We the undersigned urge you, the presumptive Republican nominee for President, to support a rebirth of free-market capitalism in the U.S. You have said repeatedly that you want to make American great again. We agree with you. And we assert that the most effective way to start that process would be to affirm your principled support for economic liberty, for open and competitive markets and for a foreign policy that rejects both protectionism at home and interventionism abroad.

Over the last two decades especially, the U.S. economy has been saddled increasingly with burdensome government rules and regulations that stifle innovation and retard economic growth. Some of the more obvious examples are the massive command and control system put in place under the Affordable Care Act (ACA); the enactment of purposely mislabeled "free trade" agreements (such as NAFTA) that actually have harmed some U.S. businesses and destroyed jobs while subsidizing other politically connected firms; the failed so-called "War on Drugs" which wastes private and public resources and contributes to rising violent crime rates; and the expansion of inefficient and rights-violating environmental regulations that have hampered productivity and increased the overall cost of doing business; and, finally, the pursuit by the Federal Reserve of a pernicious decade-long low-interest rate monetary policy which has (again) created a massive speculative bubble in housing and on Wall Street…that is sure to end badly.

As a successful businessman, you must understand that these harmful economic policies of the past must be changed by the next president and Congress if the U.S. is to continue to remain efficient and prosperous. And you also must understand that the key to any economic rebirth in the U.S. is not old-fashion Keynesian deficit spending, quantitative easing by the Fed, or the enactment of higher minimum wage laws. The key to any sustained economic recovery is the legal protection of private property rights and the adoption of free markets where entrepreneurs, alert to price and profit signals, guide scarce resources into their most productive use. Below we suggest a concise list of first-order public policy changes that could set the early agenda for your new Administration: