Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'Donald Trump'

Understanding Trump: The Deal-Maker as Redistributionist

[Note: This is the second in an occasional series evaluating the remaining presidential candidates and their views on economics and liberty. You can find the first article here.] In the previous article in this series I explained that the key to understanding Donald Trump’s economic policies is the recognition that, for him, policy and principle are secondary to process. Continue Reading...

The Despotic Reign of Fear

Yesterday was both Star Wars Day (May the Fourth) and the day that Donald Trump became the presumptive presidential nominee for the Republican party. I reflected on the confluence of these two phenomena in a short essay on what Mr. Continue Reading...

Why Edmund Burke Supported Free Trade

The Republican Party is fracturing on the topic of trade. Alas, in the same corners where free and open exchange was once embraced as a propeller for economic growth and dynamism, protectionism is starting to stick. Continue Reading...

Donald Trump and Milton Friedman Debate Free Trade

If it wasn’t for Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump would win the title of most economically illiterate presidential candidate in the short history of the twenty-first century. A prime example of why he’d earn this ignoble title is Trump’s opposition to free trade — a position which, not surprisingly, he shares with Sanders. Continue Reading...

The dangers of political populism

Reason doesn’t seem to have had a significant influence in the election thus far. Populism, on the other hand, has been having a good run. Despite Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders appealing to very different groups and offering seemingly different platforms, they’re both populists. Continue Reading...