innovate, slower launches, fewer trials, and less access over time. I’ve been direct about the damage from MFN price-setting. If the goal is to expand access and lower costs, we should push competition, transparency, faster approvals, and direct purchasing models that increase consumer choice—not bureaucratic formulas that reduce the incentive to develop tomorrow’s cures. The same principle applies to PBMs: the middleman problem is real, but bans and mandates can backfire if incentives stay broken. That’s why I’ve argued that PBM bans backfire and why reforms should focus on restoring market pressure, not replacing one distortion with another. 5) Housing needs supply—not scapegoats, caps, or punishment taxes Housing may be the clearest example of the difference between serious policy and political theater. Housing is expensive because we didn’t build enough for decades. Zoning limits, permitting delays, and process abuse restrict supply. Then politicians look for villains instead of looking in the mirror. Restricting institutional investors won’t build a single home. Punitive taxes and ownership caps shrink rental options, discourage rehab, and risk rushed sell-offs that displace renters and destabilize neighborhoods. The real solution is to build, build, build: streamline permitting, reduce zoning barriers, speed up approvals, and stop turning housing into a legal obstacle course. My market-first framework is in expanding supply. And the truly “future” housing reform Washington avoids is unwinding federal distortions that socialize risk and politicize credit. That includes finally privatizing the mortgage giants so housing finance is driven by market signals rather than permanent federal dominance. 6) Sound money means respecting price signals—including interest rates Interest rates are prices. Artificially forcing them down is how you set up the next bust. When policymakers manipulate the price of credit, they create malinvestment, bubbles, and painful corrections later. I’ve written about the Fed’s role in boom-and-bust dynamics and the distortions created by monetary manipulation—how easy money changes investment patterns before reality catches up. If you want the clearest articulation of the mechanism, see the argument about the Fed’s boom-bust cycles and why inflation pessimism is driven by policy failure, not public “misunderstanding,” in my work on inflation and rate hikes. A future SOTU should commit to sound money principles and fiscal restraint so rates are not constantly being used as a political pressure valve. 7) Family policy should build independence, not dependency Washington loves programs that sound pro-family and end up being pro-bureaucracy. “Accounts,” credits, subsidies, and new federal benefit pipelines might poll well, but they often expand dependency and deepen the tax-and-transfer state. A better family agenda is pro-growth: higher real wages through productivity, lower prices through competition, and more opportunity through less red tape. That’s why I’ve pushed back on federal social engineering through the tax code and gimmicks that avoid the spending problem. My conversation on the risk of Washington-designed “Trump accounts” is captured in fiscal reality. The next SOTU I want to hear: a true north star “Let People Prosper” address If I could write next year’s State of the Union for a president who wants a booming America, it would be a forward-looking abundance agenda—not a nostalgia tour, not a grievance list, not a government expansion dressed up as toughness. Here is what I would want to hear—policy by policy—built around a simple principle: the federal government should stop making life harder and start getting out of the way. 1) A binding commitment to spending cuts and limits Not “we’ll find savings.” Not “we’ll cut waste.” A real commitment to spending cuts and future growth limits that keep government from growing faster than average taxpayer’s ability to fund it. A pledge to end budget gimmicks, stop treating “emergencies” as permanent, and set a path to fiscal sustainability. The blueprint is in the policy guide and the spending logic is in the case for fiscal sanity. 2) Broad-based tax relief that lasts because spending falls I want a president to say: we will cut tax rates broadly and keep the base broad. But we will not fund tax relief with hidden tax hikes like tariffs. We will fund it by shrinking the growth of government itself. That’s how you deliver lasting relief rather than a temporary sugar high. The warnings are already clear in spending-first reform and durable tax reform. 3) A real abundance plan: deregulate production across the economy A future SOTU should treat regulation like what it often is: a hidden tax that raises prices, blocks competitors, and protects incumbents. That includes:
This is what pro-growth leadership looks like: not micromanaging prices, but freeing the economy to produce more. 4) A clean break from tariff-tax politics I would want to hear a simple pledge: we will not raise tariffs to “solve” domestic problems. We will compete through productivity, innovation, and free exchange. We will stop using emergency powers to raise taxes without accountability. That’s the principle behind my argument that ending tariffs is pro-worker and why policymakers must stop failing basic economics. 5) Healthcare reform that makes patients the customers again The future SOTU should reject price controls outright—MFN included—and instead commit to reforms that expand competition:
