by Dr. Travis Ricketts
Tennessee’s State Funding Board approved a tax growth rate of 1.25 to 2.15 percent for the 2025-2026 fiscal year. However, this estimation did not consider that the Trump administration will assume control of the federal government in 2025, and Tennessee stands poised to reap significant economic benefits from the anticipated policy shifts. The state’s diverse economy — encompassing manufacturing, agriculture, and a burgeoning tech sector — is well-positioned to thrive under the incoming administration’s pro-freedom agenda.
Over the last 100 years, Americans have been trying to provide for their families under an ever-increasing burden from the administrative state.
Before becoming president, Woodrow Wilson wrote “Leaders of Men,” in which he explained that a true leader recognizes that people are “tools” and uses them: “There are men to be moved: how shall he move them?” he wrote. “It is the power which dictates, dominates: the materials yield. Men are as clay in the hands of the consummate leader.”
We have a century of progressive policies, with the government putting itself in the position of choosing winners and losers in the marketplace that must be jettisoned. We’ll earn our success because we’ll figure out ways to produce goods and services that serve our neighbors well.
The Biden administration has gone out of its way to punish growth. The more “progressive” it became, the more it aligned with Wilson’s vision. As did Presidents Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and FDR, President Biden’s administration warred on the free market, and used the alphabet soup agency tentacles of the Leviathan — the DOJ, FTC, CDC, EPA, IRS and FDA — to accomplish its purposes.
FDR had done so, in part, by calling businessmen “stupid” and targeting his opponents with the IRS. One of his advisers, law professor Raymond Moley, said that he was “impressed as never before by the utter lack of logic of the man, the scantiness of his precise knowledge of things that he was talking about [and] by the immense and growing egotism that came from his office.”
Biden’s administration seemed to be similarly hostile. For example, if Biden’s DOJ took aim at Visa or any other business or entity simply because they were “too big” or “too successful,” that’s unconscionable.
Unfortunately, that is what one Tennessee professor stated recently. She V that “the Biden-Harris White House sued to stop the Visa debit card network that most Tennessee businesses favor” over monopoly concerns “even though businesses and consumers have plenty of debit networks and payment methods to choose from.
Many of them just prefer Visa, citing its convenience.” If true, this is the exact type of socialist posturing that has gotten the American economy into the mess it’s currently in. Fortunately, however, President Trump has already begun nominating pro-growth, pro-consumer officials to both the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission — to stop cases of clear overreach like this one.
This is why Trump is so unpalatable to the professional political class, corporate media, military-industrial complex, and Big Pharma, which depend on stifling regulations for wealth and relevance. There’s no monopoly so foul as a government-sponsored one.
For my students, 2021-2022 made George Orwell’s 1984 suddenly relevant: “The Party told you to reject all evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Trump has made it clear that his administration will do everything possible to uplift our economic freedom rather than punish our businesses because of their popularity or undermine their plans for growth.
This is the allure. Tennesseans, and hopefully Americans, still recognize that earning their own success is far better than being a ward of the state and having “success” given to them.
Deregulation is a prominent key. Overregulation is the kryptonite of a vibrant economy, and it’s the preferred weapon of those who would like to ensconce in power AND those progressives who would like to destroy the free market. So much of it is nonsensical.
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Dr. Travis Ricketts is Professor of Politics, Government & History at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee.
Photo “Bill Lee” by Bill Lee.