Trump’s Influence on Conservative Thought: Insights from George Will
U.S. President Donald Trump had a notable meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer (not pictured) at the Trump Turnberry golf club on July 28, 2025, in Turnberry, Scotland. The occasion was marked by the palpable tension surrounding Trump’s evolving political legacy.
George Will, a venerated conservative commentator now at the age of 84, has long championed the ideologies of President Ronald Reagan and Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona).
However, his political alignment shifted dramatically in 2016 when he severed ties with the Republican Party to assert his independence. The catalyst for this significant transformation was, unequivocally, Donald Trump.
Nearly a decade hence, Will persists as an acerbic critic of Trump and the MAGA movement, which he perceives as fundamentally discordant with traditional Reagan and Goldwater conservatism. A pivotal area of contention lies in Trump’s embrace of “protectionist” policies.
In his October 10 column, Will illuminates the plight of Khalilah Few, a salon owner in Clayton County, Georgia, as emblematic of his staunch opposition to protectionist ideologies propagated by the MAGA movement and a prospective Trump administration.
“The federal government, preening about its successes in business ventures—such as Amtrak—has recently dived headfirst into ‘industrial policy,'” Will critiques. The local government of Clayton County, Georgia, also engages in economic planning.
Should its opposition to Khalilah Few prevail, she, a single mother with a teenage son, risks losing a significant portion of her savings and her chance for financial stability. She stands to be collateral damage in her local government’s vision of ‘smart growth.’
Fortunately, she is supported by the libertarian legal advocates at the Institute for Justice. Clayton County has met its match.
Will elaborates further, stating, Few graduated from beauty school in 2012 and in 2023 launched her salon. In pursuit of a new location, she invested over $30,000 in refurbishing and leasing a space that once housed a barbershop.
When she applied for a permit in May, she presumed approval would be routine. Yet, in July, her request was rebuffed for two ostensibly flawed reasons: one was inscrutable, while the other was unconstitutional. The former claimed her salon contradicted the county’s narrative of ‘smart growth’…
The unconstitutional justification rested on the assertion that Few’s salon would contribute to ‘saturation’ due to the presence of several other salons within a five-mile radius. This reasoning epitomizes protectionism—a domestic variant of the longstanding argument for national tariffs.
Will categorizes Clayton County’s regulations as a microcosm of Trumpism.
“Clayton County appears to echo the Trump administration’s tendency to inject the national government into business activities, particularly regarding large corporations like U.S. Steel, Intel, and Nvidia,” Will posits.
“However, we ought to view the administration’s ‘industrial policy’—’smart growth’ as envisioned and implemented by so-called astute bureaucrats—as merely an amplification of established local government practices.”
Source link: Newsbreak.com.
