After Biden beat Trump in 2020, a moderate pundit I like issued a challenge to make common ground with a Trump supporter. Identify a Republican policy that you agree with, and tell him that. I did that with a friend and family member or two (my issue was infrastructure). It’s a good exercise to heal our polarization.
In that spirit, I want to start by acknowledging (again) that Trump won a free and fair election. The American people knew exactly who he was and what he wants to do, and they chose him. So he and the Republican party get to make rules for a few years. Let’s give him a chance.
I’ll go further in acknowledging that not all those policies are bad. Here is a list.
De Minimis Exception
I wrote in February about how Chinese e-commerce businesses have an advantage over Americans by being able to ship low-value items to the United States with this tax exemption. It was ended (then reinstated, and then ended again yesterday).
Ending Penny Production
The bad economics of the U.S. penny was a wonky issue that bothered econ nerds for years. We thought it was a hopeless cause, an absurd evil we would have to live with. It’s not the only one.
But the degree of absurdity was in itself absurd. The amount of copper in a penny is worth more than $0.01. There are speculators (probably on the spectrum) who are stockpiling pennies with the intention of melting it someday.
The raw material is worth more than a penny, and that’s before minting it. At the end of the day, it currently costs 2.7 cents to produce a one-cent coin. And then, nobody wants them!
If you have pennies in your pocket, you try to get rid of them. The only use for a penny is to prevent getting more. You deliberately avoid keeping them, and you definitely don’t want anymore. So why are we spending 2.7 cents to produce each additional penny?
It really took an unconventional kind of leader like Trump to finally take action on something like this. I wish he wouldn’t have stopped there. He could stop making nickels too. Maybe dimes, I haven’t looked into the economics of those. But I think the smallest coin anybody cares about are quarters.
Overhauling the Post Office
In 2012, the United States Postal Service lost $16 billion. The last year it hasn’t lost money was 2006. Since then, its typical losses are somewhere north of $5 billion.
I know this because I went on a deep dive in 2013. Someone very close to me had a business built on the back of USPS. He criticized my business for depending on Amazon. His business was built on a government service, and mine a capitalist actor, and of course, he’s the Republican, three-time Trump voter.
At the time of this friendly debate, there was a government shutdown and debt-ceiling crisis (you may remember Ted Cruz reading “Green Eggs and Ham” during a Senate filibuster). With deficits spiraling out of control, surely this outdated and obsolete service won’t have staying power. Our leaders are finally taking action, I thought, and USPS won’t survive in its current form.
What’s worse, the USPS is like the penny in something of a nuisance, a money-losing nuisance. Most of the letters delivered to my house are pitched straight into the trash. Very few are necessary. Most of it is junk.
I learned how other countries have scaled back their postal services. Decades ago, they implemented hybrids of service combining novel innovations like biweekly deliveries and neighborhood pickup stations (like PO boxes or apartment mailboxes). Nobody besides us delivers to every address six days per week anymore.
So I concluded that his business was in real danger. And in the 12 years since, I slowly but surely changed my mind completely. I did a 180. I haven’t lost any confidence in the capitalist services of Amazon, but I disabused myself of the idea that the U.S. would cut back postal services.
That would kill too many jobs in legislators’ districts. Neither party would close post offices even when the postmaster general begged them to. It would also have a larger impact on life in rural districts, whose voters have an outsize influence in our government.
But finally, most importantly, Americans don’t see the United States Postal Service as something that should be self-sustaining. The real “aha moment” was seeing opinion data for government agencies. The post office is more esteemed than NASA, the police and firemen!
So Americans see the post office as a public service they’re entitled to. I may not agree, but that’s how my fellow Americans see it. So be it.
And out of nowhere, whack! The USPS on the block. We’ll see what happens, but I believe we’re ready to join the 21st century in this respect. And I don’t see anybody but Trump being the one to have done it.
Cutting Waste, Fraud and Abuse
Formerly known as Project 2025, DOGE aims to cut waste, fraud and abuse from government agencies and contractors. I don’t think there is as much as Elon Musk claims there is, but I don’t think there’s none.
Maybe the only way to get a lot of it is to hack it off. If you try to do it with a scalpel, you cause less pain but you probably don’t have much impact.
We’ve learned over the last generation that politics is messy. It moves in fits and starts. We may need to overextend in any given effort. “Move quickly and break things” will probably have real consequences for people. But it will cut waste, fraud and abuse.
Whether the juice is worth the squeeze will only be known in time. And in the meantime, the people voted for this. Let’s move forward.
Golden Visa
Selling citizenship to aspiring immigrants has long been an idea of econ nerds. This is the silver bullet to end Illegal immigration. By advocating a “golden visa,” Trump has advanced the cause, even if he gets the price wrong.
At $5 million, I can’t imagine who is going to want this. How many people in the world have $5 million? And of those, how many need citizenship? Anyone with $5 million can get whatever nonimmigrant visa they desire. Why would they need a green card? The only reason I can imagine is to flee from a grave crisis like war or prison. But grave enough that only citizenship saves you?
I doubt this scheme will bring $500 million per year after the first year. I would be interested to see what kind of people get it. It’s going to be like the Star Wars bar scene … mad dodgy. But Trump has broken the seal. He’s advanced the cause. I like it at any price.
There will be precedent for a liberal president to set the price where I think it should be, something peasants can afford. Something a laborer can get a loan for and pay off over the lifetime of a working-class salary, somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000. A financial industry will spring up to serve that demand. And American business will have a steady supply of peasants to fulfill our labor needs.
So the price point is off, but I like the fact that it’s advancing the idea of citizenship for cash. And I believe that one day, someday after I’m dead, nations will compete for people. The world will look back at anti-immigration sentiment today and believe we were mad. The nations of the future will try to entice people, especially workers, to come to their country.
Gaza Riviera
In the spirit of Trump’s work of art I wrote about in 2019, I got a good laugh out of this video. It’s probably not appropriate for a president to share, but it pushes a new boundary on what a lot of people say in private and think in their minds.
When are the Palestinians going to stop fighting? Because if the answer is never, could they be moved out of there? That is the definition of ethnic cleansing. Let’s keep in mind what’s right and wrong.
But look at the arc of history. Their borders only move one way: BACK.
When will they cut their losses? Can they just stop? This video suggests that if they don’t, they could lose it all.
I don’t know if that has ever occurred to Palestinians. Maybe it should (occur to them).
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Trump
I wrote in 2020 how the greatest benefits of Trump are backhanded, in that his recklessness, corruption and lawlessness will cause a reaction that strengthens us as a country. The “anti-fragile” effect. I wanted to keep this list pure and honest, so it only has good policies from the Divider in Chief.
But to be clear, I still think this movement is ugly and dangerous, and it will end badly. At least as badly as Jan. 6, unless he blows a gasket with a heart attack or stroke. And its public esteem in 20 years will be well below that of George W. Bush today. MAGA will be remembered as American fascism, a unique blend with hints of Nixon, Huey Long, America First (the 1930s version), McCarthyism and Herbert Hoover.
But I’d be delighted to be wrong about that.
TRUMP 2028!