The Trump Administration's effort to bring policy expression to its populist impulses remains a work in progress. There have been some positive signs such as its firmness on addressing the trade imbalance with China. But there have also been missed opportunities such as the supply-side bias in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017. This unevenness has observers such as National Review's Rich Lowry rightly calling for a "populism that is less stylistic and more substantive."
Different factors have inhibited the translation of the president's populist insights into a substantive policy agenda. Part of it is the president's own disinterest in matters of public policy and governance. Part of it reflects the Republican establishment's resistance to deviations from long-standing orthodoxy. And another is the tension between populism's anti-elitism and the inherent technocracy of policy design, development, and implementation.
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