Trump Giving Advice to Foreign Leaders is Very Revealing
Donald Trump’s advice to Keir Starmer at his Turnberry resort in Scotland yesterday was eye-opening: slash taxes, crack down on illegal immigration, and push cheap energy by drilling more North Sea oil while ditching renewables. It’s a crowd-pleaser, echoing his own playbook, and Trump’s not wrong—it could win elections. Voters love tax breaks and tough talk on borders. But it’s a trap. His tax-cutting gospel, paired with big spending on voter-friendly programs, is a fiscal time bomb. Unless tax cuts are focused on growth and respect budget deficits, they’re just pandering, not policy. His formula thrives on immediate voter gratification, tapping into frustrations with a simplicity that’s too basic. But here’s the problem: winning votes doesn’t mean winning for the country.
Trump’s push for oil over renewables is smart—solar and windmills are expensive, inefficient, dirty to make, and a pain to dispose of. But his illegal immigration crackdown is fake tough-guy stuff if he ignores legal immigration fixes. You must reduce illegal immigration. With low fertility rates and an aging population, you must increase legal immigration. His idea to cut energy costs by slashing regulations and punishing bogus lawsuits --like the Dakota Access Pipeline $667 million verdict against Greenpeace-- is solid—make losers pay to stop delays.
Trump’s advice to Keir Starmer is a classic populist smoke and mirrors, pushing crowd-pleasers while ignoring the necessary discipline to deliver. He nails what constituents want—tax cuts, tough immigration talk, cheap fossil fuels, and deregulation—to address immediate concerns like economic relief, border security, energy costs, and regulatory frustration. However, by promising broad benefits without delivering efficient, growth-oriented tax policy, and offsetting spending cuts to control deficits, Trump derails those benefits . As is evident, the deficiencies in his advice to Starmer mirror the same flaws in his own plans, prioritizing voter appeal over fiscal responsibility, legal immigration reform, and an efficient, lightly-regulated energy policy—the harder but more responsible path.