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.

Trump ‘needs to be honest’: Tariffs, the court, and a housing market built on lies



The Supreme Court’s latest delay in its tariff case is fueling speculation that justices are trying to craft a behind-the-scenes compromise to avoid market shock — even if it means quietly curbing presidential trade authority.

But Daniel Horowitz explains that the tariff ruling may be less important than the remedy itself, especially as another crisis tightens its grip on Americans: a frozen, inflated housing market that government policy continues to prop up instead of letting it reset.

“I think what they’re trying to do is two things. ... One is, they want to do it with as little disruption as possible. So they’re trying to think how that remedy works. And number two, I think particularly maybe for Thomas and Alito, they’re trying to figure out how not to get involved in a political question,” Horowitz tells BlazeTV host Steve Deace on the “Steve Deace Show.”


“And that’s really where I am. As you well know, I don’t believe the court should ever be the arbiter of a fundamental political disagreement. If it’s a problem, Congress should oppose and deal with it,” he continues.

Trump has also announced his plan to go after residential homes being bought up by global corporations like BlackRock, which sounds great to everyday Americans, but Horowitz believes the solution is even simpler.

“It was announced, no more, you know, BlackRock owning of homes, residential, you know, mass production of, or acquisition, I should say, of residential homes, things of that nature,” Deace says.

“This is a primary thing that the young male demographic that voted our way in the last election cares about. It’s a primary driver of the current situation in the economy. Not to mention the fact it’s the greatest source for individual liquidation that exists right now to the average American,” he continues.

“We’re sitting on all this liquid that could go back into the economy if we can get the housing market moving. What should they be doing, do you think?” Deace asks.

“Very simple. Let the bubble pop. And I know it sounds very simplistic, but it’s something that they refuse to do, and everything that they’re proposing will further fuel it. Corporate ownership is a symptom of the problem, not the problem,” Horowitz responds.

“The president needs to be honest with people. The biggest problem with the president economically is he doesn’t understand the mutual exclusivity of things. So, he wants insurance to cover everything, but he wants premiums to go down, right? He wants the welfare state, but he doesn’t want inflation. He wants seniors to have a checking account in the form of fake housing on unrealized gains, but he wants young people to be able to afford them,” he continues.

“If you want to actually get the economy back to what we all said we did, which is a broad-based income economy rather than an asset bubble, you’ve got to pull the plugs on all the things doing this. And it’s the exact opposite of what the president is saying,” he adds.

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The Obamacare subsidy fight exposes who Washington really serves



The failure of both Democrat and Republican plans to extend or partially replace enhanced Obamacare subsidies offers a clear lesson: Escaping an entitlement trap almost never happens.

Yes, the House of Representatives on Thursday voted to extend the COVID-era Affordable Care Act subsidies that expired at the end of 2025. Seventeen Republicans even joined a unanimous Democratic Caucus in voting for the extension. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Republicans have “no appetite” for an extension — at least not without reforms.

Republicans remain an impediment to the necessary reforms and are working hand in hand with Democrats to bring on economic collapse. Time is not on our side.

The reality is, once government creates a welfare entitlement, logic and sustainability exit the conversation. Politicians do not debate whether to grow the program. They argue only over how much to increase spending and how to disguise the costs. That pattern now governs the fight over enhanced Obamacare subsidies.

Why the premise never gets challenged

When the Senate rejected a nearly identical bill in December, the Wall Street Journal reported that Congress faces “no clear path for aiding millions of Americans facing soaring Affordable Care Act insurance costs next year.”

The Journal’s framing accepts the entitlement premise without question. It treats “aiding millions” as morally self-evident while ignoring the coercion necessary to fund that aid. Government assistance does not materialize from thin air. It transfers responsibility, money, and risk from one group of Americans to another.

Once imposed, that transfer only grows.

Both rejected plans would have sent more taxpayer money to insurers than the ACA already guarantees. With no deal in sight, the Journal observed last month that hope for extending the subsidies is fading. That assessment may be accurate politically, but an extension does not deserve hope. It deserves scrutiny.

How entitlement politics works

Democrats want Republicans to extend an expansion they never voted for of a program they never supported. Republicans respond by proposing modest adjustments to reduce political damage without challenging the underlying structure.

Rep. Max L. Miller (R-Ohio), who voted for the bill, summarized the dilemma perfectly. “I just want to make this abundantly clear: This is a Democratic piece of legislation. It is absolutely horrific. Now, it is the best alternative to what we have at the moment.”

That is how entitlement traps operate.

