The Unignorable Incoherence of Trump 2.0

The next Trump administration is ramping up, and we are beginning to get a sense of what it might look like.

But before we get any further from the election, I want to note the one thing we absolutely know about the Trump administration’s policy: It constantly contradicts itself. In order to win, Trump has made an overlapping and contradictory set of promises to his stakeholders and supporters.

In the world of energy policy, nuclear energy is the most glaring example. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who Trump has said will have a major role in overseeing the nation’s public health, is a lifelong opponent of nuclear power. Before his current Trumpist turn, his environmental career’s crowning achievement was helping to shut down Indian Point Energy Center, a nuclear power plant that generated enough zero-carbon electricity to meet a quarter of New York City’s power needs. That closure — which was celebrated by some environmental groups — substantially increased New York’s natural gas consumption, raising the state’s emissions of climate pollution.

Vice President-elect JD Vance, meanwhile, has spoken much more favorably about nuclear energy. He sometimes frames nuclear energy as the one climate solution Democrats won’t pursue without fully conceding that climate change is a problem requiring solutions. As he told the podcast host Joe Rogan earlier this year, “If you think that carbon is the most significant thing — [that] the sole focus of American civilization should be to reduce the carbon footprint of the world — then you would be investing in nuclear in a big way.” (In reality, as I wrote last month, Democrats at the national level became startlingly pro-nuclear during this election cycle.)

Musk, for his part, is so pro-nuclear that while interviewing Trump and Kennedy in the past year, he interjected to express support for nuclear. “I do want to voice my opinion that, in my opinion, actually nuclear is very safe,” he told RFK last year. “If you look at the actual deaths from nuclear power, they’re miniscule compared to certainly any fossil fuel power generation.” (He is totally correct about that.) “I would actually — although this does go against a lot of people’s views — I’m actually a believer in nuclear fission,” Musk added.

Trump, meanwhile, has swung around on the question. The first Trump administration passed a number of pro-nuclear policies and sought to elevate the small modular reactor industry. As recently as August, Trump said that nuclear energy was “very good, very safe.” But that month he also equivocated about its safety. “They talk about climate change, but they never talk about nuclear warming,” he told Musk. He also pondered whether nuclear energy has a branding problem because it shares a name with nuclear weapons. (I am indebted to HuffPo’s Alex Kauffman, who indispensably tracked Trump’s shifts of mood on this issue.)

Finally, the officials Trump is likely to bring in to oversee energy policy — people like Doug Burgum, the North Dakota governor who could become energy czar — hold a more traditionally Republican pro-nuclear view.

Some of this incoherence might be intentional. Kennedy seems to have struck a deal with Trump over some aspects of energy policy. During his victory speech on Tuesday, Trump even told RFK, “Bobby, stay away from the liquid gold” — implying a transaction where RFK gets control of health policy while leaving energy untouched. But does that extend to other parts of the energy agenda?

I point to this because it illustrates what’s coming — the messy mix of interpersonal rivalries, shoot-from-the-hip reversals, and traditional Republicanism that will actually determine the output of Trump’s policy process. And nuclear is not even the most glaring question about the Trump administration’s energy and economic policy. Trump says he wants to bring back U.S. manufacturing, and Vance has said that the U.S. should solve climate change by investing in domestic manufacturing: “If we actually care about getting cleaner air and cleaner water, the best thing to do is to double down and invest in American workers and the American people,” he said at the VP debate.

This is more or less the exact goal of the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature climate law, which incentivizes companies to manufacture solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles domestically. This law has helped underwrite dozens of new EV and batteries factories in Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan,Texas, and Arizona — the battlegrounds of modern American politics. Yet the Trump administration has committed to repealing or freezing the IRA.

Likewise, Musk has promised to slash “at least $2 trillion” from the federal budget. But that seems virtually impossible without cutting defense, Social Security, and Medicare — programs that Republicans or Trump have promised to leave intact. (Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, the incoming Senate armed service committee chair, wants to massively increase defense spending.) Will it accept the local economic pain, the dozens of canceled investments, that will follow that repeal?

The unignorable fact of the Trump administration is that its plans, at least as viewed today, do not really hang together. Trump has been swept into power promising low prices and an end to inflation, but his centerpiece economic policies are likely to reduce the low-end labor supply (through mass deportations) while increasing the cost of goods (through economy-wide tariffs). Perhaps these policies will not affect the economy as economists expect — I remember enough of the first Trump administration to know that catastrophic expert predictions do not always come true.

But perhaps they will. When asked what the hardest thing was about being prime minister, the British politician Harold Macmillan is said to have replied, “Events, dear boy, events.” With Trump, we can be certain that some of those coalition-splitting events will spring from his own messily managed coalition.