Free Markets or America First? I’m Both, and It’s Not Close.

I hear this one a lot from my libertarian friends: “You say you love free markets, but you also cheer for America First. Pick one.”

I don’t have to. They fit together. Let me show you.

Start with the bedrock

At the 2019 State of the Union (opens in a new tab), President Trump said, “America was founded on liberty and independence, and not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free and we will stay free.” And then the line that’s on the banner of this very website: “Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

That’s not a man who wants the government running your business. That’s a man who believes free people, free to work and build and own, are the engine of national greatness. Me too.

Look at what he actually cut

Want proof that America First is pro-market? Look at the tax law. Under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill, businesses get a permanent 100% first-year depreciation deduction (opens in a new tab) for qualified equipment. Manufacturers can elect to write off up to 100% of the building (opens in a new tab) the year it goes into service. And per Grant Thornton’s summary (opens in a new tab), the Section 179 expensing limit that a lot of small businesses use went from $1 million to $2.5 million.

Translation: when you invest in your own business, Washington lets you keep more of your money, sooner. That is about as free-market as tax policy gets. It rewards risk-taking and production instead of punishing them.

So what about trade?

This is where people think the contradiction is. Tariffs, they say, aren’t free market.

Here’s how I see it. A market only works when the rules are fair and the players are actually playing by them. For decades, we let other countries subsidize their industries, steal our intellectual property, and dump goods below cost, and then we called it “free trade” when our plants closed. That was never a free market. That was a rigged one, and American workers paid the price.

America First trade policy is about forcing fair rules on people who weren’t following any. In that same 2019 speech, the President asked Congress to pass the Reciprocal Trade Act, so that “if another country places an unfair tariff on an American product, we can charge them the exact same tariff on the exact same product that they sell to us.” Reciprocity. That’s not socialism. That’s the golden rule with a calculator.

A market needs a nation

Markets don’t float in space. They live inside countries, with borders, laws, courts and people who share a home. A free market in America should make Americans more prosperous. If our policy makes a few global firms richer while hollowing out the towns that built this country, something’s broken.

Pope Leo XIII said it beautifully back in 1891 in Rerum Novarum (opens in a new tab): the law “should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.” That’s what I want. Main Street full of owners. Hardware stores, machine shops, bakeries, family farms. Not just a few giant landlords and everybody else renting their lives.

Where I land

I’m a capitalist. I’m an America First guy. I don’t see any tension, because the goal is the same: a country where free people can build, own and prosper, right here at home.

Low taxes, light regulation, fair trade and strong borders. That’s the recipe. And it’s working.

Sources

• President Trump, State of the Union, February 5, 2019 (opens in a new tab)
• IRS, permanent 100% first-year depreciation under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill (opens in a new tab)
• IRS, qualified production property guidance (opens in a new tab)
• Grant Thornton, summary of OBBBA expensing changes (Section 179) (opens in a new tab)
• Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (1891) (opens in a new tab)