How Trump Imperils Free Markets and Personal Liberties

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank provides a helpful summary, with a little help from me.

Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, recently said the Post opinion page should be "writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets." This inspired Post columnist Dana Milbank to write a helpful piece outlining some of the many ways in which the new Trump administration threatens those values:

Personal liberties and free markets are part of the American creed. But many readers I've heard from suspect the words are cover for a plan to turn this into a MAGA-friendly outlet.

I don't yet know for sure. But this much is clear: If we as a newspaper, and we as a country, are to defend his twin pillars, then we must redouble our fight against the single greatest threat to "personal liberties and free markets" in the United States today: President Donald Trump…..

Claiming monarchical powers, attacking the free press, starting trade wars, cutting off legal immigration, siding with despots over free countries, politicizing law enforcement and the military, assaulting the judicial system and injecting crony capitalism at the highest levels of government: These are all the very antithesis of "personal liberties and free markets."

Milbank also interviewed me about this issue, and quoted a few things I said:

"I think, and many of us (libertarians) think, that the Trump administration is very bad on these metrics of both economic and personal liberty," [Somin] told me. "The massive trade wars that he's starting right and left go against Econ 101 as well as any libertarian principle. There's the mass deportation and immigration restrictions, which restrict both economic and personal liberty on a massive scale. There's his attacks on the freedom of the press, which are also troubling," as is Trump's "kissing the rear end of dictators like Vladimir Putin."

Somin likes some of Trump's efforts to cut regulations and taxes, but "if you look at the cumulative impact … the horrible things Trump is doing massively outweigh many times over the good that he might do in a few areas."

He rattled off a list of Trump's offenses against personal liberties and free markets. The president, by circumventing Congress's constitutional spending authority, is making the treasury "essentially the personal piggy bank of one man," which is "extremely dangerous from the libertarian point of view." Trump's attempts to cut federal spending and the workforce, though laudable, "are actually pretty piddling, and some of them may even make the federal budgetary and regulatory situation worse" because of their ham-handed implementation. His takeover of independent federal agencies raises libertarian concerns because it puts massive governmental power "concentrated in the hands of one man." His attempts to dictate school curriculums under the guise of abolishing DEI, and his discrimination against transgender people also offend libertarian principles. The GOP budget that passed the House this week with Trump's help "will massively add to the deficit," Somin pointed out, while doing nothing to stop the major entitlement programs, Medicare and Social Security, from "just handing out money to the nonpoor elderly or even the affluent elderly."

Somin said the handing over of taxpayers' personal information to unvetted members of Musk's team violates personal liberties. Trump's attacks on media outlets critical of him are classic "weaponization of government," Somin added, and his packing of the Justice Department and FBI with loyalists is "scary and dangerous." The presence of "cranks like RFK Jr." overseeing health policy will reduce access to medicines and vaccines, which is "just a straightforward violation of libertarian principles." And the president's crackdown on migration is "a severe restriction on both the economic and personal liberty of native-born Americans. People who want to hire immigrants or engage in social relations with them cannot do that if those people are not allowed to enter the country."

The professor was heavily critical of the Biden administration, too, most notably for unilaterally forgiving student loans. But "Trump is worse," Somin said, because "under Biden there was just no equivalent to the massive assault on immigration and trade," nor Trump's attempt "to usurp the entire spending power from Congress." In sum, Trump's approach is "irreconcilable" with the principles of free markets and personal liberties.

I outlined how severe immigration restrictions like those Trump is implementing, threaten liberty in greater detail here.  The fundamental problem with Trump's administration is that the modest good he is doing on a few issues is massively outweighed by the immense scale of the harm, which includes massive trade wars with nearly all major trade partners, the most draconian immigration restrictions in modern history (save possibly those in force at the height of Covid), and undermining the Western alliance to the great benefit of authoritarian enemies like Russia and China.

I was, as Milbank notes, highly critical of many Biden policies, such as massive unilateral use of executive power to institute student loan forgiveness, and the abuse of the Covid emergency to perpetuate a nationwide eviction moratorium and bogus public health immigration restrictions. But Trump's assaults on liberty and constitutional government are substantially worse.

I don't agree with every point Milbank makes. For example, while Trump may be wrong to seek a federal takeover of the DC government, it isn't really a matter of personal liberties or free markets. But he's right about the overall picture.

