A lot of American voters got the opposite of “America First.”
Trump’s big beautiful tax law cut the corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, repealed the corporate AMT, and let corporations fully expense capital investments. That gave huge permanent windfalls to big business and shareholders, not working Americans. It helped trigger record corporate stock buybacks while wages barely moved.
His tariffs were sold as hitting foreign governments, but the reality is U.S. importers pay them and pass the cost to consumers. Americans, not other countries, have been footing that bill. Deregulation stripped away consumer protections and environmental rules that kept corporate costs in check. Trump signed a resolution blocking the CFPB’s overdraft fee cap, which was projected to save Americans five billion dollars a year, giving a direct win to the biggest banks. EPA rollbacks weakened pollution rules to the benefit of the fossil fuel industry at the public’s expense.
JD Vance brands himself America First, but in April 2024 he voted to kill the NLRB’s joint employer rule, siding with big corporate franchisors over workers’ bargaining power. He openly defends Trump’s tariffs, which work like a hidden tax on Americans.
Republicans as a whole keep passing massive foreign aid bills, including billions for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. The small group who truly oppose these packages, such as Thomas Massie and Rand Paul, are a minority. The majority coalition that passes them includes establishment Republicans, Democrats, and plenty of America First Republicans who break ranks when it counts.
Even Marjorie Taylor Greene is waking up to this. She has called out the GOP for sending money overseas while Americans struggle, slammed continued Israel funding, and became the first Republican in Congress to call what is happening in Gaza a genocide.
If America First were more than a slogan, they would stop giving away billions abroad, stop shifting costs onto American families through corporate tax breaks and deregulation, and actually put the people of this country ahead of special interests.