Project 2025 Status
In the first lines of an introduction to reforms they plan to implement to reshape America’s economy, Project 2025’s authors state the problem they want to fix: “For several decades, establishment ‘elites’ have failed the citizenry by refusing to secure the border, outsourcing manufacturing to China and elsewhere, spending recklessly, regulating constantly, and generally controlling the country from the top down rather than letting it flourish from the bottom up.”
That said, they disagree on how to achieve this, apart from a shared view that a limited federal government is best to support their vision of an unfettered free market economy as they key to building prosperity for more Americans.
Chapter 26 co-author Kent Lassman, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, wants to expand free trade by reducing the government’s role in regulating large corporations in particular, and increase domestic manufacturing, to make American businesses more competitive in global markets, and less reliant on outsourcing of manufacturing and importing of cheaper goods from China and elsewhere. He would cut government spending, and remove “Leftist” policies that “push climate change and equity-based activism” which represent hurdles to doing business. Lassman suggests the US lower or repeal tariffs — including eliminating “the destructive Trump–Biden tariffs” — to make goods more affordable for Americans.
Chapter 26 co-author Peter Navarro, former White House director of trade and manufacturing policy, sees the problem of global competition differently. He suggests tackling the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) “most favored nation” rules that “encourage our trade
partners to adopt high tariffs, which lead to our “chronic” trade deficits and make us “the globe’s biggest trade loser and victim of unfair, unbalanced, and non-reciprocal trade.” He suggests America’s trade policy be guided “by ‘the principle of reciprocity,’ in which the US coaxes other countries to lower their trade barriers if possible and raise America’s as necessary. America should ‘decouple’ its economy from China.” He and Lassman disagree on their view of trade deficits and how they impact our economy.
In this section, China — and US trade policies with China — get a lion’s share of attention as the major economic rival. Argues Navarro: “…our current trade policy enriches our allies and adversaries while hurting us, weakens our industrial base while strengthening China’s, and shortchanges ‘Main Street manufacturers and workers.’ Such non-reciprocal ‘free’ trade is slowly undermining our capabilities and our freedom.”
Among targets for reform, authors in this section cite the Commerce Department and the Census Bureau, which, they feel, “need far more political leadership” so that the Commerce Department implements the president’s agenda, and the Bureau of Economic Affairs, housed at Commerce, “conducts its statistical analysis in a consistent and objective manner” to make economic data easier to access and assess. They also call for reforming tax policy, “primarily by reducing marginal tax rates, reducing the cost of capital, and broadening the tax base to eliminate tax-induced economic distortions by eliminating special-interest tax credits, deductions, and exclusions.” They also want to “promote tax competition rather than supporting an international tax cartel.”
Conservatives plan to target the Internal Revenue Services to reduce its “intrusiveness” on American business, and take special aim at the Small Business Administration, which is accused of “waste, fraud, and mismanagement” and guilty of “mission creep.” Moreover, its “initiatives aimed at ‘inclusivity’ are in fact creating exclusivity and stringent selectivity in deciding what types of small businesses and entities can use SBA programs,” state the authors.
The most radical proposal is to get rid of the Federal Reserve entirely, replace it with “free banking,” whereby “neither interest rates nor the supply of money” would be “controlled by government.” That would, they argue, produce a “stable and sound” currency and a “strong” financial system, “while allowing lending to flourish.” Alternatively, one author proposes, the next Administration should “consider the feasibility of a return to the gold standard.”