I speak only for myself. But it's worth noting that I'm far from the only libertarian or libertarian-leaning commentator to sound the alarm about the new administration. For example, my Cato Institute colleagues Walter Olson, Alex Nowrasteh, David Bier, Scott Lincicome, Michael Cannon, and Patrick Eddington have also outlined the grave dangers posed by many of the new administration's policies.

Comments

[SRG2]

It was indeed an excellent article.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Bullbleep.

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkNOlCK1jyw

[SRG2]

Got a link to a transcript?

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Youtube supplies one. Click "more", and near the end is "Show transcript". It displays on the right side of the video.

[mike petrik]

Urban planner. 5 or 10?

[Ama Valde Intellectum]

That doesn't make it so.
Take the measles thing...of course after lying grandly about COVID , Biden gave many people cause to not even accept the usual medical advice. The problem is the govt not that dead child.
I got two vaccines because a famly member is immuno-comprimised. A very dumb thing it turns out.
Immigration? We don't even know if millions accept all men created equal , with rights from their Creator --seems the killers driving into crowds only came here to kill.
And how does touting trans like Dylan Mulvaney help my school children. They are fallling behind in the most important subjects and you argue that we need more homosexual pervert penguin books

[Hugh]

Thank you, Professor Somin. I'm not a libertarian, though I agree with many of your policy views. The clear and present danger of the madman in the White House and his enablers was reinforced by events today.

Just to let you know, I am an urban planner by profession and, while I disagree with many of your views on the subject, wholeheartedly agree with your views on the plague that exclusive single family residential zoning has had on our housing markets and supply. The state where I work and live has made major strides to break the cartel that existing single family homeowners and developers of low density housing have imposed on America by improperly using the power of local governments.

[Dr. Ed 2]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkNOlCK1jyw

[Ama Valde Intellectum]

Funny, the goofiest peson I worked with in my consulting career had been an urban planner. Such city urban expirements all over the country. Ugly buildings, unsafe neighborhoods, creeps and deviants sleeping on the shit-covered sidewalk....

[JoeFromtheBronx]

As to D.C.:

And he proposed that “we should take over Washington, D.C.” and deny its 700,000 citizens the right of self-governance.

As applied, this is going to infringe on personal liberties. By definition, it is more about local self-control, which is repeatedly promoted as a libertarian value. "Self-governing" is a component of personal liberty.

I won't carp too much, though, on not including it in the "personal liberty" box. I would note that underlines why it's silly to only be concerned about those two things. Democracy is likewise something a newspaper op-ed department should be quite concerned about.

[AmosArch]

Why does DC have the right to both be the capitol and simultaneously be its own autonomous entity? DC exists and continues to be maintained by untold gimmiedats funneled into it over the centuries by the country as a whole. By design and by history it should belong to all US citizens not just a chosen few who happen to live nearby.

[bacchys]

It does belong to all of us, but everyone else also gets to govern themselves locally, without the rest of the country butting in. Residents of the Capitol should also get that, and the current structure means they do.

[AmosArch]

DC would be a literal swamp without the taxpayer funds from across the country that constantly come in so they have a little bit of a right to 'butt in'. Specifically in matters that effect the outside like certain legislation and federal elections. DC has unprecedented privileges both as a capitol and as a pseudostate that no other area of the country gets. So it should pick a lane. Truly local matters like how much exactly they charge for electricity or sales tax I agree they can keep that among themselves and I doubt very many people care.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

There is not a "chosen few"- the local control should be for the people who live there. They are not "chosen."

They also are numerically larger than the population of multiple states and territories that have local control.

Local control was in place multiple times over our history.

[AmosArch]

There is not a "chosen few"- the local control should be for the people who live there. They are not "chosen."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

They can have local control. Its called being a city just like all the other cities in the US.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
They also are numerically larger than the population of multiple states and territories that have local control.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Two states and not by much. Due almost entirely to the largesse from the coffers of the country rather than any genuinely homegrown sweat. Wyoming probably could have been pretty big and influential if it had the infinite money spigot DC does. Morally why do they deserve it any less than DC?

[JoeFromtheBronx]

They can have local control. It's called being a city just like all the other cities in the US.

Okay. So what's the dispute? New York City has autonomy. The federal government, like Trump proposes, doesn't control it.

==

Two other states don't have much larger populations. Toss in multiple territories. The so-called "few" have equal moral rights to local self-government.

