When President Donald Trump won a second term, the question wasn’t whether his economic policy would be different from the first-term version, but how. Two factions have vied to steer the administration’s agenda: Conservative populists came with a plan to roll back globalization and empower the working class. And the tech right brought a vision of an accelerated future driven by innovation and disruption.
当唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）赢得第二任期时，问题不是他的经济政策是否与第一任版本有所不同，而是如何不同。有两个派别争取行政部门的议程：保守派民粹主义者提出了一项计划，以退缩全球化并赋予工人阶级权力。技术权的权利带来了对创新和破坏驱动的加速未来的愿景。
Vice President J. D. Vance announced in March that “as a proud member of both tribes,” he believed that “this idea that tech-forward people and the populists are somehow inevitably going to come to loggerheads is wrong.” Trump would blend the two visions into a new synthesis that would simultaneously lift up his downscale voting base and unleash technological progress.
副总统J. D. Vance在三月份宣布“作为两个部落的骄傲成员”，他认为“这一想法是，技术前进的人和民粹主义者不可避免地会出现loggerheads是错误的。”特朗普将这两种愿景融入了一种新的综合，这将同时提高他的低档投票基础并释放技术进步。
Three months later, the product that has emerged is not a better iteration of the original Trumponomics, which consisted largely of conventional Republican policy, but a worse one, much worse. It has managed, amazingly, to abandon the two tribes’ most attractive proposals while retaining the least-appealing elements of each. It discards the futuristic ambition of the tech right while preserving its social Darwinism. It leans into the closed-off nostalgia of the populist right while ignoring populists’ impulse to help workers.
三个月后，出现的产品并不是原始的特朗普工具的更好的迭代，该产品主要由常规的共和党政策组成，但更糟糕的是，更糟糕的是。令人惊讶的是，它设法放弃了两个部落最有吸引力的建议，同时保留每个部落最不可能的元素。它在保留其社会达尔文主义的同时，抛弃了技术权利的未来派野心。它倾向于封闭的民粹主义者怀旧，同时忽略了民粹主义者的冲动来帮助工人。
One measure of the dismal result of the administration’s agenda is the slew of projections about the fiscal and economic effects of its tariffs and the megabill racing through Congress. The policies, in combination, amount to an enormous transfer of resources from people at the bottom of the economic scale to those at the top. The Yale Budget Lab projects that the bottom four-fifths of the income distribution would be made poorer by the combined tariffs and megabill, while only the most affluent would come out ahead. That is an incredible result for an administration that is increasing the national debt.
政府议程的令人沮丧的结果的一项衡量标准是关于其关税和大型赛车通过国会的财政和经济影响的预测。这些政策结合起来等于从经济规模底部的人们转移到顶部的政策。耶鲁大学预算实验室预算指出，收入分配的最低五分之一将被合并的关税和大型巨头差，而只有最富裕的人才能提前。对于正在增加国家债务的政府来说，这是一个令人难以置信的结果。
Jonathan Chait: The largest upward transfer of wealth in American history
乔纳森·查特（Jonathan Chait）：美国历史上最大的向上转移
Various economic models disagree as to whether the megabill would have no effect on economic growth or actually inhibit it. Again, this would be a normal outcome for a plan that would shrink the deficit, but it’s a difficult result to pull off when you are pumping stimulus into the economy. The perverse consequence of Trump’s plan to tariff foreign trade, cut taxes for the affluent, and take health insurance from some 10 million Americans is a smaller pie, divided less equally.
各种经济模型对大型巨型的经济增长没有影响或实际抑制它不同意。同样，这对于将缩小赤字的计划来说将是一个正常的结果，但是当您将刺激刺激到经济中时，很难取得成果。特朗普计划关税，削减富裕人士的税收并从约1000万美国人那里获得健康保险的不正当后果是一个较小的馅饼，不太平等。
You might suspect that Republicans reject the assumptions behind such projections. Indeed they do. Yet it’s not as though Trump’s economic plan has satisfied the president’s own coalition. Elon Musk, the foremost spokesperson for the tech right, lambasted Trump for blowing out the deficit while cutting support for solar and battery technology (at least, he did before Trump bullied him into silence). Oren Cass, the chief economist at the right-wing think tank American Compass and a leading advocate for populist conservatism, denounced Trump’s legislation as “a death march through a series of choices that nobody really wanted to be making.”
