by Daniel Brouse
September 25, 2025
The U.S. government is once again barreling toward a shutdown, and the chaos is entirely of Donald Trump’s making. Despite branding himself a “businessman president,” Trump continues to push policies that baffle economists and devastate the very citizens he claims to represent.
The MAGA movement has ballooned the deficit through reckless spending while simultaneously cutting healthcare assistance for millions of Americans in need of insurance. Now, Trump is refusing to meet with Democratic leaders to even attempt a compromise. The result: a government paralyzed not by fiscal necessity, but by ideology.
I have been warning since Trump first took office that trying to reconstruct the global economy through the lens of white nationalism would end in disaster. Without the intellect of a second grader, Trump has undermined decades of U.S. economic stability in pursuit of grievance politics.
The government is already reeling from the DOGE fiasco, yet Trump’s proposed response is even more dangerous: firing thousands of government employees if a shutdown occurs, under the absurd pretense of “teaching Democrats a lesson.” These tactics are not only cruel—they could be the final nail in the coffin of what is already a failed Trump economy.
Protectionism and white nationalism are not economic strategies. Trade wars with nearly every major economy have shredded American credibility and competitiveness. Trump has violated the Constitution by pushing through the largest regressive tax increase in U.S. history, enriching the wealthy while burdening working families. Meanwhile, his racist, anti-immigration policies are crippling the backbone of American capitalism: population growth. Immigration has accounted for approximately 80% of GDP growth over the last five years—yet Trump insists on cutting off this lifeline.
A shutdown is now looking increasingly inevitable, not because of necessity, but because Trump believes he can spin an economic collapse into a political weapon against the so-called “radical left.” The irony, of course, is that it is the right—through Trump’s recklessness—that is dismantling the very fiscal conservatism it once claimed to uphold. As a fiscally conservative Republican economist, I cannot overstate the damage: Trump is destroying America from within.