If you want the cautionary tale, see price-control harm. If you want the middleman warning, see why bans fail. 6) Housing reform focused on supply—and federal distortions I want a SOTU that says: we will stop blaming investors and start building homes. Federal policy should encourage supply, not choke it. States and localities should streamline permitting and stop weaponizing zoning. And Washington should stop doubling down on a government-directed mortgage system that distorts incentives. That means ending permanent federal dominance and restoring market pricing in housing finance. 7) Sound money and a Fed that stops fueling cycles A future SOTU should acknowledge a reality too many leaders avoid: boom-and-bust cycles aren’t acts of God. They’re often policy-driven. A better economy requires predictable rules, fiscal restraint, and monetary sanity. That includes getting serious about how credit manipulation fuels cycles—see the case for limiting the Fed’s monetary weapon. 8) A freedom-first governance pledge Finally, I want to hear the simplest promise a leader can make to restore trust: government will serve the people by doing less—protecting rights, enforcing the rule of law, and leaving voluntary exchange alone. That’s the only sustainable path to prosperity, the only path compatible with a free society, and the only path that keeps the American experiment worth inheriting. Call to action If you want policy that is serious about prosperity and honest about tradeoffs, subscribe and follow my work at Ginn Economic Consulting at vanceginn.com. I’ll keep offering the true north star Washington rarely does: let people prosper—with more competition, more supply, and less government in the way. Five-point review for lawmakers
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 Originally published on Substack. The latest headlines tell you everything: regulators are again inching toward a fresh round of “Basel endgame” capital rules, while the Fed talks about reshaping mortgage capital treatment, and the CFPB’s “open banking” experiment keeps bouncing between litigation, reconsideration, and procedural shortcuts. Translation: Washington is still trying to run the financial system like a command economy, then acting shocked when credit tightens and consumers pay more. If you want a clean, practical framework for pushing back, start here: the Monetary Policy and Financial Regulation Guide. It’s built for lawmakers and staff who want fewer slogans and more solutions.  The real banking fight
Most “banking reform” debates are not really about safety. They’re about who controls the pipes. When regulators add complexity and discretion, the winners are predictable:
Everyone else gets the bill: tighter credit, fewer local options, and financial “innovation” that is mostly just lawyers inventing ways around red tape. Three fights that matter right now 1) Debanking is an incentive problem created by government power People hear “debanking” and assume it’s purely corporate behavior. But banks respond to the incentives regulators set. If supervisors can punish “reputation risk” or nudge account closures through informal pressure, banks will de-risk, even when the activity is lawful. That’s why the push to remove “reputation risk” from supervision and prohibit regulators from using politics or lawful-but-disfavored activity as a cudgel is a big deal. The point is not to give anyone a free pass for fraud. The point is to stop financial access from turning into a soft form of social credit scoring. The free-market fix is boring, and that’s the beauty of it: clear rules, due process, transparency, and fewer “because we said so” powers. 2) “Open banking” can become forced sharing, higher fraud risk, and higher fees The CFPB’s Section 1033 agenda is marketed as consumer empowerment, but the tradeoffs are real: mandated data portability at scale can widen the attack surface for bad actors and raise compliance costs that ultimately land on consumers. Even the Congressional Research Service notes the CFPB’s final rule has been tied up in litigation and reconsideration, with implementation originally set to begin in April 2026. A market-friendly approach is not “no data sharing.” It’s voluntary, secure, contract-based sharing with clear liability. If policymakers want competition, they should stop trying to central-plan it. 3) Basel endgame rules risk turning banks into regulated utilities Capital matters, but capital is not free. Every extra layer of risk-weighting and modeling can mean less lending at the margin, especially for households and small businesses that do not fit neatly in a regulator’s spreadsheet. Reuters reports regulators have taken steps toward proposing a new version of Basel endgame rules, and the Fed has also signaled changes around mortgage capital treatment. If Washington wants more mortgage lending and more access to credit, it should stop designing rules that make banks act like cautious bond funds. A safer system is not one where credit disappears. A safer system is one where risk is priced honestly, failure is possible, and bailouts are not assumed. What this guide does differently My policy guide ties these debates together with a simple theme: stop subsidizing bad incentives, stop politicizing access to money, and stop pretending regulators can outsmart millions of market decisions. It also pushes something Washington never wants to discuss: many “banking crises” are downstream of upstream monetary and fiscal mistakes. When money is distorted and deficits are monetized, the system gets fragile, then regulators blame banks for living inside the warped environment government created. Review for lawmakers
