Each December Paul Ryan gives copies of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” to his staff as holiday presents. The book is a small reminder that their boss carries the GOP’s supply-side standard on Capitol Hill. But now the House speaker might need to remake his Christmas list.
The Wisconsin wonk just praised the president-elect for making a deal to keep Carrier Corp. from moving 1,000 manufacturing jobs to Mexico. On Thursday, Ryan cheered Trump for doing something he once loathed: meddling in the market.
“I’m pretty happy that we’re keeping jobs in America, aren’t you?” the speaker said Thursday. “I think it’s pretty darn good that people are keeping their jobs in Indiana instead of going to Mexico.”
Ryan’s comments came as Trump was flying to Indianapolis to celebrate his first big deal as president. With the help of outgoing Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Trump provided the air-conditioning giant a $7 million state tax cut in exchange for a promise not to move manufacturing to Mexico.
If the corporation refused, Trump warned earlier that he was ready to level a 35 percent retaliatory tax on all Carrier imports.
It was a classic episode in central planning, the same kind that Ryan slammed Obama for when he was running for vice president. When he was Mitt Romney’s running mate, Ryan accused Obama of trying “to pick winners and losers.”
“Spending money on your favorites, you know people like Solyndra or Fisker,” Ryan said while critiquing Obama’s economic approach during a September 2012 interview, “picking winners and losers in the economy through spending, through tax breaks, through regulations does not work.”
But four years later, Ryan now praises Trump for doing exactly like that. It’s a stark reversal and perhaps a sign of what’s to come.
Trump has already promised a trillion dollars to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. His senior strategist Steve Bannon described that plan in terms reminiscent of President Roosevelt’s New Deal. “It will be as exciting as the 1930’s, greater than the Reagan revolution,” Bannon told the Hollywood Reporter, “conservatives plus populists in an economic nationalist movement.” In short, everything Ryan once opposed.
By praising Trump, Ryan has signaled that he’s prepared to give crony capitalism a chance and leave free market principles on the shelf.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