And there is no "infinite" money coming to D.C. Multiple states also take in more federal funds than they pay in taxes.

[AmosArch]

Okay. So what's the dispute? New York City has autonomy. The federal government, like Trump proposes, doesn't control it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Are you taking the piss? DC has greater privileges like their own electoral votes than New York City. DC should be treated just like any other city which is directly subjected to a higher level of government, although NYC has much more of an argument for being its own thing.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And there is no "infinite" money coming to D.C. Multiple states also take in more federal funds than they pay in taxes.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Again I don't know if you are purposely pretending to be obtuse. True value is not created by bureaucrats in washington but by individuals all over the country. There is effectively tons of value from the rest of the country coming into DC which has gotten far more from this welfare than any other area of the country you can name. And even though this redistribution exists it doesn't mean DC should keep its special privileges when the only 'benefit' is to gerrymander the country a tad bit more to help Democrats.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

You are bouncing around so let's not talk about "taking a piss" (is that a British thing?). You talked about "autonomy" and seem to acknowledge it is fine to think D.C. should have it.

That's the bottom line, given the Trump thing referenced, which would take that away. NYC currently is provided electoral votes according to its congressional districts.

The state as a state also gets two electoral votes. Population-wise, NYC has over 40% of the state population. That's basically one electoral vote.

D.C. gets three where mere numbers would warrant one but also is limited to that of the smallest state even if its population grows larger than that state.

D.C. is not treated like any other city. Congress has special power over it. Also, the 23A was a compromise since others wanted to give D.C. more. The two extra electoral votes don't amount to much in the long run. And, population-wise, multiple states have a comparable benefit. NYC effectively also has a comparable benefit.

Again, whatever "true value" is involved (a subjective enterprise), there is no "infinite" value. And multiple states get more than they give back. The value D.C. has is earned as the nation's capital. This is not just some "Democratic" thing.

BTW, I didn't promote D.C. statehood in my original comment.

[Sarcastr0]

the right to both...the capitol

What?

[Noscitur a sociis]

Recite capital, presumably. As I’m pretty confident you knew.

[Sarcastr0]

I get that wrong all the time; I didn't event notice that part. And I have no standing to ding people for that kinda thing.

But there is no right to be the capital; that's incoherent.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

No more incoherent than you pretending to not understand what it means. Languages have a lot of redundancy built in just because humans are so sloppy. You should take advantage of it.

[Sarcastr0]

It's incoherent. AA is saying you can't have both rights, when one thing is not a right, not a thing you exercise at all, and most people in DC proper don't care.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Why does DC have the right to both be the capitol and simultaneously be its own autonomous entity?"

Two accidents of history -- DC was a Southern city where Blacks were treated a lot better than they were in neighboring states. (Remember that both MD and DE were Slave states, even if not in the Confederacy.) And then there was WWII and DC became the center of a global military effort that didn't involve traveling to DC for a few months and then going home.

You also have to understand how paranoid, truly paranoid, the various STATE representatives were in 1787 about some city in some OTHER state becoming the new capitol. Philadelphia was the biggest city, also centrally located which is why the conventions were there, Boston (if you include it's immediate suburbs) was the second biggest in the era of sail, NYC (the first capitol) was third.

DC doesn't make the top ten biggest US cities until 1950.

And the founding fathers never really asked who would own/maintain the hotels that the Congress critters stayed in, who would produce and supply the food, etc. They never thought about that and hence designed DC as a place where no one lived and everyone could (and did) vote somewhere else.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

As for the 700,000 residents, Trump can just remove them, like he has proposed for the residents of Gaza. It should be a lot easier to relocate 700k than 2m, surely?

Imagine a District of Columbia with only the beautiful people in it!

[Noscitur a sociis]

As applied, this is going to infringe on personal liberties.

The DC government’s oppressive and unconstitutional laws led to the most important civil rights case this century.

[AmosArch]

Cutting off the taxpayer money spigot to transgender forest consultants and opposing banning prayer in homes. Totally out of control threat to personal liberty and free markets!

[bernard11]

opposing banning prayer in homes.

Who, exactly is trying to ban prayer in homes?

Or is this just another RW effort to stoke outrage with a bunch of lies, which gullible fools like you cheerfully spread.

