When it comes to the priorities of his administration, President-elect Donald Trump says he will have two simple rules: buy American, and hire Americans.
Tweeting Thursday morning, Trump said, “My Administration will follow two simple rules,” and added a link to his Instagram account with the following meme:
Trump ran his campaign on the themes of “Make America Great Again” and “America First.” Trump’s tweet was greeted with admiration from his supporters, although it was not met with universal praise.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro writes, “if Trump simply means that the federal government will buy American and hire American, that’s already the case. The federal government’s expenditures overwhelming go toward domestic concerns, and the federal government’s employees are nearly universally American.”
However, Shapiro cautions, if Trump is “talking about forcing domestic businesses to buy American and hire American. That means restricting business, costing them dollars, undermining their global competitiveness – and that will necessitate trade barriers that will impoverish American consumers, particularly at the low end of the income scale.”