Trump Again Defines National Priorities

The former president has again defined the territory over which an upcoming national election will be fought. And in so doing, he’s done the nation a great service.

Political observers and partisan activists debate whether Donald Trump or some other Republican candidate has the best chance of beating a Democratic rival in the 2024 presidential election. But earlier this month, Trump demonstrated that just as he did in 2016, he is raising campaign issues central to America’s future, issues that no other candidate is talking about. The latest flare-ups of what have been nearly eight years of relentless, orchestrated prosecution of Trump are a massive distraction but don’t change this reality.

Candidate Trump in 2016 raised issues Michael Anton adroitly summarized in “The Flight 93 Election” as “open borders, lower wages, outsourcing, de-industrialization, trade giveaways, and endless, pointless, winless war.” Making these neglected issues the themes of his campaign, Trump beat the odds and won the election. These are now among the most public and polarizing issues in America. They may be unresolved, but they are now central instead of peripheral.

This time, Trump’s 2024 campaign website includes under his agenda a list of the issues that have defined him since his political debut. They include deregulation, opportunity zones, fair trade, reshoring of industry, energy dominance, secure borders, reclaiming national sovereignty, war on drug cartels, law and order, military readiness, parents’ rights, ending censorship, election integrity, and more. Anyone questioning the coherence of Trump’s policy agenda is invited to read this list, which is long on specifics. But in a video released on his campaign website on March 4, Trump looked into the future.

The Future According to Trump

Calling it Agenda 47—presumably based on his aspiration to become America’s 47th president—Trump challenges Americans to once again “pursue big dreams and daring projects.” He points to previous national accomplishments, such as the settlement of the frontier, the interstate highway system, and the deployment of communications satellites. In what he characterized as America’s next “quantum leap” in progress, Trump calls for a national contest for urban developers to submit designs for new “Freedom Cities,” with 10 winning designs to be allocated federal land for their construction.

Trump then enumerates several related goals, including calling for American industry to win the race to commercialize airborne mobility, revitalization of economically depressed regions by investing in the manufacturing assets we’re going to need as we disconnect from China, and initiatives to lower the cost of a car and lower the cost of a single-family home. Trump also wants “baby bonuses” to encourage a new baby boom in America. Finally, Trump says he would challenge the state governors to make cities and towns more livable and build monuments to American heroes.

At the conclusion of Trump’s four-minute video, he vows to “dramatically increase living standards and build a future that brings our country together through excitement, opportunity, and success.”

Trump is on to something. Every one of his goals is a driver of productivity and innovation, starting with new cities. Why shouldn’t the federal government allow for the privatization of a mere 0.5 percent of federal land in the United States? That would be roughly 5,000 square miles which, if split evenly and allocated as squares, would be...

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