Trump’s Race Against Time |
Trump’s Race Against Time
Eight months before the crucial midterm elections, the administration of President Donald Trump is battling high living costs.
Thomas Kolbe | March 8, 2026
Eight months before the crucial midterm elections, the administration of President Donald Trump is battling high living costs. The strike against Iran threatens to undo the first successes achieved in the struggle against inflation via falling energy prices.
Ludwig Erhard understood the formula for sustained political success. The equation was as simple as it was powerful: stable money circulating in free markets coordinates the millions of individual decisions made by households, businesses, and credit institutions -- day after day -- in the most efficient manner.
Stable money requires a lean state. Public debt, meanwhile, is widely regarded as the primary cause of inflation, because it is typically financed or diluted not through real growth but through the central bank’s printing press.
Erhard condensed his economic principles in his popular work Prosperity for All -- recommended reading for anyone seeking to understand the roots of Germany’s present political crisis from the perspective of economic policy.
Regardless of how one assesses his chancellorship, the framework designed by the nonpartisan liberal economist remains a civilizational achievement of modernity. It stands for economic rationality, rules-based order, and the conviction that prosperity grows out of freedom. Yet these principles are too often forgotten -- or systematically discredited by political and left-wing ideologies.
In the United States, after years of regulatory decay, this thinking has found renewed resonance. Donald Trump deliberately aligned his campaign with Erhardian principles. He........