A simple standard Here’s the test every proposal should pass: does it increase competition and consumer choice, or does it centralize power in regulators and mega-institutions? If it centralizes power, it will be sold as “safety.” Then it will show up as higher costs and fewer options. Funny how that works. For more on these issues, my writings keep tracking the fights that matter, with receipts and real-world policy fixes.  Originally published at The Mackinac Center. President Trump recently urged Congress to cap credit card interest rates at 10%, arguing that rates of 20% or 30% are abusive and that the government should step in to protect families.  The good news is that, at least for now, many Republicans in Congress are pushing back. Lawmakers are warning that government price controls on credit would restrict access and hurt consumers rather than help them. That skepticism matters because this debate is bigger than one proposal. It reflects a deeper misunderstanding about how credit markets work and why controls on the price of credit consistently fail. Credit exists because lenders take risks. Some borrowers repay on time. Some don’t. Some have stable incomes. Others don’t. Those differences are real, and they matter. Interest rates exist to reflect that reality. They are prices, not moral judgments. They reflect the time value of money, the risk of nonpayment, inflation, and opportunity cost. Lending money today means it cannot be used elsewhere tomorrow. Capping interest rates does not remove risk. It prevents risk from being priced. When that happens, lenders don’t lend more. They lend less, especially to those who need it the most. Supporters of rate caps often point to the amount of debt Americans carry. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Household Debt and Credit data, total household debt is about $18.6 trillion, including roughly $1.2 trillion in credit card balances, which make up about 20 percent of all non-housing debt.  Source: New York Fed Those numbers are large, but large numbers alone don’t indicate failure. What matters is whether borrowers are defaulting at alarming rates. An increase in unpaid and overdue balances would indicate that creditors were encouraging people to take on too much debt. On that front, the picture is serious but not catastrophic. About 12.4 percent of credit card balances are seriously delinquent, meaning they are 90 or more days past due. That’s higher than during the pandemic and near levels seen during the 2007-2009 recession.  Source: New York Fed But here’s the key point: there were no interest-rate caps during the financial crisis or the pandemic, and the credit card market did not collapse. Lenders adjusted. Borrowers repaid over time. The system absorbed the shock without government price controls. So what market failure would a cap on interest rates correct? Attempts to control interest rates are nothing new. For centuries, governments imposed usury laws because they viewed interest as unfair. The results were predictable: fewer loans, less access to credit, underground lending, and worse outcomes for people with the fewest alternatives. As people better understood the time value of money, strict caps faded away. Risk-based pricing replaced them. Lending became more transparent and more widely available. Modern credit cards are a product of that evolution. Today, more than 80% of U.S. households have at least one credit card, and 82% prefer using a credit card for purchases, according to Federal Reserve survey data. That access didn’t come from government mandates. It came from competition, innovation, and flexible pricing. But access isn’t equal. Lower-income households are less likely to have credit cards, and when they do, they’re more likely to carry balances—especially during emergencies. These are the very consumers politicians claim to protect. Interest-rate caps would price them out of the credit market.  Source: Committee to Unleash Prosperity
Credit cards are expensive to operate. As outlined by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, lenders face roughly 4% in capital costs, 6% in expected credit losses, and about 5% in administration and collections—more than 15% in costs before earning any return. A 10% cap would guarantee losses. When losses are guaranteed, lenders respond logically. They tighten credit standards. They lower limits. They close accounts with limited credit history. Credit becomes concentrated among the safest borrowers. That isn’t punishment. It’s arithmetic. Trump is not alone in promoting ideas that would worsen the credit market. Congress is considering the Credit Card Competition Act, which would impose government mandates on how credit card transactions are routed. Supporters claim it would lower costs. In reality, it functions as another form of price control. These mandates would reduce the revenue lenders currently use to fund fraud protection, security, and rewards programs such as cash back and travel points. Those rewards don’t disappear evenly. They disappear first for everyday cardholders and small businesses. High-credit, high-balance users are protected the longest. Price controls don’t remove costs. They hide them and shift them. Supporters of these policies often argue that consumers make poor decisions and need protection from themselves. But economic choices are subjective. What looks irrational from the outside may be entirely reasonable given someone’s constraints or priorities. We cannot observe the outcome of other choices. We don’t know which option a borrower rejected. Assuming the government knows better than individuals isn’t economics. It’s paternalism. The bottom line is that price controls don’t work. They don’t work for housing, labor, or energy —and they don’t work for credit. Capping interest rates and dismantling payment networks won’t make credit cheaper for everyone. They will make credit scarcer, reduce benefits, and limit options — especially for the people who rely on credit the most. We already know how this story ends. Repeating it won’t protect consumers. It will leave them with fewer choices than before.  