Trump’s economic agenda needs a Vegas test — and a Vegas win



Las Vegas is a mirror. When it works, America works. When it struggles, the problem isn’t local — it’s national.

Vegas was built on a simple idea: value. Give people a reason to come, treat them fairly, and let them choose how much risk they want to take. No lectures. No stupid political games. No government hand in your pocket every five minutes.

A great city doesn’t nickel-and-dime its customers. Value matters. People don’t expect cheap. They expect fair. That lesson applies nationally, too.

That formula built the entertainment capital of the world. And right now, it’s under pressure.

The neon lights have dimmed

Vegas is getting squeezed from both ends, and the pressure feels familiar because it’s the same pressure families across the country have felt.

Under the Biden administration, inflation surged. Housing costs jumped. Groceries, energy, airfare, and insurance rose together. Families didn’t get richer. Their dollars just bought less.

Reckless spending, energy restrictions, and regulatory overreach drove the damage. Washington acted like prices were somebody else’s problem.

Southern Nevada also felt the economic whiplash. Tourism collapsed during the 2020 lockdowns, wiping out billions and driving unemployment as high as 33% at its peak. Visitor spending returned slowly, then softened again in 2025 — after wages, rents, and debt had already risen on the assumption that demand would keep growing.

For locals trying to raise families, that meant higher baseline costs and less margin for error. Housing, rent, and transportation ate paychecks. Hospitality wages rose, but many workers still lost ground as commuting costs and rents climbed faster.

A gamble on progress

Under President Trump, the trend has started to reverse — not overnight, but directionally. Energy production is up. Supply chains have stabilized. Regulatory pressure has eased. Inflation cooled. Costs didn’t snap back, but the bleeding slowed.

That matters because affordability is competitiveness. Vegas shows what happens when value breaks.

For decades, Vegas understood the middle-class customer: a weekend trip, a decent room, a good meal, a show, maybe a little gambling — and you left feeling like you got your money’s worth.

That perception is cracking. Resort fees that feel like a second room rate. Paid parking where it never used to exist. Food and drink prices that make people stop and stare. Fees stacked on top of fees, revealed at checkout. The experience starts feeling less like entertainment and more like an airport terminal.

Visitors notice. And when people feel squeezed, they don’t just complain — they change their behavior.

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Photo by Timothy Fadek/Corbis via Getty Images

Vegas runs on volume. When fewer visitors come, fewer dollars circulate. The pain hits the dealer, the server, the bartender, the stagehand, the hotel staff, and the rideshare driver long before it reaches the executive suite.

Zoom out, and you see America facing the same dynamic.

The United States used to win because we offered the best value on earth. Not the cheapest — the best deal. A place where costs made sense and life felt attainable.

That edge has been eroding, especially in housing. When home ownership becomes a fantasy, workers can’t relocate, young families delay building stable lives, and talent looks elsewhere.

Meanwhile, competitors are building. Riyadh. Dubai. Macao. Singapore. They’re creating new tourism and entertainment hubs designed to pull dollars away from legacy markets like Las Vegas.

They’re betting America forgets how competition works.

Make Vegas Vegas again

Federal policy matters here. Washington still treats Vegas like a cash register, with outdated rules such as taxing gambling winnings and forcing IRS reporting thresholds stuck in the 1970s. That doesn’t just annoy visitors. It tells the world America doesn’t understand modern consumer behavior.

Ending the federal tax on gambling winnings isn’t radical. It’s strategic. Updating IRS reporting levels isn’t reckless. It’s realistic. Both would improve the visitor experience and help Vegas compete.

The industry also has work to do. A great city doesn’t nickel-and-dime its customers. Transparency matters. Value matters. People don’t expect cheap. They expect fair.

That lesson applies nationally, too.

America doesn’t win by lecturing consumers or ignoring affordability. America wins by making this country the best place on earth to live, work, build, and spend money.

Vegas is telling that story in real time. If Washington listens, the rest of the country benefits.

McRib fake-out? Sticky lawsuit claims no 'actual pork rib meat' in fan-favorite McDonald's menu item



A class-action lawsuit filed last month is challenging McDonald's over a cult-favorite menu item, the McRib.

The lawsuit, filed on December 23 in U.S. District Court in Chicago, alleges that McDonald's engaged in false advertising when promoting the limited-time menu item.