您可能会怀疑共和党人拒绝这种预测背后的假设。确实他们确实如此。然而，这似乎并不是特朗普的经济计划满足了总统自己的联盟。埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）是该技术权利的最重要的发言人，他抨击特朗普在减少对太阳能和电池技术的支持的同时炸毁了赤字（至少在特朗普欺负他寂静之前，他做到了）。右翼智囊团美国指南针的首席经济学家也是民粹主义保守主义的主要倡导者奥伦·卡斯（Oren Cass）谴责特朗普的立法是“通过一系列没有人真正想做出的选择，这是“死亡游行”。
Vance’s prediction that the populists and the tech right could come together turned out to be, in a way, correct. The two factions quietly agree that Trump’s plan is a failure.
万斯（Vance）的预测，民粹主义者和技术权利可能会在某种程度上变得正确。两个派系悄悄地同意特朗普的计划是失败的。
Read: The decline and fall of Elon Musk
阅读：埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）的衰落和下降
The effort to change the Republican Party’s economic program has been going in fits and starts for the better part of two decades. Starting in George W. Bush’s second term, a clique of reform conservatives, or “reformicons,” critiqued the party’s attachment to tax cuts for the rich as a political drag that fit poorly with its growing share of working-class voters. They derided the tax-cut fetish as “Zombie Reaganism,” a mindless adherence to an obsolete program. Yet they failed to make headway, precisely because Republicans believed, with theological certainty, that Ronald Reagan had discovered the eternally correct set of economic policies in the late 1970s, and that questioning their efficacy amounted to heresy.
改变共和党的经济计划的努力一直很合适，在二十年的大部分时间里开始了。从乔治·W·布什（George W. Bush）的第二任期开始，这是一个改革保守派或“改革人”的集团，批评该党对富人的减税措施的依恋，因为政治上的拖累与其在工人阶级选民中的份额不大。他们嘲笑税收的恋物癖是“僵尸再生主义”，这是对过时计划的无意识的遵守。然而，他们未能取得进展，恰恰是因为共和党人认为，有了神学的确定性，罗纳德·里根（Ronald Reagan）在1970年代后期发现了永恒正确的经济政策，并且质疑他们的效力等于异端。
The internal debate seemed to die down—until Trump emerged with his claim that every previous Republican, including the sainted Reagan, had been a total loser. At times, Trump made populist rhetorical gestures that resembled elements of the reformicon plan (promising to raise taxes on the rich, rein in Wall Street, and give everybody terrific health insurance). When he took office in 2017, however, he fell back on the old formula.
内部辩论似乎已经消失了 - 直到特朗普出现了他的说法，他的说法是，每个先前的共和党人，包括圣人的里根，都是失败者。有时，特朗普做出了类似于格雷奇（Regincon）计划的人的民粹主义修辞手势（有望在华尔街的富人身上提高税收，并为所有人提供出色的健康保险）。然而，当他在2017年上任时，他倒下了旧配方。
After Trump’s first term ended in defeat, his supporters set out to ensure that they would not squander their next opportunity. Most of the intellectual energy went toward building up authoritarian power that would overwhelm the hated “deep state,” as well as the judiciary, the media, and other forces that Trump loyalists blamed for undermining him. At the same time, his partisans sought to supply a second Trump administration with authentically Trumpian policies.
