Skeptical conservatives who remain wary of “America First” populism might want to listen closely to Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a constitutional conservative and a strong critic of Trump’s candidacy who not that long ago wondered whether the party was done for. Now, he has a plan to deliver principled conservatism to the president’s populist mandate. In a speech Wednesday morning at the Heritage Foundation—“Conservatism for the Forgotten Man: Reform in a Divided Society and Global Economy”—Lee laid out a vision to protect American interests without descending into protectionism.
Senator Lee, who was first elected to the Senate in 2010, campaigned as a constitutionalist and made the American worker—big government’s forgotten man—his first term’s fighting cause. The Trump presidency need not kill conservatism, he says, but brings a chance to revive it.
Really, it’s an opportunity for conservatives to do what we do best, Lee said Wednesday morning—and to break free from an elitist posture of indifference, what seems to have been the establishment’s undoing.
President Trump’s nationalism, unchecked, might translate to policy that “protects” us from a prosperous free market. But rather than obstruct trade with prohibitive tariffs, Lee said, the best policy to protect Americans’ interests will bring trade to our shores: Eliminate the federal corporate tax to incentivize investment in American businesses—and increase taxes on income from investments to “level the playing field.”
It’s a new tax framework intended to get everyone playing in our sandbox, to make America a “tax haven” and to ramp up foreign investment in American business—to serve Trump’s agenda, in other words, without alienating all America’s friends.
It’s also quite different from the House Republican tax plan, which would lower but certainly not eliminate the corporate rate, and lower (rather than, ahem, raise) taxes on capital gains and dividends. Increasing taxes on investment income will doubtless prove a controversial idea—and that’s kind of the point. Remembering the forgotten American, breaking the bonds of the status quo, might also mean a radical break from decades of tax policy. (For establishment Republicans, increasing the capital gains tax is the George Costanza approach to tax reform.)
A duty to the voters and to the president hoists on lawmakers the challenge to govern in line with Trumpian goals—without defying principle. “Conservatives may not support everything [Trump’s new populist] coalition does. And when we don’t we should say so. But we are part of it now,” he said. It’s an opportunity, a call to action, to “do what we do best”—that is, find solutions. “At our best, conservatives craft successful reforms by empowering citizens and communities to experiment with bottom-up, trial-and-error problem-solving.”
Forging policy that will indeed put “America first” is central to Lee’s proposed alliance between conservatives and populists. Taking populism seriously (and literally) requires responsible policy of the sort not intuitively associated with the crass slogan.
There’s a populist-conservative middle road on immigration too, Lee said: restricting legal immigration to immediate family members, what Arkansas senator Tom Cotton has proposed, and “reorienting our entire immigration system around economic need.” What Lee called “pro-worker immigration reform” would put a damper on low-skilled immigrants’ entry, as Cotton proposes, but would also encourage highly-skilled potential innovators, and presumably employers, to immigrate.
Executive overreach is a party-blind concern, or it should be. Lee introduced the Global Trade Accountability Act on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, The Weekly Standard‘s John McCormack reported. It’s legislation to require congressional approval of executive action on trade—but not expressly meant as a protection against protectionist policy from Trump:
Putting Americans’ interests first also means protecting Americans from an imperial presidency: “The way to empower the Forgotten Americans is to empower the local communities where they can be in charge. This will allow more Americans to live according to their own values, and rescue all Americans from the unnecessary traumas of the an imperial president from the other party,” Lee said.
Trump has the mandate. And, in its constitutional commitment to deny the centralized authority of the presidency or the D.C. status quo, conservatism has the tools to restore power the forgotten man—and to turn a nationalistic rhetoric into a lasting and growing national benefit. In Lee’s view, if conservative principles can work for Trump, there’s really no reason Trumpism can’t work for America.