'We've always been transparent about our ingredients so guests can make the right choice for them.'

The four plaintiffs in the complaint are Peter Le of Baldwin Park, California; Charles Lynch of Poughkeepsie, New York; Darien Baker of Chicago, Illinois; and Darrick Wilson of Washington, D.C.

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Photo by David Paul Morris/Getty Images

The complaint claims that the McRib "does not contain any meaningful quantity of actual pork rib meat — indeed, none at all." The plaintiffs claim that the fast-food chain uses lower-quality cuts of meat instead of rib meat, including, "inter alia, pork shoulder, heart, tripe or scalded stomach."

In December 2024, when the McRib was available, the complaint shows that the McRib was one of the most expensive individual items on the menu, even exceeding the price of a Big Mac on average.

As a result, had they "known that the McRib did not contain any actual pork rib meat, [the plaintiffs] would not have purchased the McRib or would only have purchased it for a lower price."

In a statement obtained by CBS News, McDonald's USA said, "This lawsuit distorts the facts, and many of the claims are inaccurate. Food quality and safety are at the heart of everything we do — that's why we're committed to using real, quality ingredients across our entire menu. Our fan-favorite McRib sandwich is made with 100% pork sourced from farmers and suppliers across the U.S. We've always been transparent about our ingredients so guests can make the right choice for them."

CBS also reported that McDonald's denied the specific claim that the McRib contains pork hearts, tripe, or scalded stomach and that the company said the McRib has a base of 100% seasoned boneless pork.

The complaint emphasizes that the marketing for the McRib was "materially misleading" for consumers, potentially affecting their purchasing decisions.

The McRib was first introduced in Kansas City in 1981.

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When a ‘too big to fail’ America meets a government too broke to bail it out



I’ve been titanically bearish on America for years. Sorry. I can do math.

The United States owes more than $38 trillion. That alone makes the balance sheet hopeless. The debt is insurmountable.

America’s GDP in 2024 was $29.2 trillion, meaning the debt exceeds 130% of what we produce in a year. If this were a business, every financial adviser would tell you to file Chapter 11 and salvage what you can.

Washington keeps adding another trillion to the tab roughly every 100 days. As the debt climbs, interest payments climb faster. The country now spins in a debt spiral that ends only one way. Game over.

The more the world moves away from the dollar, the more tens of trillions of unwanted dollars come flooding home. You haven’t seen anything like real devaluation yet.

Then comes the $210 trillion in future unfunded liabilities — mostly Social Security and Medicare. Those numbers don’t pencil out in any universe.

Underneath all of it sits a sinking currency. The dollar lost 87% of its value since we abandoned the gold standard in 1971. For decades, the petrodollar arrangement held the world in our system by forcing oil purchases through the U.S. currency. Saudi Arabia let that mandate expire last year. Global energy deals immediately began shifting to other currencies.

The more the world moves away from the dollar, the more tens of trillions of unwanted dollars come flooding home. You haven’t seen anything like real devaluation yet.

To fund our binge, Washington must keep selling treasuries. But foreign buyers are losing interest. Rates rise. The government buys its own debt just to keep markets from buckling. The Cayman Islands now holds $1.85 trillion — the largest single foreign share and rising fast. Treasury officials tried to obscure the numbers. None of it signals stability.

Meanwhile, our economy rests on an absurdly fragile foundation: 70% consumption. Seven out of 10 dollars depend on Americans buying things they can no longer afford. Household debt hit a record $18.6 trillion — nearly two-thirds of GDP. Families now pay down debt instead of fueling growth.

Shrinking consumption means a shrinking economy. Shrinking economy means shrinking tax revenue. Combine that with a weakening dollar and the picture becomes darker still.

Enter artificial intelligence, the accelerant. AI threatens tens of millions of jobs within years, wiping out income and collapsing the consumption model even faster. A government facing falling revenue and exploding obligations cannot pretend to stay solvent.

Some cling to fantasies like universal basic income. With what money? The same government already $210 trillion short on existing promises? Please.

This all points toward an economic crash far larger than 2008. Washington froze that crisis with $29 trillion in bailouts — money it didn’t have then either. We conjured it and shoved it onto the national debt.

