Why This Matters to Me

As a 30-something-year-old with two kids, starting a family in the midst of historic inflation, an impossibly tight housing market, and increasing economic pressures, I’ve had no choice but to stay deeply connected to modern politics and economics. I’d love to have three or four kids, but the economic realities around me make that a challenge. So it’s imperative I track them in great detail.

For those who know me, economics has been my obsession for years. Marc Andreessen talks about “nights and weekends” people—those who are so passionate about something they work on it in their free time. That’s me with financial markets and economics. But today’s post isn’t just about my passion for the subject; it’s about my excitement for the future of American economic policy as I believe it will go far more mainstream this time around than ever before.

Let’s dive in.

Old Free Trade Theories Are Dead, New Ones Arise

For the last 20-30 years, mainstream economists—heavily influenced by textbook theories—promoted free trade as an unquestionable good. The idea was simple: if trade is free and open, supply and demand will balance everything out. While this theory may have made sense in the 1980s and 1990s, it has long outlived its usefulness. It fails to account for:

• The hollowing out of domestic industries in exchange for theoretical “low cost items” at the expense of critical manufacturing capabilities
• The speed at which capital moves in the modern world to adjust for sudden economic shocks
• The impact of resource control and shipping routes
• The destruction of important logistical needs in times of crisis in exchange for ultra cheap goods

What I mean is this: a deal that looks perfect on paper—according to outdated economic models—may still be disastrous if it erodes a country’s manufacturing base or economic sovereignty. This is trading long-term sufficiency for short-term, mostly meaningless, goods. The world has changed drastically since economics classes became mainstream, and now so must the approach. This is something I am growing more passionate about.

At the core of my believe is that Economics is not a fixed science; it adapts with time. What worked in the 1990s won’t necessarily work today. Global trade is no longer just about efficiency; it’s about long-term sustainable health, national security, and maintaining vital logistical capabilities rather than getting undercut by cheap (possibly slave) labor.

A New Era for Tariffs

One of the most glaring trade developments has been America’s over-reliance on ultra-low tariff rates. Since 2000, U.S. tariffs have been near historic lows, leading to the offshoring of critical industries, a weakened domestic manufacturing sector, and a growing dependence on imports. The assumption was that cheaper imports would lead to prosperity. In reality, it created a structural imbalance—allowing foreign competitors to exploit regulatory loopholes while American businesses operated under stricter rules.

This is why the American industrial space has been gutted.

The closure of the de minimis loophole is a major shift. For years, Shein and Temu leveraged this rule, which exempted shipments under $800 from tariffs and customs declarations. Originally designed for travelers, it was never meant to facilitate the mass importation of untaxed, unregulated e-commerce goods. In 2023 alone, over a billion packages from China entered the U.S. this way and not a single one paid tax on those packages. Not a single one! Who bore the burden? The US Post Office.

That is not free nor fair trade. That is the exploitation of loopholes.

For years, free trade was treated as an absolute good. That assumption is now being dismantled and more economists need to wake up and realize their models are wrong because they do not account for these exploitations or long-term sacrifices that I mentioned above. Trade must be fair, not just free.

Practitioners in Government, Not Theorists

A major shift is also underway at the Treasury. Scott Bessent’s appointment as Treasury Secretary marks a departure from the academic, ivory-tower approach of past policymakers. Unlike his predecessors, Bessent isn’t a career bureaucrat—he’s a trader. He understands markets through experience, not theory. His leadership signals a move toward pragmatic, market-driven policy rather than rigid economic frameworks.

And it’s not just Bessent. The shift extends beyond policy circles into actual government operations. Elon Musk’s DOGE team recently recruited six of the sharpest 20-year-old engineers in the world to overhaul Treasury’s inefficiencies. For decades, the same bureaucratic class—primarily baby boomers—has dominated government, resistant to change. Now, the next generation is stepping up.

Six AI-powered engineers can replace the inefficiency of 1,000 uninspired 9-to-5 bureaucrats. The government has been bogged down by paperwork, outdated processes, and an inability to properly audit itself. Taxes and compliance have become so convoluted that most people need outside help just to file correctly. This is peak inefficiency. A well-designed system should simplify these processes—not make them worse.

That’s finally changing.

In Conclusion…

The old economic order is crumbling. The rise of strategic trade, the return of tariffs, and the influx of real practitioners into government signal a new era. The U.S. economy is no longer being shaped by outdated academic models but by people who understand markets in real time.

Exciting times ahead.