To the editor:
In 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt stood on his steel-braced legs in front of 100,000 cheering supporters in Philadelphia and denounced the “economic royalists.” Today, the economic royalists are called oligarchs, and we know some of them by name, especially Elon Musk, the richest of them all. They all attended Trump’s inauguration, all seeking special privileges from the new president, an oligarch himself.
President Trump inherited a good economy in 2025, with strong job growth and with inflation dropping from a peak of 9.1 percent in June 2022 to 2.9 percent in December 2024, partly due to the skillful guidance of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
Trump could have simply ridden the coattails of Bidenomics — the Infrastructure Act, the Chips Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act — and taken credit for continuing growth. But no, Trump foolishly started a worldwide tariff war, falsely believing that American CEOs will build manufacturing plants in America when for much less risk they can continue offshoring production, padding their salaries and reaping stock options.
The market is highly imperfect, but Bidenomics and its industrial policies are much more likely to be successful than tariffs. Now, after creating a mess, the president attacks Jerome Powell for not lowering interest rates. Yes, lower interest rates, so the private equity oligarchs can renew their plundering of America. Meanwhile, the president and his sons are promoting crypto Ponzi schemes.
Americans are witnessing the impotence of congressional Republicans to control a president who is acting like a king. Mainers are also witnessing our mistake in electing a geriatric senator in 2024. We should not make the same mistake in 2026. We need progressive representatives who will make “good trouble (John Lewis)” in Washington, who will fight for the political freedoms won by our founders in 1776, and who will fight for a wider economic freedom for the forgotten Americans, “the opportunity to make a living — a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives people not only enough to live by, but something to live for (FDR, Philadelphia, 1936).”
Stephen Freeman
Presque Isle