That option is gone.

Today the government sits too deep in debt, with a weaker dollar and fewer global buyers. And the next crisis won’t hit one sector. It hits everything:

• Record mortgage debt: $13.1 trillion
• Record credit-card debt: $1.2 trillion
• Collapsing commercial real estate: $4.9 trillion
• Big Tech borrowing hundreds of billions to inflate an AI bubble

OpenAI’s Sam Altman already expects an eventual government bailout for AI’s collapse.

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Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Total U.S. debt — public and private — hit $102.2 trillion in 2024. Washington cannot rescue a single major sector, let alone all of them. The national debt was $10 trillion during bailout 2008. It’s four times that now. The dollar buys less. Foreign creditors show less patience.

So who steps in next time? Who buys the treasuries? Who absorbs the losses?

No one. Not abroad. Not at home. Nowhere on this planet.

That leaves Washington with only one move: Print tens of trillions in new dollars and hand them to itself — more IOIs (as opposed to IOUs) stacked on a pile already ready to topple.

And that printing wave will obliterate whatever value the dollar still holds.

Think the dollar’s fallen far? You haven’t seen anything yet.

Woke CEOs mocked conservatives. Now the joke’s on them.



Corporate America is bending to conservatives’ market influence. Not out of sudden ideological sympathy, but because conservatives have more economic power than the left — and they’ve stopped pretending not to notice.

For years, corporations ignored conservative concerns. Worse, they often went out of their way to antagonize them, stripping away team mascots like the Redskins and Indians, embracing diversity quotas, and saturating entertainment with left-wing tropes. The squeaky wheel got the grease, and the left made all the noise.

Free markets punish bad bets more effectively than Washington ever could. Let them.

Conservatives, meanwhile, were taken for granted. Corporate leaders assumed they would keep buying no matter how many insults were thrown their way. For a long time, they were right.

That ended when conservatives started fighting back. Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney stunt turned into a disaster. Victoria’s Secret collapsed under its “new image” campaign. Cracker Barrel’s woke makeover backfired so badly its chairs stopped rocking. And when employees mocked Charlie Kirk’s assassination, corporations finally began to realize that “the customer is always right” still applies.

Numbers don’t lie

Corporations aren’t embracing conservatives because they’ve had a change of heart. They’re doing it because they need to survive.

The 2024 election was a wake-up call: Conservative voters outnumbered liberals 35% to 23%. Add moderates, and non-liberals outnumbered liberals more than three to one.

Conservatives overwhelmingly vote Republican. Ninety percent cast ballots for Trump. Pew data shows a majority of middle- and upper-middle-income Americans lean Republican — and 51% of Americans identify as middle class. That’s a lot of disposable income.

Family size makes the math even stronger. The Institute for Family Studies reports that counties where Trump won big also have higher birth rates: 1.76 compared to the national average of 1.63. Harris counties, by contrast, averaged just 1.37. Republicans also want bigger families: half want three or more kids, compared to only 31% of Democrats.

Bigger families and higher incomes mean bigger market clout. And the left’s most extreme advocates — the loudest drivers of corporate wokeness — are a small minority inside an already shrinking ideological bloc.

Why the shift happened

So why did corporations bow to the left for so long? Two reasons.

First, executives themselves lean left. Pew Research found upper-income Americans tilt Democrat, and CEOs have marched steadily leftward over the last two decades. Second, conservatives tolerated it. They didn’t punish woke messaging, making it appear costless for companies to indulge their leadership’s politics.

That illusion is gone. Conservative consumers are awake. And companies are finally capitulating to reality.

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Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Don’t let government ruin it

This is why Republicans should resist the urge to meddle. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr made a mistake threatening ABC over Jimmy Kimmel. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way”? Let’s not.

That kind of government action obscures the real shift — a market correction, not a political one.

Markets speak louder than regulators. If conservatives let economics do the work, corporations will continue adjusting out of necessity. But if government steps in, companies will chalk the change up to political coercion, not consumer demand, and drift back toward the left as soon as administrations change.

Already the left is trying to spin it that way, casting Jimmy Kimmel as a martyr for “free expression” instead of what he is: a bad business decision. The left wants companies to believe government, not consumers, forced the pivot.

Conservatives know better. Free markets punish bad bets more effectively than Washington. Let them.

