Trump Agreed With Bernie, Bessent Trashed the Free Market, What's Going On?!

Trump and Bessent are shattering the free-market orthodoxy and reviving Henry Clay's American System--and the jobs numbers prove it's working

-- Susan Kokinda, --June 6, 2026

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Susan argues that Trump's recent comments praising overlap with Bernie Sanders and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's critique of “slavish devotion to free markets” signal not a change of sides but a shift to a different economic system. 

It frames Trump’s “new economic plan” as an industrial policy that uses tariffs, tax policy, directed investment, and potential public-private stakes in major AI firms, while also challenging Federal Reserve practices and Wall Street forecasting.

Citing the latest jobs report (172,000 jobs versus a 105,000 forecast, with prior months revised upward), it claims the plan is working, though manufacturing hiring is still early, following a sequence of orders, production, investment, then jobs described by Peter Navarro. Susan says this approach revives Henry Clay’s “American System,” presented as distinct from free markets, free trade, or socialism.

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