The claim by these libertarians was that, aside from obvious exceptions like eminent domain and tariffs, he was basically sympathetic to the free market. Unfortunately, these hopes have not been fulfilled, and in this week's article, I'll try to show this. Before going ahead, though, I'd like to avert a possible misunderstanding. The issue we have to deal with is Trump's policy, not whether he was a marginally more acceptable choice for president than his Democratic Party opponent, the "woke" Kamala Harris. Many people regarded her as a repellent figure; but, to reiterate, this isn't our topic.

I mentioned "obvious deviations" like tariffs, but the fact that a deviation is obvious doesn't address the question of how serious the deviation is. An as the great Ron Unz points out, the deviation is very serious indeed: "His outrageous 'Liberation Day' tariffs were announced on April 2nd, but it would have been far more appropriate for them to have been released on April Fools' Day. The gigantic international tariffs that he imposed apparently based upon personal whim were quickly retracted a few days later, but then regularly restored, raised, and lowered over and over again during the months that followed. Not only was this the most bizarre sequence of massive international tax changes on trillions of dollars of goods that the world had ever seen, but all of it was a total violation of American constitutional law. . . Across thousands of years, the world has seen many important countries ruled by absolute monarchs or all-powerful dictators, with some of these leaders even considered deranged. But I can't recall any past example in which a major nation's tax, tariff, or tribute policies have undergone such rapid and sudden changes, moving up and down by huge amounts apparently based upon personal whim. Certainly Caligula never did anything so peculiar, nor Louis XIV nor Genghis Khan nor anyone else who comes to mind. Lopping off the heads of a few random government officials was one thing, but drastic changes in national financial policies were generally taken much more seriously. I don't think that Tamerlane ever suddenly raised the tribute he demanded from his terrified subjects by a factor of ten, then a few days later lowered it back down by a factor of two."

Trump is also an ardent inflationist. He says a criterion for the new Chair of the Fed is that the choice must favor lowering interest rates. We know from Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) that this will generate an artificial boom that must eventually crash and cause a depression. According to the New York Times, this is what Trump said: "President Trump said on Tuesday that he wanted the next chair of the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates if financial markets are doing well, rather than raising borrowing costs to temper any investor exuberance. The Fed sets interest rates with an aim to foster a healthy labor market and maintain low, stable inflation, but it also keeps a close eye on financial stability risks.