The big, not-at-all-beautiful first year of Trump 2.0
National Post, 20 January 2026
Make no mistake, this 'big government' president is no conservative
President Bill Clinton is a Democratic establishment figure now, but he rose in the 1980s as a kind of insurgent “new Democrat.” In 1990 he became, while governor of Arkansas, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of partisans promoting a more centrist, less liberal approach, the Democrats having lost five of the previous six presidential elections. Clinton himself won in 1992, a new Democrat from a new generation, and began reshaping his party in his image.
Thirty years ago this week, Clinton used his prime-time State of the Union address to launch his 1996 re-election campaign. Waving a fond farewell to FDR and LBJ, the new Democrat declared that “the era of big government is over.”
As President Donald Trump marks the first anniversary of his second inauguration on Tuesday, the unifying theme of his second term could be summarized: The Era of Big Government is Back.
Trump and his acolytes call themselves conservatives. Hardly, as they are less conservative, in some respects, than Clinton.
They are big spenders, except on the poor who depend upon food stamps and health insurance subsidies. Big deficits stretch to the horizon and beyond. Federal control of the economy is expanding, with monied interests jockeying for governmental — or even personal presidential — favours. There seems to be no industry — microchips, credit cards, steelmaking, automobiles, media companies, professional golf, oil — in which the president does not desire direct managerial involvement. Big government now means micro-managing.
And macro-managing, too, as Trump has sought to commandeer the central bank to do his bidding, a concept that would make any true conservative blanch, giving the elected head of government direct control over interest rates and the money supply.
The president’s preferred solution to any problem is to increase government revenues by raising taxes on Americans. Only a lover of big government could say that his favourite word is” tariff,” a regressive tax on his own people.
Europeans object to his lusting after Greenland? Tariffs on Americans who buy European goods. Ontario runs a television commercial featuring Ronald Reagan, the one who blazed the trail that led to Clinton’s declaration decrying big government? Threatened tariffs on Americans who buy Canadian goods. Brazil prosecutes its former president for attempting to steal an election? Trump puts massive taxes on Americans who buy Brazilian coffee. (Those went into a partial grinder later.)
Americans choose to buy foreign cars or foreign toasters? Punish them with taxes to raise the cost of living. Americans choose to take lethal drugs? Tax them, too. Americans like to eat fruit that does not grow in the United States? Tax them! Foreigners disagree with Trump’s foreign policy? Tax Americans!
For the man who only has a hammer, every problem is a nail. The president has lots of tools, but he loves nothing more than to pound away on the American people with import taxes, the greater burden of which is borne by those most struggling to make ends meet.
Other tools he also treats like hammers. The American criminal justice apparatus has a long history of being corrupted for political ends, but a president publicly identifying specific targets for prosecution is new. He has hired and fired prosecutors to that end, while at the same time granting pardons to those whom he favours, including international narco-traffickers and violent criminals.
The nakedly political abuse of prosecutorial power to indulge personal pique is an outrage that Trump does not even bother to defend. There is no pretending. He’s got the hammer now and will use it with evident delight.
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