For decades, big-government advocates have followed a reliable strategy. They create a benefit for a defined group, allow costs to spiral, then dare the opposition to take something away from a newly entrenched constituency. When the moment arrives, those who claim to favor limited government retreat or propose cosmetic reforms that leave the core system untouched.

That dynamic explains why the country remains locked into the socialist ratchet, the uniparty routine, and a political class that acts as tax collector for an ever-expanding welfare state.

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Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Trapped voters, trapped taxpayers

Entitlements squeeze the nation from both sides. They trap recipients by discouraging work and mobility, and they trap taxpayers by locking future governments into permanent obligations.

The Affordable Care Act stands as one of the most powerful modern examples of this system. The law forced millions into government-regulated insurance markets while guaranteeing insurers a growing pool of subsidized customers. The result was predictable: higher costs, deeper dependency, and a massive political constituency invested in permanent expansion.

Not a single Republican voted for the ACA. They understood what the law would do. Democrats passed it anyway, and it worked exactly as designed.

Who Obamacare was really built to serve

As Connor O’Keeffe has argued at Mises Wire, federal health care policy has long served industry interests. Government interventions channel money toward providers, pharmaceutical companies, and insurers under the guise of helping patients.

Obamacare accelerated that process by mandating coverage and expanding what insurers must provide, driving demand and cost growth in tandem. Once people rely on government assistance to afford insurance, any reduction becomes politically unthinkable.

Republicans now scramble to avoid electoral consequences. House Speaker Mike Johnson says the GOP will advance health care proposals without extending subsidies, yet many lawmakers privately admit that only an extension prevents immediate pain ahead of the 2026 midterms.

That admission exposes the trap. Spending limits become cruel. Taxpayer costs disappear from the conversation. Only the next premium increase matters.

Why conservatives keep losing

History explains where this leads. Entitlement debates almost always end with higher spending. Political power depends on payments to voters. Reducing benefits means losing elections.

Progressives act decisively when in power. Conservatives obsess over procedure and restraint, even as the administrative state grows unchecked.

Last week alone offered two examples. The House overturned President Trump’s March 2025 executive order blocking collective bargaining for over a million federal employees, with 20 Republicans joining Democrats. Even Franklin Roosevelt opposed public-sector unions. Modern conservatives could not summon the resolve to block them.

On the same day, Indiana Republicans declined to redraw their congressional map despite the risk of losing the House and triggering impeachment proceedings against Trump. They clung to unwritten norms while their opponents prepared to exploit the outcome.

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Leontura via iStock/Getty Images

This pattern defines conservative failure. Republicans manage decline. They preserve a decaying system rather than reverse it.

Donald Trump broke from that habit. A former Democrat, he understands power. Win elections, then act. Trump restored a political energy absent on the right for decades.

His approach to entitlements focuses on restraining growth outside Social Security while expanding private-sector freedom to increase economic output. The goal is not austerity. It is to shrink government’s share of the economy by growing everything else faster.

Reform or collapse

That strategy may succeed or fail. It remains the only alternative to collapse. Without reform, federal spending and debt will overwhelm the system within a decade, possibly sooner. Borrowing costs will explode. Inflation will surge. Control will vanish.

The United States approached that danger under unified Democrat control and Joe Biden’s autopen in 2021 and 2022. Voters halted the slide by electing Republican majorities and returning Trump to the White House.

Trump failed to drain the swamp in his first term, largely because congressional Republicans refused to legislate when they had the chance. In his second term, he has advanced reforms through executive action. Congress has responded with delay and timidity.

The country will escape the entitlement trap one way or another. Reform can arrive through disciplined growth and economic expansion, or through collapse driven by massive overspending.

With their conservative approach to governance, Republicans remain an impediment to the necessary reforms and are working hand in hand with Democrats to bring on that collapse. Time is not on our side.

America tried to save the planet and forgot to save itself



Let’s face it: $20 trillion is a lot of money.

One would expect a big bang to follow the spending of 20,000 billion dollars. It’s a lot of money! In fact, it’s pretty much the total present value of America’s GDP.

The American economy sent trillions to our south and east — putting America second, hollowing out the American middle class, and neutralizing the American dream.

This is the total amount spent globally — largely by Europe and the United States — in a coordinated effort by the developed world to decarbonize the global economy. China, in contrast, sold windmills and solar panels worldwide while opening a new coal-fired power plant every month.