Originally published on Substack. Every time the Federal [Reserve] Open Market Committee (FOMC) meets, the commentary fixates on a familiar question: Will interest rates go up, go down, or stay the same?  What if that debate misses the forest for the trees? The Fed’s recent decision and meeting minutes—covered by the Wall Street Journal and CNBC—reveal something far more consequential: policymakers are increasingly boxed in by the structure of the system itself.  Inflation is still a concern. Financial instability is still a concern. Federal debt from overspending is an enormous concern. And the Fed is expected to help manage all of it at once. That tension is not accidental. It is the predictable outcome of central banking. Does America Need a Central Bank? The United States has never been comfortable with central banking. For good reason. The First Bank of the United States (1791–1811) was controversial from the start, opposed by luminaries like Thomas Jefferson and others who feared concentrated financial power. Congress ultimately allowed its charter to expire. The Second Bank of the United States (1816–1836) followed the same path, dismantled after Andrew Jackson warned—correctly—that central banks entrench privilege, socialize losses, and distort markets. For much of the 19th century, America had no central bank. Economic growth was uneven, yes—but long-run prosperity was remarkable, innovation flourished, and financial discipline was enforced more by market forces than committees. The modern Federal Reserve arose not from a clear market failure, but from political reactions to earlier government mistakes. The 1907 financial panic, often cited as justification for the Fed, was worsened by bad banking laws and restrictions on branch banking that made the system fragile. Instead of fixing those distortions, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913—the same year the dreaded federal income tax was enacted. That costly pairing was likely no accident. The modern fiscal–monetary system was seemingly built deliberately. A Central Bank That Is “Independent” in Name Only The Federal Reserve is frequently described as independent or quasi-private. In reality, it is a government-created institution with monopoly power over printing money. Congress sets its mandate. Fed controls the monetary base. Fed manipulates interest rates. While private banks fund the Federal Reserve System through fees and assessments, those costs are passed on to consumers and businesses. Americans pay for the central bank whether they approve of its actions or not. Meanwhile, the Fed has been running hundreds of billions of dollars in operating losses, driven by interest paid on reserves and the consequences of its flawed balance-sheet expansion. This is not a market-tested institution. It is a politically protected one. The Mandates—and the One That Really Counts Officially, the Fed operates under a dual mandate: price stability and maximum employment. In practice, there is a third mandate that dominates policy decisions: Keep federal debt service manageable. Before the 2008 Great Financial Crisis, the Fed’s balance sheet hovered around $800 billion or 6% of GDP. After GFC and COVID-era interventions, it surged to $9 trillion or 35% of GDP, and remains near $6.5 trillion or 21% of GDP.  This persistence has little to do with inflation being “conquered.” It has everything to do with the reality that allowing interest rates to fully reflect risk would dramatically increase federal borrowing costs. The Fed suppresses yields, absorbs Treasury issuance, and calls it stability.
That is fiscal dominance, not sound monetary policy. Why Central Banking Creates Cycles—and Inequality Central banks promise stability. What they deliver is systematic distortion. New money enters the economy unevenly—flowing first into financial markets, asset prices, and large institutions. Wages, savings, and fixed incomes adjust last. That Cantillon dynamic fuels asset bubbles, raises housing costs, and widens the gap between large firms and small businesses. These outcomes are not accidental. They are baked into discretionary monetary policy. From the Great Depression to the Great Inflation, from the housing bubble to the post-COVID inflation surge, the Fed has presided over repeated boom-bust cycles. A robust, resilient economy is not compatible with a system that tries to centrally plan it. A Serious Reform Path—Starting Now For those of us who believe in free markets, the long-term goal should be clear: a competitive, free-banking system where money and credit are disciplined by people in markets, not managed by non-elected members of the FOMC. Ending the Federal Reserve should be on the list of priorities when genuine free-market reformers are in office. But we don’t get there overnight. Until then, the Fed must be constrained as tightly as possible. That means:
