In a interview With Time Magazine, President Trump explained how he approaches prices and commercial negotiations. I use the word “explained” with a certain apprehension because the explanations imply a certain delimitation of reasoning, facts and logic as well as opinion and perspective. If you ask me to explain my support for the abolition of rent control and I answer: “Because the vests have no sleeves and turtles. Or have I just revealed what is going on for my thinking?
“We are a department store, a giant department store, the biggest story in history,” said Trump, “said.” “Everyone wants to come and take us. They will enter and they will pay a price to take our treasure, to take our jobs, for having done all these things.”
“I have the store and I set prices,” said Trump. He will fix these prices according to “statistics” and all that he – and he alone – relevant judge.
Now, it is enough to say that department stores do not work like that, America is nothing like a department store and the president is in no way the owner of America or his economy. Countries that negotiate with the United States do not “take” our treasure. They sell us things that millions of consumers and businesses need or want. Trump believes that because we buy more foreign goods (he ignores our trade surplus in the services) that foreigners buy from us – that is to say trade deficits – is proof that we are “scammed”. If it was true, whenever you put your money back for coffee or car, you would be stolen. But you have already heard these arguments.
We have heard much less on the way in which Trump's economic “philosophy” is a fundamental repudiation of American economic and political philosophy which dates back to more than a century. We certainly did not hear this from most republican politicians, even if we would do so if a philosophical democratic president and set rates in the same sense.
Trump defenders often say that we should not take it literally, we have to take it seriously. Fairly fair. I agree to concede that he does not literally think that America is a department store. But he clearly thinks that this analogy captures a fundamental truth not only on the functioning of trade and macroeconomics, but also of its ability to thwart the market. I don't just want to say the stock market. I mean the whole capitalist order. He – and he alone – knows how much the fellows and coffee brewers, car manufacturers and car buyers should pay for what they need, when they need it.
Despite its roughly caricatured form, Trump's analogy is the essence of left -wing economic thought. The most sophisticated versions concede that a president alone cannot know enough to make such decisions. But a president counting on a team of experts and planners, equipped with the best data and techniques? Absolutely.
Forget the Bogeymen like Karl Marx or the Bolsheviks. The basic hypothesis that experts can best know have served as an economic leitmotif on the left for the last 150 years. German historicians, English Fabian socialists, the American progressive party and new concessionaires, Atari Democrats from the 1970s and today's “abundant” Democrats: to one extent or another, they all argued that economic planners and politicians can direct the economy of the economy of the economy of above Better than a leave below.
Normally, what we should hear from a republican president and his supporters is the competitor point of view, based on the types of arguments put forward by Adam Smith, Frédéric Bastiat, Henry Hazlitt, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell. For them, the quantity of information and economic coordination that goes into the price of a miche bread is too large, too complex and too fast for a bureaucrat or an entire bureaucracy to plan with better results than a free market. This is what Hayek called “the problem of knowledge”.
In addition, he formed the heart of the economic pillar of the case for free society. The hypothesis that individuals and businesses know their interests better than certain politicians or bureaucrats are an integral part of the idea of freedom. Hayek again: “It is because freedom means that renouncing direct control of individual efforts than a free society can use much more knowledge than the spirit of the wisest sovereign could understand.”
Today, the default position of many on the right, at their extreme discredit, would be to modify this quote with “unless this sovereign is Donald Trump”.
Knowledge
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Prospects
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Ideas expressed in the play
- President Trump's pricing policy is considered to be a rejection of the traditional conservative economy, which emphasizes free markets and decentralized decision -making. The article maintains that his approach reflects the left -wing economic planning, based on centralized control and the conviction that experts – or in this case, the president alone – can surpass market dynamics(1)(2).
- The analogy of America as a “department store” owned by Trump is criticized as an erroneous representation of trade, ignoring the mutual benefits of exchange and reducing complex economic interactions to a simplistic story of exploitation. This perspective aligns with criticisms of free market thinkers like Friedrich Hayek, who highlighted the “knowledge problem” of centralized planning(1)(4).
- The article highlights a lack of ideological coherence among the Republicans, noting that Trump policies contradict conservative principles of defensive long -standing defended by personalities like Milton Friedman and Adam Smith, who argued that individuals and businesses – not political decision -makers – are the best placed to allocate effectively effectively effectively –(4)(5).
Different views on the subject
- Supporters argue that prices are necessary to resolve trade deficits, protect national industries and counter the exploitation perceived by foreign nations. The White House frames prices in response to “non -reciprocal treatment” and policies such as manipulation of currencies, aimed at strengthening national security and economic sovereignty(2)(3).
- Supporters claim that centralized economic intervention can correct market failures and rebuild critical supply chains, in particular in manufacturing. This is aligned with Trump's assertion that prices will encourage domestic production and reduce dependence on foreign opponents(2)(5).
- Some defenders reject criticism on the free and obsolete market, arguing that globalization requires aggressive measures to protect American interests. The documents of the 2025 project suggest that the tax reductions for the rich and deregulation could compensate for the economic impacts of the prices, although criticism argues that this would exacerbate inequality(3)(5).
