Date: 2025-07-04 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028553
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
OPINION: LIZ TRUSS
Elites killed my pro-growth agenda.
Trump can’t let them stop his.
OPINION: LIZ TRUSS
Elites killed my pro-growth agenda.
Trump can’t let them stop his.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent listens as President Donald Trump
speaks in the Oval Office at the White House on April 9.
(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Original article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/05/22/liz-truss-trump-growth-agenda/
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
I agree with almost nothing in the essay by Liz Truss.
I have not been a fan of the British Conservative Party for a long time, and this essay by Liz Truss confirms the correctness of my position.
I wish the UK had more financial power and international clout. Britain is not financially very strong, but it still does its fair share and more when it comes to giving backing to all sorts of international disputes.
Looking back to my 20s and 30s ... the 1960s and 70s ... I am reminded of the very weak economy that resulted from the massive cost of economic degradation of the country as a result of WW11. Britain paid a huge price in order to win the war. The USA helped a lot, and in the process experience an economic boom selling US produced weaponry to Britain and the other allies! For the USA, this was a financial bonanza! A huge contrast to the impact on Britain and its depemdamcies!
Liz Truss was Prime Minister for just a few weeks ... and even that was really too long!
Peter Burgess
The White House’s proposed tax cuts, tariffs and spending reforms are showing the West the way forward.
May 22, 2025 at 6:45 a.m. EDT
Written by Liz Truss
Liz Truss was prime minister of Britain [for 49 days in 2022)
President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have a herculean task ahead of them in turning around the U.S. economy and gripping the deep state that has promoted managed decline. But it is vital that they succeed.
If they were not taking the actions they now are on tariffs, the U.S. economy would remain on course to be eclipsed by China, with other Western economies also dwindling in its wake — and our security with it.
Allowing China to join the World Trade Organization in 2001, and then break all the rules, was a massive mistake. Only drastic action can remedy this. It is also important that the U.S. take appropriate action on other nations — otherwise, China will simply be able to circumvent the tariffs.
Trump and Bessent must also stay the course on squeezing the government, cutting taxes and getting rid of all the regulations holding America back. In doing this, they hold in their hands not just the future of the U.S. — but also that of its Western allies that are waiting to see how the Trump administration’s policies work out. For this should also be the opportunity for Western Europe to break free.
Over recent decades — in particular after the Great Recession and the covid pandemic — America and other Western nations built up huge amounts of debt. In the U.S. and Britain, general government debt as a proportion of gross domestic product has more than doubled since the turn of the millennium, passing 100 percent in both countries.
Yet, the modern Keynesian economic orthodoxy that has been in vogue since the 1990s and promoted by institutions such as the World Economic Forum and the European Union had no way of dealing with this. Instead, its advocates resorted to money printing, more government intervention — claiming that diversity, equity and inclusion programs and reducing fossil fuel use were going to generate growth — and stimulus policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act.
When these actions inevitably reduced growth and created inflation, their advocates looked to raise taxes to make up the difference. If you want to know what the future holds for nations pursuing these terrible policies, check out Western Europe, which has been stagnant for more than a decade. Extraordinarily, Britain’s leftist government and the E.U. have just done a deal tightening this death grip.
Bessent is right that the only way out of this sort of doom loop, which the United States was also in danger of entering, is to grow the economy — and, in particular, to grow the economy faster than the size of state. This is how you bring down the ratio of debt to GDP over time — it’s basic math.
This is achieved by liberating the supply side of the economy: “Drill, baby, drill,” cut taxes, get rid of regulations, embrace bitcoin and unleash a spirit of enterprise. Securing trade deals will also help. It’s what made our countries great, and it’s what will make them great again.
Of course, public spending also has to be reined in. The work of the U.S. DOGE Service is important in reducing waste and increasing accountability, and President Joe Biden’s excesses, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, must be taken on. But public spending changes are not that fast if they are to be effective. For example, successfully reforming welfare to get more people into work takes time; an expanding private sector helps this.
I know that what Trump is attempting to do won’t be easy. Back in 2022 — when I became British prime minister — I sought to go for growth by taking on the economic orthodoxy that had presided over the United Kingdom’s stagnation. I planned to rein in public spending by limiting rises in welfare while cutting the top rate of income tax and halting proposed rises in corporation tax. I reversed Britain’s ban on fracking as a way of increasing our energy independence and reducing household energy bills (since U.K. energy prices are now four times higher than those enjoyed by our American cousins).
British Prime Minister Liz Truss attends a news conference in London on Oct. 14, 2022. (Daniel Leal/AP)
Yet, I faced a barrage of criticism from establishment economists who claimed that these actions would stoke inflation and increase the deficit. They overlooked the fact that inflation is a monetary phenomenon and had been created by too much money printing by the Bank of England. I also was blamed for the fallout of the Bank of England’s failure to ensure financial stability in the pension market — even as subsequent research by its own analysts found that two-thirds of the market spike we saw was down to them.
I wasn’t targeted just by the usual British suspects, such as our Office for Budget Responsibility and the Financial Times, but by the entire Davos elite, from the International Monetary Fund to Biden himself. And just as they’ve tried to do with Trump, the naysayers pointed to short-term market reactions to bully policymakers out of securing long-term economic prosperity.
It’s notable how silent my critics were when previous — and subsequent — administrations in the U.K., U.S. and elsewhere pursued profligate spending programs. Their default setting is to applaud spending hikes, however unaffordable, but to lambast tax cuts, even when they raise more revenue and foster growth. It comes as no surprise that all their economic models have since proved to have been fundamentally wrong. And since they forced a reversal of my policies, the debt has gotten worse and the rates for U.K. government bonds have soared to even higher peaks.
The other factor hindering me was the fact that a significant element of the Conservative Party did not believe in conservative economic policy. They wanted net-zero emission targets, higher taxes and more money printing. They had already got rid of Boris Johnson with a view to installing the former Goldman Sachs banker Rishi Sunak. I got in the way of their plans. So, they stoked the narrative to depose me — and having done so, and after failing to implement conservative policies, last year the party went down to its worst election defeat in modern history. Their losses were instructive: The White House should not be swayed by “allies” warning of political disaster if they make meaningful reform to benefits, remove climate giveaways and cut down on spending.
What I learned from my experience is the sheer power of the globalist economic establishment and its allies in the political arena. They will try to create divisions and promote a false narrative.
But Trump comes with a strong mandate to push his agenda through. He must be given maximum support in Congress. He must dismantle as much of the permanent bureaucracy as possible. And he must also act to take on the globalist economic establishment through alternative networks and forums to those employed by the very elite who have brought about so much ruin.
It will take a lot to defeat them, but they must be defeated to save the West.
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The comments overwhelmingly criticize Liz Truss, the former UK Prime Minister, for her brief and disastrous tenure, marked by failed economic policies that led to her quick ousting. Many commenters express disbelief and ridicule at The Washington Post for giving her a platform,... Show more
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