This approach restores predictability, limits political abuse, and begins reintroducing market discipline into money and credit. This should be paired with a strict spending limit on Congress. This dual monetary-fiscal rules of limiting any growth to population growth plus inflation will help improve the situation. The focus must be on reducing the Fed’s balance sheet with an single rule of price stability and federal government spending to a lower share of GDP, possibly 6% for both, then limiting to population growth plus inflation thereafter. The Bottom Line Central banking in the United States did not arise from market failure. It arose from political convenience—and it has been used ever since to paper over fiscal excess. If we want lasting prosperity, rising wages, and real opportunity, we need to stop pretending that smarter central planners can fix what central planning itself breaks. Sound money, fiscal restraint, clear rules, and ultimately freer banking are not radical ideas. They are the foundations of a free and prosperous society. That’s how we truly let people prosper. Originally published on Substack. Affordability is the issue that decides elections because it decides everyday life. Families don’t measure success by press releases or selective charts. They measure it by whether housing, groceries, insurance, healthcare, childcare, and borrowing costs fit inside a paycheck. That’s why recent claims celebrating lower inflation metrics ring hollow for so many Americans. For example, the White House recently shared this post on X claiming that “core inflation at its lowest in nearly five years.”  That claim may be technically true for a narrow slice of price data—but it misses the broader reality: the general price level remain far higher than before 2020, core inflation rates are currently running fast at near 3% y/y, and the damage to purchasing power has not been undone.  Inflation isn’t gone. It’s much higher than pre-Trump-Fauci-COVID lockdowns. It’s being managed, delayed, and quietly socialized. And unless we change the rules that created this mess, affordability will remain out of reach. Who Broke Affordability—and Why It Matters Let’s be clear about responsibility, because pretending this is a one-party problem is how we repeat it. The affordability crisis is the product of serial policy failures across administrations and institutions:
Each actor contributed. Each avoided hard limits. And each relied—explicitly or implicitly—on inflation to paper over bad decisions. That’s why affordability collapsed. The Fed’s Balance Sheet Tells the Real Story If inflation were truly beaten, the Federal Reserve wouldn’t still be sitting on a $6.6 trillion balance sheet filled with Treasury debt, mortgage-backed securities, and agency debt.  The data from the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet on FRED make the problem obvious:
That expansion isn’t neutral. It reshaped the economy. Here’s the uncomfortable truth often missing from official messaging: The Fed isn’t maintaining this balance sheet because inflation has been defeated. It hasn’t. The Fed is trapped because allowing interest rates to fully clear would sharply raise federal debt-service costs. So yields are suppressed, Treasury issuance is absorbed, and rates are kept artificially lower than they otherwise would be. That’s not independent monetary policy. That’s fiscal dominance. Why Inflation Fuels Inequality by Design New money and the resulting inflation never hit everyone equally. New money enters the economy unevenly. It flows first into:
Wages, savings, and fixed incomes adjust last. That’s how you get:
Families feel squeezed. Entrepreneurs struggle. Meanwhile, firms closest to capital markets adapt just fine. Then politicians—on both sides—blame “greed” or “capitalism” for outcomes driven by policy. Let’s be precise: this isn’t free-market capitalism. It’s government-managed finance layered on top of regulatory and trade intervention. What a Pro-Affordability Agenda Requires: Three Rules  If affordability is the goal—and it should be—policy must be anchored to rules, not discretion.
1) A Spending Rule (Fiscal Discipline) Government spending growth should be capped below population growth plus inflation—a Sustainable Budget rule, long advanced by my work at Ginn Economic Consulting, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), Club for Growth Foundation, and others. This forces prioritization, prevents structural deficits, and restores credibility that debt will be managed through restraint rather than higher taxes and inflation. 2) A Monetary Rule (Sound Money) The Fed needs a binding constraint—either a fixed growth rule for high-powered money or a cap on its balance sheet tied to the size of the economy. Returning toward ~5% of GDP, where the Fed stood before 2008, would end permanent “emergencies,” reduce asset inflation, and protect purchasing power. 3) A Trade Rule (Constitutional Accountability) Tariffs are taxes. Under the Constitution, only Congress has the authority to raise taxes. The executive branch can make the case when action is warranted, but unilateral tariff authority undermines accountability, raises prices quietly, and fuels uncertainty. Restoring congressional control over tariff taxation could directly support affordability. Why This Matters for Trump—and the Country President Trump is right to focus on affordability. That’s where voters live. But lasting affordability cannot be built on protectionism, discretionary monetary policy, or unchecked spending. A pro-growth agenda must also be pro-rules on government:
That combination doesn’t just tame inflation. It restores competition, lowers barriers to entry, and expands opportunity—especially for small businesses and households without access to robust financial markets. The Bottom Line Affordability is not a slogan. It is an outcome. And outcomes follow incentives. If policymakers want prices to stabilize, wages to rise in real terms, and opportunity to broaden, they must bind themselves to rules that work—even when inconvenient. That’s how trust is rebuilt. That’s how growth becomes durable. And that’s how we let people prosper. |
Vance Ginn, Ph.D.
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