Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. Treasury is working to restore economic security as the foundation that allows a nation to fulfill its most basic obligations.
Emboldened by our actions, other countries began to exploit our dependence as leverage. Now is the time to correct this. We need to insist on trade that is fair, reciprocal and consistent with our national interest. This is why the U.S. Treasury is organizing its economic statecraft around five core principles.
First, economic security begins with national capacity. We have rediscovered at great cost what Alexander Hamilton taught us: that every nation “ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply.” Our strength is derived from what we can build, for the nation that can’t produce what it needs isn’t truly secure. The nation that depends on its adversaries for critical inputs isn’t truly sovereign. And the nation that reduces its economics to consumption isn’t truly prosperous.
The Hamiltonian point about security and sovereignty is perfectly obvious. How foolish to be dependent upon a geopolitical adversary such as the Chinese Communists for pharmaceuticals and semiconductors! But that dependence is what the Democrats allowed, whatever their motives.
This is why we are lucky that Donald J. Trump came along. You may find him stylistically off-putting, as I do, but substance trumps style, a fact that escapes the stylish but merely performative Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris. If it is style you want, Melania has more than enough for both POTUS and FLOTUS.
For my edgier political observations, take a gander at my Facebook page, where I do not hesitate to impute motives to our political enemies. And yes, they are enemies, even if you do not want to go all the way with Carl Schmitt.