[AmosArch]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DfDRo4Oo9KU

Its right here straight from the freedom loving Europeans mouth.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/praying-at-home-illegal-depending-on-who-passes-window-msp-admits-82qqptl2h

Of course crickets from MSM so I'm not surprised you haven't heard.

[Sarcastr0]

"Mackay dismissed Vance’s claims as “absolute nonsense” but acknowledged that a person could, hypothetically, face legal action for praying in a “performative” way at a window within a buffer zone."

"A Scottish Greens spokesman said Mackay’s comments “were made in jest to a podcast”

So aRW effort to stoke outrage with a bunch of half-truths.

Much better.

[AmosArch]

Gaslighto gaslights the statement to be a joke which you can clearly hear is not the case if you actually listen to the clip while simultaneously moving the window of acceptability so the flagellant violation of freedom of expression that is prayer bans in general be they public or private as the new normal to argue from. What a maestro.

[Sarcastr0]

The joke bit is a quote from your linked article.

Did you read what you linked?

[MollyGodiva]

Wow. A fascist does not like free markets and personal liberties. I'm shocked I say shocked.

[Roger S]

Yes, Somin is against free markets and personal liberties.

[Daddyhill]

Thanks, Ilya, for prizing honesty, candor, and first principles.

I believe that it's not really necessary to be a libertarian to criticize and oppose Trump. It's necessary only to be an American who remembers when we actually were great.

[Please, Daivd, Seek Help]

> I don't agree with every point Milbank makes. For example, while Trump may be wrong to seek a federal takeover of the DC government, it isn't really a matter of personal liberties or free markets.

I really liked "Freedom to Move". I'm a non-lawyer who has been beginning research on how people weigh catastrophic but low probability risk (in the context of risks of war, deteriorating local conditions, climate, the prospective of restrictive policies) and so obviously engaging with your work is an important part of how I'm thinking about the problem.

In the book, my understanding was that you typically express the case that foot voting is enabled by federalism and that decentralized control best empowers foot voting. You often do it semi-parenthetically, I think because you don't want your case for foot voting to be buried under concerns about substantive policy disagreements, but it seems like a pretty clear throughline in the book for me.

You are vociferously opposed to restrictions on migration because you think they impinge foot voting; surely a "supply side" restriction (on the existence of a political jurisdiction to move to) is as bad as a "demand side" restriction (on the ability of a person to physically move)

I would think the nationalization of DC administration further than it is already is a quintessentially antifederalist move. I am surprised to find you don't think dismantling structures of federalism presents an issue for personal liberty for you. (Even beyond the fact that ballot box voting -- or in Hirschman's sense the broader "voice" are also negatively impacted by the erosion of federalism and those are also personal liberties).

[MaddogEngineer]

The residents of the district are free to migrate elsewhere, to any state in the Union, where they will have full democratic representation and no longer be oppressed. Freedom to move, vote with your feet, yada yada...

[Please, Daivd, Seek Help]

Of course. But in the book, the personal liberty benefits of foot voting are guaranteed by having places you can _go to_. This is part of what underpins his views on immigration. He often mentions laboratories of democracy, lots of federalism and decentralization, market of ideas, etc. Clearly it's not fatal to go from N to N-1 jurisdictions but it should at least be considered a bad thing in his worldview.

[MaddogEngineer]

Milibank is fundamentally wrong, framing the abolishment of DC home rule as a federal takeover. The federal government has always been the final, ultimate authority of the district, even if Congress has chosen not to exercise it directly.

Sorry to offend district residents, but I as a Pennsylvanian have as much say (and maybe more honestly) about the district as they do. The rule of law remains the rule of law. It's why I've supported the idea of amending the Constitution to give the district a single congressman but no senators (and sure, maintaining its 3 electoral votes from prior amendment). Nobody wants that. Too bad.

[Sarcastr0]

"It's legal therefore it's cool and good" is the argument of a totalitarian.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

No, a lawyer. All lawyers. Or at least the half on whatever side is winning at the moment.

[Sarcastr0]

Your hate makes you weird.

The engineer I'm replying to is arguing what's cool and good. And his argument is legal things are all cool and good. You'd think you would have an issue with that.

Nope. Just want to whine about lawyers.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Gosh. I wonder what your weirdness comes from. Being a know-it-all statist is my guess. Can't stand people who don't bow and scrape to the elite.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Give it back to Maryland...