Why are Republicans helping Dick Durbin gut Trump’s crypto bill?



Fifteen years ago, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) slipped an amendment into law that handed a $90 billion windfall to mega-retailers like Walmart and Target — while forcing everyday Americans to foot the bill.

Now he’s trying to do it again. This time, he’s recruited Republican help.

President Trump has made his priorities clear. He wants America to dominate in financial tech — not hand the future to China.

As a former chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises — and as a proud Trump ally — I’m alarmed that Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) has teamed up with Durbin to hijack one of the most important bills of the year: the Genius Act.

This legislation, backed by President Trump, would establish the first federal framework for stablecoins — digital dollars backed by U.S. currency and issued by trusted financial institutions. It’s the cornerstone of America’s entry into 21st-century digital payments and a key to ensuring that we — not China — lead the future of global finance.

President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have made the bill a top priority. “We’re optimistic that the Senate is able to move quickly on passing a clean Genius Act and for the House to follow up and do the same,” Vance told attendees at the Bitcoin 2025 Conference in Nashville.

But that momentum will vanish if Marshall and Durbin succeed in attaching their so-called Credit Card Competition Act. This isn’t reform — it’s the Durbin Amendment 2.0, and we’ve already seen how that story ends.

In 2010, despite widespread opposition, Durbin passed his original amendment, shifting the cost of payment processing from big-box retailers onto credit card companies. He promised that consumers would benefit when retailers passed along those savings.

They didn’t.

A Federal Reserve-backed study later found that only 1% of merchants passed savings on to customers. Meanwhile, 22% raised prices. Card companies — forced to absorb the new costs — cut back on free checking accounts and slashed debit card rewards programs. The number of cardholders earning rewards dropped 30%.

Main Street lost. Big box stores cashed in. Even the left-leaning Progressive Policy Institute now admits the amendment failed and has urged Congress to “rethink” the policy.

The Credit Card Competition Act would repeat the mistake, but with credit cards. It would force every credit card to operate on at least two payment networks, letting mega-retailers route transactions through the cheapest — and often least secure — option. They’d pocket the savings. Consumers wouldn’t see a dime.

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Photo by IAN MAULE/AFP via Getty Images

Under the current system, consumers choose the networks by picking the cards they want to carry. Merchants choose which cards to accept. That’s the free market. The CCCA would dismantle that system and take away the rewards — cash back, airline miles, travel perks — that millions of Americans rely on.

Amazon, Walmart, and Target would benefit. Rural consumers, community banks, and small businesses would lose.

If this poison-pill amendment gets attached to the Genius Act, the bill’s broad bipartisan support will vanish. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) has already warned he’ll withdraw support if Durbin 2.0 gets jammed into the final package.

Congress must not let backroom deals or crony carve-outs derail this legislation. The Genius Act should be an easy win for consumers, tech innovation, and U.S. leadership in digital finance.

President Trump has made his priorities clear. He wants America to dominate in financial technology — not hand the future to China. His administration supports clear, commonsense rules that unlock innovation, protect consumers, and safeguard the dollar’s global status.

The Genius Act achieves all of that — if lawmakers pass it clean.

Republicans can’t claim to support Trump’s economic agenda while carrying water for woke corporations and their favorite Democrat senator. They need to decide: Stand with Main Street or sell out to K Street. Back American innovation or stick with the same tired crony playbook.

The country doesn’t need another Durbin amendment. It needs leadership.

Trump’s tariffs are working — now comes the ‘marshmallow test’



The Congressional Budget Office released a report Wednesday detailing the budgetary and economic impact of President Trump’s tariffs. The top-line result: Even the Democrat-controlled CBO concedes that tariffs will reduce the deficit over the next decade.

Trump has every reason to celebrate. Tariffs shrink the deficit in one of two ways. They either raise revenue directly — as tariffs are a form of tax — or they do so indirectly, by reshoring industry and expanding GDP.

History suggests both outcomes are likely. But if Trump stays the course and keeps tariffs high and stable, the United States could seize the opportunity of a generation: reindustrialize the economy, grow GDP, and restore prosperity for our grandkids.

