美国总统唐纳德·特朗普的经济政策，尤其是关税政策，正受到政治左右两派的批评。批评者包括保罗·克鲁格曼和罗伯特·赖克等自由派经济学家，也包括推崇已故经济学家米尔顿·弗里德曼的保守派和自由意志主义经济学家。弗里德曼认为，高额关税会损害企业和消费者。

《新共和》杂志的迈克尔·托马斯基认为，共和党的经济问题远不止特朗普本人。在一篇周一上午发表的文章中，托马斯基指出，共和党整体上未能理解基本的经济概念。阅读托马斯基在《新共和》杂志发表的文章。

托马斯基提到了特朗普在2024年竞选期间作出的一项承诺。特朗普当时说：“Under the Trump economic plan, we will cut your energy prices in half … We are going to bring energy down by 50 percent, 50 percent, 50 percent within 12 months from January 20, which is the day we go into office.”

托马斯基写道，这项承诺“relevant to us today on two levels.”

“The first is the more obvious: He was lying out his know-you-what without any regard for whether these words would end up being true,” Tomasky writes. “They just sounded good at the time, so he said them. Fifty percent in a year … The second level is more interesting — and more damning not only of Trump, but of the entire Republican Party and of conservatism generally, in this country and across the world, and not just in Trump's second term, but for all time. And that is this: There is probably some way in which Trump actually believed he could lower energy prices — maybe not by 50 percent in a year, but lower them substantially and noticeably. Why would he believe this? He believed it because conservatives believe stupid, simplistic things about how the capitalist economy works.”

Tomasky continues: “They believe that if you just let the free market do its thing, wonders will arise and all will be well. They believe this first and foremost because their big-money donors believe it. But they also believe it because the economists — or more precisely, the economists they prefer to listen to — say so, and they must know what they're talking about.”

据托马斯基称，一“new generation of economists … have seen with their own two eyes that markets do not always self-correct”，如今认识到“sometimes, government intervention is required to achieve good ends.”

托马斯基写道，在中期选举竞选期间，民主党可以理解地将重点放在攻击特朗普撒谎，并把民众正在承担的更高价格归咎于他。他表示，这种做法在政治上有道理，但认为从长期来看，民主党必须采取更广泛的策略。这种表述将焦点从特朗普个人的言论转向托马斯基所称的影响共和党政策的经济观念，包括市场力量与政府干预之间的平衡。

“It would be great if they nominated a presidential candidate in 2028 who had the guts and the rhetorical skill to indict not just Trump, but conservatism and traditional economics more generally,” Tomasky writes. “It's not an accident that the last three, now four, GOP presidents have wrecked the economy: Bush, Bush, Trump, and Trump.”