JAMES P. PINKERTON: Trump’s Outside The Box Thinking Could Spark Supply-Side Revolution Not Seen Since Reagan
President Donald Trump is opening up new frontiers for wealth creation around the world. How so? By advancing the supply side. A half-century ago, supply-side economics burst onto the national stage thanks to the energy…


President Donald Trump is opening up new frontiers for wealth creation around the world. How so? By advancing the supply side.
A half-century ago, supply-side economics burst onto the national stage thanks to the energy and charisma of former Republican New York Rep. Jack Kemp. Back then, in a time of high inflation and slow growth, Kemp argued that tax-rate reductions would increase the supply of goods, as producers were incentivized to make more. So prices would be lowered as new jobs and profits were created.
Kemp sold the supply-side concept to Ronald Reagan, who won the presidency in 1980, and enacted two epic tax cuts, in 1981 and 1986. The result was a non-inflationary economic boom.
Yet Kemp had an even broader vision of growth than just tax-rate reductions. In his 1979 book, ”An American Renaissance” he argued that oil and gas production was being crimped by federal price controls. Kemp argued that price decontrol would lead to more production. And that’s what happened. In the 1980s, Reagan, Kemp’s supply-side soulmate, lifted controls and producers responded by increasing supply. Today, the U.S. is a substantial oil and gas exporter.
Yet there’s still the matter of advancing the supply-side, of fully unleashing production. President Donald Trump pledges to do exactly that, as part of his plan for American energy dominance. Kemp, who died in 2009, would applaud.
You see, the Kemp-Reagan-Trump vision is about expanding supply; creating abundance. And now the 47th president is looking to the world. Let’s consider three examples:
Greenland: Nobody knows how much mineral and energy wealth awaits under all that ice, because Malthusian restrictions have kept people from looking. Yet



