There was always something impressive about the old Republican orthodoxy’s faith in markets. To its critics, it could appear indifferent, even cruel. The weak might be left behind, and success was never guaranteed. Yet there was a certain nobility in its central proposition: that for men and women possessed of talent, ambition, and industry, almost anything was possible if government had the good sense to get out of the way.
The arrangement was familiar. Keep taxes low. Regulate sparingly. Permit enterprise to flourish. Let government perform those tasks that only government can perform: build roads, provide for the common defense, ensure that aircraft do not fall from the sky, and establish the stable framework within which free citizens can pursue opportunity. Prosperity would not be directed from Washington. It would emerge from millions of decisions made by investors, entrepreneurs, workers, and consumers.
Of course, Republican administrations never practiced this philosophy with perfect consistency. They subsidized farmers, protected favored industries, and occasionally intervened in markets on a grand scale. But there was at least an organizing principle against which such departures could be measured. Government intervention was supposed to be the exception, not the governing method.
The politics of the Trump era, particularly in its second incarnation, seems animated by a different instinct. One finds less interest in cultivating the broad conditions under which markets thrive than in arranging discrete benefits for favored constituencies. A subsidy for farmers. A tax preference for tipped workers. A factory secured through political negotiation for a particular community. A tariff imposed to extract concessions from a trading partner.
The governing instinct is no longer to trust the invisible hand but to advertise the visible deal.
The distinction matters. Markets distribute capital and opportunity through countless decisions made by people who need not seek the approval of a president. A government organized around transactions invites businesses, industries, and communities to look toward Washington for favorable treatment. Success becomes less a matter of competing under predictable rules and more a matter of securing an advantageous arrangement.
And the president becomes the central figure in the transaction.
What is striking is the theatrical quality that accompanies these interventions. There is a signing ceremony. There is a social media announcement. There is a declaration that another factory has been saved, another industry protected, another victory secured. The spectacle is almost as important as the policy itself.
Whether the arrangement produces lasting prosperity, improves productivity, or merely shifts costs elsewhere is never demonstrated.
That doesn’t appear to trouble an administration for which the announcement of a deal so often seems to constitute proof of its success.
What makes the transformation particularly noteworthy is that Republicans control the White House and Congress. They have an opportunity to pursue a coherent program of market-oriented reform, removing impediments to growth and encouraging competition. Yet the administration’s most conspicuous economic initiatives repeatedly involve government choosing where to intervene, whom to protect, and which transactions deserve presidential attention.
There is an irony here. For generations, Republicans warned that an expansive federal government would encourage businesses and citizens to seek political favors rather than compete in the marketplace. They worried that economic decisions would become entangled with political influence and that Washington would acquire too much power to determine winners and losers.
The Trump administration has not so much rejected that danger as embraced the opportunity it presents.
The result is a peculiar inversion of conservative economics. Rather than diminishing the importance of Washington, the administration makes Washington more important. Rather than allowing markets to operate at arm’s length from political power, it invites economic actors to negotiate with that power directly. And rather than measuring success by the broad prosperity of the economy, it celebrates individual transactions that can be attributed to the president.
The old Republican vision asked government to clear the field and allow enterprise to run. The new vision increasingly asks government to referee each contest, compensate selected losers, and personally negotiate each victory.
The old Republican creed trusted markets. The new Republican creed trusts deals.
And in the end, those are fundamentally different understandings of how a free and prosperous society is built.