President-elect Donald Trump can do the most good for the American people by taking a sledgehammer, or perhaps a chainsaw, to the bloated and overreaching federal government. Trump has reportedly called the libertarian Argentine President Javier Milei his “favorite president.” Milei should be a guide for a broad deregulatory agenda.
Elected last year on a radical libertarian platform, Milei has gleefully sought to deregulate the Argentine economy and downsize government. On his first day in office, he cut the number of cabinet offices from 18 to 9. He scrapped rent control, slashed government subsidies and pushed to eliminate government jobs.
The result? Inflation dropped to three-year lows, rental prices fell (yes, fell), Argentina experienced a budget surplus at levels not seen in well over a decade and benefited from a trade surplus.
More government, more government workers and more government rules, as we should know well by now, are never the solution to our problems.
“Do not be intimidated by the political caste or by parasites who live off the state,” Milei declared during a speech earlier this year in Davos. “Do not surrender to a political class that only wants to stay in power and retain its privileges.”
Fortunately, there are serious indicators that Trump might follow in these steps.
Trump has said he would create a government efficiency commission, headed up by Tesla owner Elon Musk, who in turn has suggested former Republican Congressman and libertarian icon Ron Paul could join such an effort. Musk has reportedly called for upwards of $2 trillion in cuts. That would be a glorious and just project.
“The best way to cut $2 trillion out of the budget is to ax everything the federal government does that it shouldn’t be doing in the first place,” wrote economist and columnist Veronique de Rugy in a recent column. “It’s time we rediscovered the exercise of thinking critically about government and the role it should or shouldn’t play in our lives.”
Trump has also pledged, explicitly, to eliminate the federal Department of Education. “We will drain the government education swamp and stop the abuse of your taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s youth with all sorts of things that you don’t want to have our youth hearing,” he had said in September. Amen to that.
As explained by the Cato Institute, “the evidence strongly suggests that, while Washington has driven no lasting improvements, it has marginalized and angered parents and other citizens. The federal government should drop the reins and let people at the state level decide where and how to exercise education authority.”
Trump should follow through and push for scrapping the bureaucracy.
Trump’s nomination of former Rep. Lee Zeldin to head the Environmental Protection Agency is an admirable step. Trump says Zeldin “will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet.” That sounds good to us.
We encourage Trump to deregulate and downsize the federal government where he can, across the board. America’s greatness comes from the people, not from featherbedding bureaucrats and bureaucracies.