特朗普的第一任期以失败结束后，他的支持者着手确保他们不会浪费下一个机会。大多数智力能源都用于建立专制权力，这将使讨厌的“深层国家”以及司法，媒体和其他忠诚主义者责备破坏他的司法，媒体和其他力量。同时，他的游击党人试图为第二届特朗普政府提供真正的特朗普政策。
The populist version is laid out in a new book edited by Cass, The New Conservatives: Restoring America’s Commitment to Family, Community, and Industry. The authors lament the squandered potential of Trump’s first term, which could boast only another regressive tax cut as its sole major domestic-policy accomplishment. Rather than continue lavishing such gifts on the affluent, Cass and his colleagues argue, the new administration should tax the rich more heavily and give the working class a break. The policies they favor would combine protection of key domestic enterprises with an industrial policy to create good-paying jobs for blue-collar workers.
民粹主义版本是由卡斯（Cass）编辑的新书《新保守党：恢复美国对家庭，社区和工业的承诺》中列出的。作者感叹特朗普第一任期的浪费潜力，这可能只有另一种削减税收税收作为其唯一的重大家庭政策成就。卡斯和他的同事们认为，新政府不再继续对富裕的礼物进行此类礼物，而是应该对富人征税，并让工人阶级休息一下。他们喜欢的政策将结合对主要企业的保护与工业政策，为蓝领工人创造高薪工作。
The alternative vision floated by the tech right is more amorphous, as you might expect from supremely confident billionaires unburdened by deep familiarity with public policy. The general thrust is a desire to cut the deficit by slashing social-insurance programs, while supercharging economic growth by encouraging high-skilled immigration and investing heavily in science.
您可能期望的是，由对公共政策非常熟悉的亿万富翁充满信心，您可能期望的是，技术权利提出的替代愿景更加无定形。一般的打击是通过削减社会保险计划来减少赤字的愿望，同时通过鼓励高技能移民并大量投资科学来增强经济增长。
Each tribe’s plan has its merits and drawbacks. The strength of the populist program is its emphasis on low-income workers and its willingness to tax the rich. Its weakness is its static impulse to restore a 20th-century economy. The reverse holds true for the tech right: Its strength is its emphasis on dynamism, and its weakness is its social-Darwinist-infused hostility to the safety net.
每个部落的计划都有其优点和缺点。民粹主义计划的优势在于它强调低收入工人及其愿意征税的富人。它的弱点是恢复20世纪经济的静态冲动。相反的是技术权利：它的优势在于它对动态的重视，其弱点是对安全网的社会丹文主义者敌对的敌意。
Trump might have chosen one approach or the other, or—per Vance—tried to blend their best features. Instead, he did the precise opposite: He made scientists leave the country and put in doubt the future of hundreds of high-tech factories while exploding the deficit, jacking up inequality, and taking medical care from millions.
特朗普可能选择了一种方法或另一种方法，或者（按万斯）努力融合其最佳特征。取而代之的是，他做了相反的相反：他让科学家离开了该国，并怀疑数百家高科技工厂的未来，同时又爆炸了赤字，不平等并从数百万人那里获得医疗服务。
Amazingly, in the most obvious area of overlap between the populists and the tech right—government support for a domestic battery industry, which would be vital for powering AI, drones, and other key products—Republicans have imposed deep rollbacks. The House version would cut battery production by three-quarters in coming years, eliminating manufacturing jobs and strangling this tech incubator. And by cutting funds for green energy, the House bill would raise energy prices by 7 to 9 percent, according to different projections. Trump’s determination to crush low-carbon energy sources at any price was exemplified by his recent order to reopen antiquated coal plants in Michigan, which forced consumers to pay higher electric bills simply to subsidize coal.
令人惊讶的是，在民粹主义者与技术权利之间最明显的重叠领域中，对国内电池行业的支持，这对于为AI，无人机和其他关键产品提供动力至关重要 - Republicans施加了深层回滚。房屋版本将在未来几年中将电池生产削减，从而消除了制造业工作并勒死了该技术孵化器。根据不同的预测，通过削减绿色能源资金，众议院法案将提高能源价格7％至9％。特朗普最近在密歇根州重新开设过时的燃煤电厂的命令来说明了特朗普以任何价格粉碎低碳能源的决心，这迫使消费者仅仅为了补贴煤炭而支付更高的电费。
The perversity of this outcome is almost impressive. Trump is not even mortgaging the future for the benefit of cheap, dirty energy. He is combining short-term pain with even greater long-term pain.
