Victor Davis Hanson
Despite the media hysteria, President Donald Trump’s counterrevolution remains on course.
Its ultimate fate will probably rest with the state of the economy by the November 2026 midterm elections. But its success also hinges on accomplishing what is right and long overdue — and then making such reforms quietly, compassionately, and methodically.
No country can long endure without sovereignty and security — or with 10 to 12 million illegal immigrants crossing the border and half a million criminal foreign nationals roaming freely.
The prior administration found that it was easy to destroy the border and welcome the influx. But it is far harder for its successor to restore security, find those who broke the law, and insist on legal-only immigration. Trump is on the right side of all these issues and making substantial progress.
Everyone knew that a $2 trillion budget deficit, a $37 trillion national debt, and a $1.2 trillion trade deficit in goods were ultimately unsustainable.
Yet all prior politicians of the 21st century winced at the mere thought of reducing debts and deficits, given that it proved much easier just to print and spread around federal money. As long as the Trump administration dutifully cuts the budget, sends its regrets to displaced federal employees, seeks to expand private sector reemployment, and quietly presses ahead, it retains the moral high ground.
The elite universities have long hidden things from the American people that otherwise would have lost them all public support.
They deliberately sought to neuter Supreme Court rulings banning race-based preferences by stealthily continuing their often-segregated policies on campuses, from admissions and hiring to dorms and graduations.
They have taken billions of dollars from autocracies, such as communist China and Qatar. And they have partnered abroad with their foreign illiberal institutions and then disguised their quid pro quo subservience.
These supposedly prestigious universities have previously made no real effort either to stop or even hide their own campus epidemics of antisemitism.
They have spiked their tuition and costs higher than the annual rate of inflation, assured that the tottering $1.7 trillion guaranteed student loan portfolio would always send them guaranteed cash flows.
They have gouged taxpayers by charging exorbitant surcharges on federal grants from 40 to 60 percent. And they make no effort to offer students intellectual, ideological, or political diversity.
So, even our most prestigious universities seem to have no real moral compass. Accordingly, as long as Trump retains the high ground, the public, too, will demand either reform in higher education or a cessation of federal support to it.
The economy remains strong, but its ultimate health depends on reaching a trade deal with a handful of nations that account for our $1.2 trillion trade deficit in goods: China, the EU, Canada, Mexico, the Southeast Asian trade bloc, and Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.
These nations all know that their tariffs are not symmetrical. But our trade partners will not willingly change. They apparently, but wrongly, believe that the U.S. either welcomes its trade deficits, naively thinks they’re irrelevant, or is too wedded to libertarian trade ideology to demand accountability.
So, too, on trade, the Trump administration is in the right.
Its only challenge is to avoid envisioning tariffs as a new, get-rich source of massive revenue. Data does not support the idea of such large tariff incomes.
The American people signed on for symmetry, fairness, and reciprocity in trade, not tariffing those who run deficits with us or seeing high tariffs as a cash cow to fund our out-of-control government.
Enraged Democrats still offer no substantial alternatives to the Trump agenda.
There are no shadow-government Democratic leaders with new policy initiatives. They flee from the Biden record on the border, the prior massive deficits and inflation, the disaster in Afghanistan, two theater-wide wars that broke out on Biden’s watch, and the shameless conspiracy to hide the prior president’s increasing dementia.
Instead, the Left has descended into thinly veiled threats of organized disruption in the streets. It embraces potty-mouth public profanity, profane and unhinged videos, nihilistic filibusters, congressional outbursts, and increasingly dangerous threats to the persons of Elon Musk and Trump.
All that frenzy is not a sign that the Trump counterrevolution is failing. It is good evidence that it is advancing forward, and its ethically bankrupt opposition has no idea how, or whether even, to stop it.
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won,” from Basic Books. You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.