The marshmallow test goes national

In the 1960s, Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel ran an experiment on self-control. Children were given a choice: Eat one marshmallow now or wait and receive two later. Those who delayed gratification generally fared better in life. Intelligence and future success correlated with restraint.

The implications extended beyond childhood. Researchers found similar behavior in animals, with more intelligent species — like crows — choosing delayed rewards.

Delayed gratification builds successful investors, entrepreneurs, and nations.

No one pretends tariffs deliver instant gratification. They don’t. They aren’t supposed to.

Tariffs function much the same way. They impose short-term pain in exchange for long-term gain. Like the marshmallow test, this moment asks whether Americans will accept some present discomfort to secure a far more prosperous future.

Fortunately, patience pays. Economic logic and historical evidence both show that tariffs expand the gross domestic product and create jobs over time.

What the trade deficit reveals

In 2024, America posted a net trade deficit of $918 billion. That figure represents more than a statistic. It reflects real, physical production now taking place elsewhere — mostly in China.

The math is simple: If Americans didn’t buy those goods from abroad, they would need to produce them at home.

Reshoring that production would raise GDP accordingly. When demand remains steady and supply shifts from overseas to domestic producers, GDP rises.

Demand drives supply. That’s basic economics.

This principle played out throughout American history. For over a century, high tariffs protected domestic industry. America’s economy grew faster than the global average. Consumption increased. Industrial output soared. Not until the 1970s, when the country embraced so-called “free trade” and abandoned the gold standard, did growth begin to stagnate.

Industrial production also benefits from increasing returns to scale. The more you produce, the cheaper each unit becomes. Part of the reason Chinese goods seem inexpensive lies in our own underproduction. As American firms ramp up supply, the cost gap narrows.

Financing habits support this trend. Americans fund trade deficits by selling assets or issuing debt. Those mechanisms would remain available in a closed trade system. True, consumers might get less “bang for their buck” in the short term, but the willingness to spend wouldn’t change.

Most Americans will continue to consume, no matter where production occurs. That behavior ensures demand will remain steady — providing the economic incentive for supply to shift back home.

Unused capacity, untapped opportunity

America’s industrial potential remains far from exhausted. Millions of citizens remain unemployed or underemployed. Hundreds of billions of dollars in productive capital sit idle.

The infrastructure exists. The labor pool exists. The only thing missing has been the incentive to build again. Or more accurately, the disincentive to rely on foreign labor.

The United States thrived for generations as a self-sufficient manufacturing power. It can do so again.

RELATED: Without tariffs, the US is defenseless in an economic war

Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

Production follows consumption. That truism holds in both individual and national economies. No one works because they love harvesting wheat or running a forge. People work because they want to eat, live, and flourish.

In a globalized economy, countries can consume without producing. But once that system breaks — or gets reshaped by political will — production must rise to meet domestic demand. It cannot work the other way around.

This logic exposes a hard truth: America’s trade deficit reflects lost potential. We haven’t stopped consuming. We’ve just stopped building.

Trump’s tariffs aim to reverse that trend. By shrinking the trade deficit, the policy raises GDP. With production comes employment. With employment comes prosperity.

The patience to win

No one pretends tariffs deliver instant gratification. They don’t. They aren’t supposed to.

Tariffs offer a national test of will. Do Americans want long-term sovereignty, security, and wealth badly enough to endure a temporary adjustment? Or will they flinch the moment cheap consumer goods rise in price?

This question lies at the heart of the national debate. And the outcome will shape whether America reclaims its manufacturing base — or continues hemorrhaging power to rival nations.

The evidence favors success. But only if we stay the course.

Conservatives and nationalists should recognize what’s at stake. Tariffs don’t just serve economic goals. They advance a moral imperative — to rebuild the country we inherited and preserve it for those who follow.

The marshmallow test may sound childish. But its lessons hold: The future belongs to those who can delay gratification today to build something greater tomorrow.

America stands at that threshold now. As I show in “Reshore: How Tariffs Will Bring Our Jobs Home and Revive the American Dream,” reindustrialization isn’t a fantasy. It’s within reach. But it requires courage, consistency, and sacrifice.

Trump’s tariffs have set the stage. The numbers now support the policy. The question remains: Will the American people pass the test?

Let’s hope so. Because this country doesn’t belong only to us. It belongs to our children, our grandchildren, and every generation still to come.

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