MAGA policies would make America mediocre

Mint

2 days ago

'MAGA" was always an insult to the United States. Make America great again? Wasn't this country great when Donald Trump rode down that escalator in 2015? Now, as Trump 2.0 unfolds, the president seems intent on turning this insult into a reality by damaging or destroying much of what has made America great over 2½ centuries—including the rule of law.
The survival of our republic is at stake. But since I'm an economist, I'll stick to how MAGA policies are undermining America's economic greatness.
Topping the list of what made our economy great is relatively free-market capitalism, supported by the rule of law. The U.S. has no monopoly on capitalism, but our version has traditionally been freer from regulation and taxed more lightly than, say, Europe's. Our sturdy rule of law has been a huge strength, attracting capital and brain power.
The word 'relatively" does a lot of work, however. Every economy needs some regulation for health, safety, and other reasons. Every country needs to levy taxes to pay its bills. Democrats and Republicans have argued for decades over how much (and how) to regulate and tax, and those battles will continue long after MAGA is a bad memory.
But when the White House begins telling companies like Walmart when it may raise prices, or Apple where it should make phones, that's not normal capitalism.
America's economic greatness has also relied, among other things, on what might be called the federal-industrial-university complex in science and engineering. This engine of growth has been central to American economic exceptionalism. No other nation comes close. Yet each piece is now being undermined by MAGA.
The U.S. government has been promoting scientific advances at least since Vannevar Bush, the engineer whose scientific leadership helped win World War II. He convinced President Harry S. Truman and Congress that such advances were crucial to national security and economic growth.
Some of the research is done directly by the government in national laboratories such as Brookhaven and Los Alamos. Some is done at the National Institutes of Health. Some is done cooperatively between government and private companies, such as the life-saving mRNA vaccines for Covid-19. And a great deal is done at research universities, typically with federal grants. Importantly, the funding hasn't been politically based.
Until now. Elon Musk's chainsaw approach has decimated or eliminated entire scientific units within the federal government. Green technology and anything that smacks of DEI are particular targets. But when you cut with a chainsaw rather than scissors, accidents happen. Remember those nuclear-safety employees?
The national labs, the National Science Foundation and even the NIH are all looking at serious budget cuts nowadays. Will these make our nation greater?
America's universities, the best in the world, merit special discussion because Mr. Trump has declared war on them, starting with Columbia and Harvard. First a small point: University education is an export industry for the U.S. In the president's distorted view of international trade, we are supposed to export more than we import. Well, the higher education industry does exactly that. Vastly more (paying) foreign students come here than American students go abroad. And it's not because our universities are cheaper. It's because they are better.
But the main point is about science, and the extensive cooperation among research universities, government and private industry. America's universities employ many thousands of scientists, including some of the best. Will taking their grants away, sometimes in midproject, make our country greater?
Our universities also teach many other subjects, some of which Mr. Trump doesn't like. Classroom discussions in these 'other" subjects may sometimes veer in anti-MAGA directions. That seems to upset the president. But should the federal government try to stop that by, for example, threatening to ruin the universities financially? The First Amendment has a clear answer: No. And so does any effort to keep America great.
Universities are unusual 'businesses." While most aren't run for profit, they do need to pay their bills, including for research support. A few, like Harvard, are very wealthy. Most aren't. But even the richest universities are poorly positioned to withstand a major withdrawal of federal funds. Research and much else will suffer.
Too few Americans, I fear, see the attack on universities as an attack on scientific and therefore economic progress. Maybe it's hard to generate sympathy for Harvard. But do we really want to make America mediocre again?
Mr. Blinder is a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton. He served as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, 1994-96.