这种结果的变态几乎令人印象深刻。特朗普甚至没有为了廉价，肮脏的能源而抵押未来。他将短期疼痛与更大的长期疼痛结合在一起。
Read: Uproar at the NIH
阅读：NIH的骚动
The collapse of the attempt to reform Republican economic policy under Trump has been so swift and complete that we can already discern causes for the failure. I propose four.
特朗普领导下的共和党经济政策的企图崩溃是如此迅速而完整，以至于我们已经可以辨别失败的原因。我提出了四个。
First, Trump, flushed with victory, rashly attempted to speedrun versions of both reform visions via executive order. DOGE was the tech right’s turn at the wheel. Trump gave Musk virtual carte blanche to remake the federal government. Rather than pursue a coherent reform agenda, Musk appeared to fall for a series of conspiracy theories, alienated Trump’s Cabinet, and wound up kneecapping some of the federal government’s tiniest but most cost-effective functions. In the process, he failed to generate any meaningful fiscal savings or operational improvements. One could envision a tech right–driven government overhaul that accomplished something useful, but Musk’s blundering resulted in fiasco.
首先，特朗普（Trump）凭借胜利冲洗，轻率地试图通过行政命令加速两种改革愿景的版本。Doge是The The Wheel的技术权利。特朗普给了Musk虚拟的Carte Blanche，以重制联邦政府。马斯克没有追求连贯的改革议程，而是因为一系列的阴谋论而落下了疏远的特朗普内阁，并屈服了联邦政府一些最微小但最具成本效益的功能。在此过程中，他未能产生任何有意义的财政储蓄或运营改进。人们可以设想实现了有用的事情的技术权利驱动的政府大修，但马斯克的错误导致了惨败。
In tandem with all of that, Trump worked with his populist trade adviser Peter Navarro to impose a set of global tariffs, on the erroneous premise that the trade deficit amounted to per se evidence of unfair foreign-trade practices. The “Liberation Day” tariffs overreached, generating a stock-market blowback that Trump couldn’t tolerate, causing him to fall back on lower across-the-board tariffs that have served little strategic purpose. No really smart way to use trade to revive manufacturing, as the populists had hoped, may have been available to Trump—but there were less dumb ways.
与所有这些同时，特朗普与他的民粹主义贸易顾问彼得·纳瓦罗（Peter Navarro）合作，征收了一系列全球关税，这是错误的前提，即贸易赤字本身就是不公平的外交贸易做法的证据。“解放日”的关税超过了，引起了特朗普无法容忍的股票市场反击，导致他跌回了几乎没有战略目的的低层全面关税。正如民粹主义者所希望的那样，没有真正明智的方式利用贸易来复兴制造业，特朗普可能可以使用，但愚蠢的方式较少。
In both cases, Trump opted for speed and unilateral authority instead of care and legislative consultation; ham-fisted management by his ill-chosen staff did the rest.
在这两种情况下，特朗普都选择了速度和单方面的权威，而不是关怀和立法咨询。他选择的员工的ham拳头管理人员剩下的工作。
A second source of failure is that Trump prioritized political control above any other objective, including economic outcomes. His slashing attacks on the bureaucracy, including deep cuts to scientific and medical research, incapacitated agencies that play a vital role in the economy. After paying lip service to the tech right’s hope for more high-skilled immigration, Trump not only abandoned the goal but also created a brain drain with his war on universities. In every case where Trump could choose between building human capital and punishing his enemies, he selected the latter.