What was the net effect of this “Green" Marshall Plan? Hydrocarbon consumption continued to increase anyway. All that was achieved was a tiny reduction, just 2%, in the share of overall energy supplied by hydrocarbons. Put simply, as the energy pie got bigger and all forms of energy supply increased, hydrocarbons ended up with a slightly smaller share of a larger pie.

We also saw the deindustrialization of the European and American economies — not just with higher prices at the gas pump and on electric bills, but a stealth green tax that was passed on to consumers on everything. This is the culprit of our American and global affordability crisis. So much treasure and pain for a 2% reduction in the share of hydrocarbons.

Ironically, a byproduct of this Green Hunger Games was political populism.

What a waste. The worst bang for the public and private buck ever. Yet the Chicken Little believers of the Church of Settled Science and the grifters who profited from it will still sing in unison that it failed because they did not go far enough. If only the global community spent and regulated more!

In contrast, the Marshall Plan (1948-1951) rebuilt a decimated Europe into an industrial, interconnected, and peaceful powerhouse. It was a great success by any measure. At the time, its price tag was huge: $13.3 billion in nominal 1948-1951 dollars, equivalent to approximately $150 billion in today’s dollars.

Since a trillion is such a large number, let’s divide $20 trillion by an inflation-adjusted Marshall Plan of $150 billion, and we have 133 Marshall opportunities. Money was not the problem. To give a sense of the comparative bang for buck, by the Marshall program’s end, the aggregated gross national product of the participating nations rose by more than 32% and industrial output increased by a remarkable 40%.

President Trump has been on the global funding rounds and has secured more than $18 trillion in foreign investment. That’s roughly the equivalent of 120 Marshall Plans — just 13 shy of $20 trillion — to be invested here and nowhere else.

Unlike NAFTA, through which the rich got richer under the banner of free markets in exchange for cheaper consumer goods, Trump’s policy is a recipe for prosperity for all Americans.

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Photo by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Making these investments a reality in America will require a growing army of blue- and white-collar workers. With the wealth that it creates, our debt could be paid down and, finally, retired. Social Security and Medicare would be placed on a solid footing for time immemorial. All our public obligations to one another would be met by ever-growing prosperity, not by borrowed money and suffocating debt service.

Nothing approaching this level of intentional investment in a single country has ever been done. Yes, a similar tranche of greenbacks was burned with no discernible environmental benefit and great economic hardship for all. And yes, the American economy, under the guise of comparative advantage, sent trillions to our south and east — putting America second, hollowing out the American middle class, and neutralizing the American dream.

Trump’s plan is the opposite of both failed experiments. Like the original Marshall Plan, Trump’s is a recipe for the reindustrialization of the American economy and military, and it is not going to be fueled by windmills and solar farms but with hydrocarbons and uranium. That’s the Trump plan. It has merit.

Yet if we look at the polls, Trump is under water, and his base is showing signs of stress fractures. You bring peace to the Middle East, stop six other wars, and bring in some $20 trillion in America First investments within your first year, and you come home to find yourself under water and called a “lame duck.” Democracies are known to be fickle and hard to please, but this is still rich — and it will result in poverty if it continues.

Without the use of Trump’s tariffs and dealmaking, there would not be $20 trillion looking to onshore in the United States. You can blame Trump for higher costs on bananas and coffee, but it is the cost of electricity and health care — not the cost of coffee and bananas — that is roiling kitchen-table economics.

Vice President JD Vance recently made the right call for popular and populist patience. Those who are impatient should look at the offsets already passed, such as no taxes on Social Security, tips, and overtime. That helps pay for bananas and coffee and then some.

The sovereign wealth funds that are presently lining up on our shores are coming here based on promises made by a can-do president speaking for a can-do nation. While Trump is a can-do guy, are “We the People” still a can-do people? Or do we at least want to return to becoming a can-do people again?

The “can’t-do” forces are legion, and they are the ones now championing the affordability crisis they caused. When America was a can-do nation, we built the Empire State Building in a year. Today, it would take years to get a permit.

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Photo by Jim WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

Those willing to invest such money will require some certitude that the power they will need will be there to “build, baby, build.” If not, the money and the opportunity will pass before they have the possibility to take needed root.

And what about us, the American family, worker, and business continuing to struggle under the legacy of throttling energy privation? In short, we all have a common good — a shared interest — in righting the wrongs that control our grid and our nation’s future.

The good news is that a bill was introduced in the House during the government shutdown. It’s called the “Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security Act.” Unlike Obamacare, which clocked in at 903 pages, this bill is a lean 763 words. If it becomes law — and it should — it would change everything for the better, unlike Obamacare, which is a recipe for unaffordability.