[ReadMore]

This. Retrocession. Make DC 20 square blocks bounded by 2nd, H St, the interstates, and the Potomac. Then no one’s voting rights are being trod upon.

[Sarcastr0]

The issue there is no one wants DC residents, and DC residents don't want to be retroceded.

[Mr. Bumble]

Sounds like they are like Palestinians.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Everyone outside of DC’s voting rights would be trod upon, since the people who live there would still get three electoral votes.

[Jmaie]

"the single greatest threat to "personal liberties and free markets" in the United States today: President Donald Trump….."

He/they aren't that far off the mark, but is it just me or does this kind of rhetoric diminish the impact of the underlying message?

[damikesc]

Dana Milbank already beclowns any point attempted to be made.

[damikesc]

But it is nice to see Ilya sinking to his true intellectual level.

Dana Milbank --- when Keith Olbermann is just too intellectual for you.

[Incunabulum]

The only question is - more or less than previous administrations.

My money is on less and that's a win, however small.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

DEI, CRT, misgendering your children is child abuse, unreliable energy, inflation, encouraging Putin's invasion of Ukraine -- all those have done more damage than anything Trump has done, and he's always obeyed the courts when the tell him no, unlike Biden and his student loan shenanigans.

And then there's four years of Biden the Senile being manipulated by unelected unknown puppet masters. That's a foundational undermining of democracy far worse than anything that happened Jan 6th.

[Incunabulum]

>Claiming monarchical powers, attacking the free press, starting trade wars, . . . , siding with despots over free countries, politicizing law enforcement and the military, assaulting the judicial system and injecting crony capitalism at the highest levels of government:

Deja Vu

[шинка]

The sky is fucking falling.

Conjecture.

Why shouldn't any branch of government test its boundraies?

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Yeah! What could possibly go wrong?

[bernard11]

Are we facing an infestation of Reason commenters?

[Roger S]

Milbank and Somin are Trump-haters, and not libertarians. If they were for personal freedom, they would be in favor of Trump's proposal to sell $5 million gold card visas, and stop giving immigrant visas for free. Somin's proposed open borders is a gigantic wealth transfer from Americans to foreigners.

[Noscitur a sociis]

If they were for personal freedom, they would be in favor of Trump's proposal to sell $5 million gold card visas, and stop giving immigrant visas for free.

In what way does this promote personal freedom?

[Roger S]

Open borders restrict freedom, because they force people to live in crowded areas as too many people come in. It would allow Americans to live more as they want to live.

[David Nieporent]

Schlafly: Allowing black people to buy homes in my neighborhood hurts my freedom to live in a place without black people. Emancipation hurt freedom because it prevented me from owning slaves.

[Commenter_XY]

So why are businesses like Apple and SoftBank and OpenAI and Oracle investing here in America to the tune of 1T+? Why do they choose America, since POTUS Trump (a free market billionaire himself), is such a threat to personal liberty and free markets?

Their actions make the words of Milbank and Professor Somin just blather.

[SRG2]

"I'm in favor [sic] of free markets and personal liberties and I support Trump so this article must be wrong" says every pro-Krasnov poster here, none of whom are in favour of free markets or personal liberties.

Hint: you're not in favour of personal liberties if you're happy that the man with his boot on the neck of others is the man you voted for.,
K
"

[Noscitur a sociis]

[sic]

Heh.

[Brett Bellmore]

Are you under the impression that calling Trump "Krasnov" does anything beyond making you look like a lunatic?

[Noscitur a sociis]

.

[ReaderY]

I am going to suggest that that the economy and society Trump seeks is closer to the world Dune than to the previous economy. A Dune wifh computers. A combination of technology and oligarchical quasi-monopoly enables a relatively small number of Great people to seize complete control and to turn the society and economy into seeving them. Both domestic and foreign policy are essentially feudal and imperial, with serfs working under the thumb of the great lords and foreign relations consisting of a few Great Powers and a system of vassals, protectorates, and colonies for the rest.

The concepts of free markets and individual liberties are essentially irrelevant in this system . And the nation-state system also becomes a thing of the past. What emerges is an oligarchical crony capitalism that is more like the feudal system than the system of Adam Smith.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm going to suggest that, like many on the left, you're caught up in a moral arms race, where the winner is whoever publicly claims the opposition is worst.

The result is a never ending spiral of ever more hysterical assertions about the foe, in this case Trump.