The idea is that subsidies, tariffs, targeted tax incentives, and restrictions on immigration might be justified in order to preserve Americans in a way of life to which they have become accustomed, and to preserve their communities—even in places where the industries that gave rise to those communities have long since left. This is supposedly the big takeaway from Trump’s victories in the Rust Belt, where he won the support of blue-collar Democrats.
For Trump intellectuals like Decius, the goal of all this government action is not really to ameliorate income inequality or increase prosperity but to bolster national solidarity. Trump conservatives often talk about the need for a new sense of patriotism and citizenship to shore up our fragmenting republic. They of course have a point, but in the context of Trump’s stated policy preferences, bolstering solidarity means big government doing more, not less. Who feels more solidarity with other Americans who are picking his pockets and using government to push him around?
The irony is that one of Decius’ central critiques of modern conservatism is that it has done too little—nothing, really—to slow the growth of the administrative state and the march of progressivism. But now, Trump conservatives and a growing number of Republicans want to use the administrative state to advance their own agenda. The basic progressive thesis is that government programs run by massive bureaucracies can improve people’s lives. The emerging thesis of Trumpism seems to be that government action can improve the life of the nation as a whole.
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