第二个失败的根源是，特朗普将政治控制优先于任何其他目标，包括经济成果。他对官僚机构的攻击攻击，包括对科学和医学研究的深度削减，无能力的机构在经济中起着至关重要的作用。在为技术权利对更多高技能移民的希望支付了口头服务之后，特朗普不仅放弃了目标，而且在他的大学战争中造成了脑力消耗。在特朗普可以在建立人力资本和惩罚敌人之间做出选择的每种情况下，他都选择了后者。
Third, the deliberations among Republicans in Congress and the White House have revealed the hold that Zombie Reaganism retains over the party. The fiscal gravity of Trump’s tax cuts is so huge that it has pulled every other aspect of the party’s economic program into its orbit. Republicans have taken politically toxic votes to cut Medicaid and SNAP benefits because those cuts were needed to offset the cost of making Trump’s tax breaks permanent. The same dynamic drove Republicans to pull spending on batteries and green-energy manufacturing.
第三，国会和白宫的共和党人之间的审议揭示了僵尸再生党对党保留的裁定。特朗普减税的财政严重性是如此之大，以至于将党的经济计划的其他方面都拉到了轨道上。共和党人采取了有毒的投票来削减医疗补助和抢购福利，因为需要这些削减以抵消使特朗普永久税收减免的成本。相同的动态驱使共和党人在电池和绿色能源制造上拉支出。
Republicans have not so much embraced these trade-offs anew as assumed them to be self-evidently good. No senior Republican elected official has advocated for letting the Trump tax cuts expire. Although many of them complain about deficits, they’ve blamed spending, not tax cuts—despite the fact that the megabill is slated to reduce spending.
共和党人并没有像假设他们是自觉的好处那样重新接受这些权衡。没有共和党高级当选官员提倡让特朗普减税到期。尽管他们中的许多人抱怨赤字，但他们指责支出，而不是减税 - 尽管大型巨头计划减少支出。
The final and most profound reason that Republicans failed to revise their economic program is the corrosive influence of the Trump personality cult.
共和党人未能修改其经济计划的最终也是最深刻的理由是特朗普人格邪教的腐蚀性影响。
However strongly the populist wing wants to expand the party’s appeal by jettisoning unpopular policy baggage, it is committed above all to elevating Trump. Although populists such as Steve Bannon and Josh Hawley might warn of the dangers of cutting Medicaid, or urge their party to raise taxes on the rich, they have neither the leverage nor any willingness to press their complaints. The source of their political authority is loyalty to MAGA before all else, and they know that dissenting from Trump on any policy matter is a ticket to political exile—as the tech right has already discovered. Ardent Trump supporters horrified by his trade war have had to couch their dismay in obsequious pleading. Even Musk, after briefly entertaining the notion that he was free to argue with Trump in the way that Trump argues with people, shrank into humiliating contrition, adopting the tone of a defrocked Soviet official apologizing at his show trial to Stalin.
然而，民粹主义翼希望通过抛弃不受欢迎的政策行李来扩大该党的上诉，这首先要提高特朗普。尽管史蒂夫·班农（Steve Bannon）和乔什·霍利（Josh Hawley）等民粹主义者可能会警告削减医疗补助的危险，或敦促他们的党派对富人征税，但他们既没有杠杆作用，也没有任何愿意向他们的投诉。他们的政治权威的根源是对玛格（Maga）的忠诚。热心的特朗普对他的贸易战争感到恐惧的支持者不得不为他们的辩护而感到沮丧。即使是马斯克，在简短地阐明了他可以自由地与特朗普与人争论的方式争论的观念之后，陷入了羞辱的福祉，采用了一位苏联官员的语气，在他对斯大林的表演审判中道歉。
Remaking an economic strategy is an intellectual endeavor, one that is inherently fraught in the atmosphere of conformity and obfuscation that Trump has cultivated. The Republican Party’s economic philosophy was long trapped in mindless dogma. But rather than escaping it, the GOP has exchanged one cult for another.
重制经济战略是一项智力努力，这种努力天生就在特朗普所培养的整合和混淆的气氛中烦恼。共和党的经济哲学长期以来一直被困在无意识的教条中。但是，共和党没有逃脱它，而是将一个邪教交换为另一个邪教。
