The 'Meritocracy' Lie
Two months after he was inaugurated, Trump has smashed many of the government's silly DEI rules. But he hasn't created a new age of meritocracy.
On Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump vowed to "forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based."
Less than two weeks later, Vice President J.D. Vance's office hired Buckley Carlson—the 24-year-old son of former Fox News host and popular conservative pundit Tucker Carlson—as deputy press secretary.
At least young Buckley can be certain that he didn't get the job because of the color of his skin.
The dismantling of the federal government's various so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies has been one of the signature efforts of the first two months of the second Trump administration. Those rules often required that factors like race, gender, and ethnicity be considered alongside (or even ahead of) other more important things when the government was hiring, promoting, or awarding taxpayer-funded contracts.
To be clear, the DEI regime was (and is) fundamentally unfair and discriminatory. It also just plain didn't work, as Editor at Large Matt Welch detailed at length in the June 2021 issue of Reason. Anyone who values individual talent over immutable, collective characteristics should applaud DEI's fading power.
And yet, what Trump has done over these first two months seems to be a long, long way from restoring meritocracy to the federal government or society at large—often in ways that matter much more than a silly patronage job handed out to Tucker Carlson's kid.
Start with some of the personnel decisions the administration has made. Reducing the size of the federal workforce is a laudable goal, but the mass firings carried out by Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) seem to have targeted probationary employees (those on the job less than a year, generally) first and foremost—despite DOGE's public claims to the contrary. That's an arbitrary approach that says absolutely nothing about merit and protects more senior employees simply because they've been around longer. Rather than promoting meritocracy, it is the sort of "last in, first out" thinking you'd expect from a teachers' union.
That approach sits awkwardly alongside this week's big news story: that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth disclosed sensitive operational details about a military operation in a group chat that included The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg. Goldberg was reportedly invited to the chat by Michael Waltz, Trump's national security adviser, who has now also been put in charge of the investigation into how all of that happened. (Cue the meme!)
The implications have not gone unnoticed. If no one is fired over the group chat snafu, writes journalist Zaid Jilani, then "the message is that accountability is only for people at the bottom. People at the top can get away with anything."
"There is no administration in the world—beyond this one—where a blunder of these proportions happens and nobody gets fired or resigns. Not in London. Not in Moscow. Not in Tokyo. Not in Pyongyang. Nowhere," is how Politico summed it up on Thursday.
Without accountability, all that talk about meritocracy is pretty meaningless.
The Trump administration's blatant anti-meritocracy extends into policymaking as well. Tariffs and other trade restrictions are simply "DEI" for companies that engage in commerce that the Trump administration favors. If American consumers want to buy a car made in Japan, they should not be punished for that choice. If an American manufacturer decides that the best way to build a gadget is to combine doohickies made in Mexico with widgets from Brazil, the president's opinion should not matter.
Worse, tariffs also create incentives for businesses to seek political favors rather than succeed on merit alone. That's not unique to tariffs, of course—lobbying frenzies occur anytime the government is so directly picking winners and losers—but tariffs tend to take that to another level. Back in 2020, for example, a single request for a tariff exemption ended up involving dozens of lawmakers and lobbyists petitioning the Commerce Department. "What a sorry example of how tariffs have become another opportunity for government intervention based on political power, not business necessity," is how The Wall Street Journal described it. Trump is now inviting more of that.
A free market is the ultimate judge of merit, and each time Trump substitutes the preferences of central planners in place of the wisdom of consumers, he is working to undermine the meritocracy that he claims to favor.
Restrictions on immigration are anti-meritocratic for the same reason. If Trump truly sought "a society that is colorblind and merit-based," as he said on Inauguration Day, then his administration would be throwing open the gates so that the best and brightest might have a chance to succeed here. Immigrants are more likely to start businesses than native-born Americans and are less likely to draw upon the welfare system. In a meritocracy, immigrants often win—and, indeed, that's one of the reasons why America has become the wealthiest nation in the history of the planet.
Toss Trump's attacks on free speech onto the pile. The marketplace of ideas should be the ultimate meritocracy, but the Trump administration is undermining it by targeting legal residents for the opinions they've expressed. Meanwhile, Trump's appointees at the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission seem to think they have the power to override editorial decisions made by social media platforms, as Reason's Jacob Sullum has detailed.
All of this pushes the federal government and American society farther away from the meritocracy that Trump and his allies have promised.
Writing in the Washington Examiner a few weeks into the Trump administration, Robert Chernin praised what he called a "return to meritocracy" that "does not just benefit one group."
"It elevates our entire society," Chernin wrote. "It ensures that the most capable among us, regardless of our background, are the ones to lead our institutions and businesses. It champions true diversity—the diversity of thought, experience, and approach. Most importantly, it restores faith in the American dream and the work ethic that goes with it: the belief that anyone, from anywhere, can rise based on their merits."
That all sounds great! The Trump administration should do those things! It should try to ensure that "anyone, from anywhere" can succeed, even if they were born in another country or (gasp!) want to purchase a product made in Canada. It should pare back the federal workforce to more efficiently provide services to taxpayers, without regard for seniority. It should not tolerate incompetence, especially not from those in leadership positions.
Until that happens, enough with the "meritocracy" talk from the people who think they know how to build a car better than Toyota or act as if American companies are so helpless they need protection from foreign competitors. The Trump administration, so far, seems mostly fixated on rewarding friends and punishing perceived enemies. There's a word for that, but it sure isn't "meritocracy."
But, hey, at least Buckley Carlson will be okay.
