He was supposed to be leading a revolt against America’s elites. In practice Donald Trump is laying out a banquet for their delectation. The Trump White House is drawing up plans for across-the-board deregulation, tax cuts and a new generation of defence contracts. The only question is at what speed.
In contrast, Mr Trump’s middle-class economic plans, such as they were, are already receding. The chances of a big infrastructure bill are rapidly dimming. In marketing they call this bait and switch. The effect of Mr Trump’s economic agenda will be to deepen the conditions that gave rise to his candidacy.
The biggest winners will be on Wall Street, in the fossil fuel energy sector and defence. Stephen Bannon, Mr Trump’s most influential adviser, last week described the bonfire of regulations as the “deconstruction of the administrative state”. For every new regulation, two will be scrapped. The first clutch will come this week with executive orders undoing Barack Obama’s “clean power plan” that limits carbon dioxide emissions and a separate one on clean water. Anticipation of this has helped to fuel the boom in energy stocks since Mr Trump was elected. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose more in Mr Trump’s first month than for any president since Franklin Roosevelt.