The ‘Affordability’ Horseshoe: The president is stealing progressive Democrats’ worst economic ideas. (Scott Lincicome, February 4, 2026, The Dispatch)
Trump was never a doctrinaire Reaganite supply-sider, of course, but his embrace of domestic economic policies championed by U.S. progressives is the clearest evidence yet that the “horseshoe” theory of politics—i.e., that the extreme left and extreme right have more in common with each other than with the moderate center—is alive and well in the United States. The similarities have been clearest on trade, where both the far left and far right uniformly disdain “globalization” and the “elites” who supposedly use it to profit at The People’s expense. But we now see the same parallels in domestic economic policy, too—both in the details and the script that each policy follows: target common enemies and offer easy solutions to complex problems—solutions that don’t actually work and, in fact, can often make things worse for the very people that they claim to be helping.Trump’s “affordability” proposals follow the “horseshoe economics” script to the letter. Smacking institutional investors (aka “Wall Street”) might make for a great populist soundbite, but as housing expert Jay Parsons explained at considerable length (and as we’ve discussed here at Capitolism), there’s simply no good case for the ban, which would likely harm rental markets yet have a minimal effect on the supply of single family homes—even in investor-rich markets. (My Cato Institute colleague Norbert Michel has more on this myth in The Dispatch this week.)
Trump’s populist attack on Big Meat would be similarly ineffective: As Reason’s Jack Nicastro explains, there’s no evidence that meatpackers are, as Trump alleges, “criminally profiting at the expense of the American People,” because the real culprit for high beef prices is the greatly reduced supply of cattle in the United States and from Mexico, which is struggling to stave off the New World screwworm. (More bad news on that front today, unfortunately. Sorry, fellow carnivores.)
Other proposals, meanwhile, would be downright bad for most Americans