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act was missing this one thing. His short- and long-term America First ambitions would be significantly strengthened by making this energy bill law before the midterms. Executive orders don’t provide the energy security these investors require or the American people deserve.

$20 trillion is a lot of money. Coming to our shores is a new lease on the American experiment as we enter our 250th birthday, hopelessly divided and broke. Let us come together to solve not just the affordability crisis but also set the conditions for greatness for the next 250 years.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

Venezuela was the stage. China was the target.



Last weekend’s Caribbean live-fire exercise in and around the suburbs of Caracas delivered a steady stream of tactical messages to the Western Hemisphere. We don’t like narco-terrorists, wannabe communists, bloated dictators, or people who supply oil to our adversaries.

But that wasn’t the real message.

Message to Xi: There’s a new sheriff in town. He isn’t ‘Sleepy Joe.’ And his call sign is FAFO.

The love note was addressed to China, and it read: We are awake now. Our game is FAFO.

America’s 36-year slumber on the Monroe Doctrine — “Stay out of the Western Hemisphere or else” — began after Panama in 1990. The Gulf War and the Global War on Terrorism followed, and Washington became dangerously myopic about threats in America’s own backyard.

Then came the turning point. When Bill Clinton signed off on communist China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2000, Beijing rapidly surged into a world-class economic power. Along with that rise came a succession of Chinese leaders who openly advanced the idea of global Chinese hegemony.

Oddly enough, many of those ideas came from an American — my late friend Alvin Toffler.

Toffler’s book “The Third Wave” so impressed Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang in 1984 that millions of bootleg Chinese translations were distributed — without royalties — throughout the People’s Liberation Army. The same thing happened after Toffler published “War and Anti-War.” Once again, millions of pirated copies circulated, and Beijing began integrating his ideas into military doctrine.

In the late 1990s, PLA Major General Qiao Liang and Colonel Wang Xiangsui wrote “Unrestricted Warfare,” borrowing heavily from Toffler while laying out a strategy to defeat the United States.

In hindsight, it should have been titled “Slow Motion War.”

The book focuses on perceived weaknesses in American character and American war-making. The United States remains a nation of quarterly earnings reports and election cycles. We change political leadership every two or four years. The Chinese think in generational time frames.

From their perspective, Americans only go to war when facing a “clear and present danger.”

The genius of “Unrestricted Warfare” lies in exploiting what happens when a threat is clear but not present — like cancer from long-term smoking — or present but not clear, like the slow poisons Lucrezia Borgia allegedly used on her enemies.

Qiao and Wang proposed a slow, steady pressure campaign against the four pillars of American national power: diplomatic, information, military, and economic — the DIME.

Examples abound. Diplomatic and economic leverage through the Belt and Road Initiative. Tight control of information inside China paired with aggressive information warfare abroad through platforms such as TikTok. A decades-long military buildup aimed at surpassing U.S. power. And a long trail of currency manipulation.

(And then there’s this gem from page 191 of “Unrestricted Warfare”: “Can special funds be set up to exert greater influence on another country’s government and legislature through lobbying?” Eric Swalwell might find that line interesting.)

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Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

While America fixated on the Middle East, China quietly embedded itself throughout Latin America. In Panama, Beijing gained control of port management at both ends of the Panama Canal and began upgrading the system. In Costa Rica — which has no army — China donated 3,500 police cars and built a national stadium in San José, free of charge. It also cut sweetheart deals involving hundreds of Chinese fishing trawlers. Colombia saw similar treatment.

Then came Orange Man Bad.

Donald Trump is the first president to grasp that China isn’t a Red Godzilla stomping cities with napalm breath and a scything tail. China is more like the Blob — and Trump is Steve McQueen.

Venezuela, Maduro, oil, and narco-terrorism were all subsets.

China was the target. Xi Jinping was the bullseye.

Zero hour wasn’t set by the weather. It was set by the departure of Chinese envoy Qiu Xiaoqi, who had just wrapped up discussions on future ties with Venezuela. Unfortunately for Beijing, Delta Force snagged and bagged Nicolás Maduro and his wife and had them sitting in a Brooklyn jail before the envoy even made it home.

Message to Xi: There’s a new sheriff in town. He isn’t “Sleepy Joe.” And his call sign is FAFO.

Any questions?

Here’s What Trump And Other Republicans Can Do To Solve America’s Housing Affordability Crisis

'Potential home buyers would benefit greatly from a whole-of-government approach at the federal, at the state, and at the local level,' said Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni.