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President Trump’s recent embrace of economic proposals runs sharply against free-market orthodoxy, exploring three headline-grabbing ideas: capping credit-card interest rates, banning institutional investors from buying single-family homes, and restricting dividends and stock buybacks by defense contractors. Why is a Republican president advancing policies more commonly associated with progressive populism? Drawing on economic history, constitutional law, and real-world market behavior, Epstein argues that price controls, capital restrictions, and politicized contracting consistently backfire, harming consumers, workers, and innovation alike. The conversation situates Trump’s proposals within a broader populist strategy, assesses the political incentives behind them, and warns that ignoring basic economic lessons risks repeating some of the most durable policy failures of the past.
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Because he's not a Republican, of course, and never was. He's spent most of his life as a Democrat, but lacking any coherent political philosophy or interest in anything other than himself, he's not really one of those either. He's never read a book and knows as much about economic theory as my cat, thus the cretinous tariffs, capping credit card interest rates, announcing the correct number of pencils a citizen should own, and so on.