Two weeks before the November presidential election that swept Donald Trump back into office, I spoke with Stephen Moore, the famed economist and former president of Club for Growth.
Moore and his co-author, Dr. Arthur B. Laffer, released a new book: "The Trump Economic Miracle and the Plan to Unleash Prosperity Again," which predicts another Trump economic boom when the president-elect returns to the Oval Office.
The book details the economic policies of the first Trump Administration (which fueled a major boom in U.S. job creation, economic growth, and energy production) and what his second incoming administration could do to reinvigorate those policies.
Moore broke down his roadmap for how Trump can fix the U.S. economy and bring prosperity back to the American people after four years of mismanagement and deceit under Joe Biden.
"So the main point of the book is that we have concrete evidence that virtually every economic measure of Trump's performance on,everything from finance, the people, family finances to small business to stock market performance, et cetera, has been far superior than under Biden and Kamala Harris," Moore aid. "And so the we don't have to sort of speculate with like all these economists have been doing about how, you know, who would be better for the economy."
"We know that from their actual record, that everything from the price of eggs to the price of groceries, to mortgage costs, to real income gains for workers, how minorities did, even issues like the debt, which rose under both presidencies, but rose much faster under Biden, does point to a clear verdict for Trumponomics over Bidenomics," he added.
The economist said that Americans hate inflation, which was one of the major reasons for Biden's unpopularity amongst voters, as it shrinks their buying power and reduces savings.
"They hate it and they feel it every time they go to the store, every time they go to the gas pump, every time they pay their monthly bills for utilities or insurance or mortgages," Moore said.
He added, "Americans are down now, they're depressed about the way the country is going, they're depressed about their family finances, they're depressed about the fact that we can't get along as a country, and I think Trump could possibly repair that."
Moore said that under Biden, prices have increased by a record 20.2% over the past four years, whereas prices rose about 8% under Trump.
"Under Jimmy Carter, we had 8, 9, 10, 11 percent inflation. We had a high of 9 percent in 2022 under Biden's policies, and this was all a direct result of the massive overspending," Moore recalled.
Moore called Biden the "most financially reckless spender in American history," while admitting that Trump did not have a great record on that either although Biden's record was worse.
He partially blamed the trillions of dollars of government spending financed with debt and money creation for the current inflation crisis and explained that according to an old rule in economics, inflation is caused by too many dollars chasing too few goods.
When massive amounts of money are pumped into the economy with no increase in the supply of goods and services, it will automatically lead to higher prices.
Another key subject in his book was the decline in domestic energy supplies and production under Biden, which Moore called the other leading factor for rising inflation rates.
Moore said that it is clear that the vast majority of voters were in agreement with Trump's energy policies and that the United States should produce all the energy that it needs.
He noted that America was energy independent under Trump and was on the verge of becoming the dominant country in the world on energy, but Biden's first act in office was to kill the Keystone XL pipeline. He allowed radicals at the EPA to write up new regulations to choke off U.S. energy production.
Moore said that we only have record amounts of energy production at the moment because Biden drove prices up so high due to extreme demand. He estimates that the United States lost about 200 billion barrels of oil that would have been produced had the current administration stuck with Trump's energy policies.
He said that Americans still get 80 percent of their energy in this country from fossil fuels, so the Biden administration's policy of achieving zero fossil fuel consumption would be "ruinous for our country" and would "destroy the American economy."
The economist used the example of the recent hurricane that hit South Florida and said that if everyone had electric vehicles according to Biden's vision, millions would have been left stranded, as charging stations were knocked out, leading to the deaths of many people.
Moore also slammed the idea of shutting down natural gas and coal plants and noted that the radical left does not want nuclear plants either.
He asked: "How are you going to put the entire transportation system on the grid? It's the most idiotic policy I've ever heard of. I mean you're going to have brownouts and blackouts throughout the country. How can you run factories, schools and hospitals? And how can you run the cloud? How can you do artificial intelligence without vast amounts of electric power?"
"If you want batteries and you want solar panels, you need precious minerals and they don't wanna produce those either," Moore said.
Moore claims that the U.S. has enough domestic supplies of mineral resources to manufacture batteries and solar panels without being dependent on rivals like China, but we are not allowed to extract them under the current administrative rules.
"We're dependent on Uzbekistan and then Russia and China for these minerals that we have right in Montana, Colorado, and in North Dakota, so it doesn't make any sense. We should go after all our resources and Trump wants to do that as well," he said.
He also warned that energy prices won't fall unless domestic firms are allowed to construct sorely needed pipelines, LNG terminals, and refineries, but that Trump's return to the White House will allow that to happen.
Moore explained that "we could get the price of oil back down to where we could get gas prices back down to $2 to $2.50 a gallon" under Trump, because an increase in the supply will drive down prices.
He added that if Trump could get America back to producing energy again, it would defund the Russian war machine and reduce the missiles shot at Israel because the Iranians would not have the money to do it. Moore believes that a deal will be made with Putin to stop the killing in Ukraine.
Another big issue for Moore is U.S. trade policy under Trump, but what excites him the most is his goal of moving towards a national consumption tax and getting rid of the income tax.
Moore said that "taxing people on their consumption would return us to for the first time, the 125 years of our country when we did not have an income tax."
"It wasn't until 1913 that we enacted an income tax through the 16th Amendment and that was a miss, so Trump wants us to go back to taxing imports and taxing consumption, not taxing people on what they put in their economy. The capital investment, the work, the savings and the jobs, because you're taxing jobs when you tax income," he noted.
Moore also said that he loved the idea of Elon Musk doing his commission on government waste, and called it "a government reform commission that would get rid of waste and fraud and redundancy and obsolescence."
He further added that Trump needed the continued support of young voters, as their futures were on the line, stating, "If we make a mistake in the selection, it's going to hurt the country for the next 25 years. I'll be dead by then, but for young people they're the ones who are going to be mostly affected."
Regarding the border crisis, Moore believes that "Trump will get control of the border and we actually need a lot more immigrants, but we just need them to come in legally, not illegally, and we can have a better immigration system."
Moore also recollected that back in 2020, "if it wasn't for COVID, Trump would have won a resounding re election."
He called Trump's Operation Warp Speed program "amazing," since "we got this vaccine out in nine months when the left said it would take four years."
The economist noted that it was Kamala Harris and Tim Walz who were the biggest cheerleaders and advocates of lockdowns and that Trump tried to get the economy reopened as quickly as he could and "wanted to cut the payroll tax."
Moore explained: "The point of our book is that you don't have to take our word for it. He has a record, so why would anybody question whether he can do it again?"
"We're going to be ready to hit the ground running with the executive orders, with the legislation -- make the tax cuts permanent. It's gonna be a whirlwind of activity when he wins. People will be so uplifted by the idea of the whole America First agenda, which is I think so critical," he concluded.
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