A perennial parlor game amongst us Washington Insiders is ... Who'll be the next president? The most interesting potential candidate is ... Francis Suarez.
He gets prosperity creation like no other candidate.
Suarez, mayor of Miami, president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Per Politico: "Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has bet his political future on being a cheerleader for the industries that purport to hold the keys to, well, the future.
"Whether it's crypto, artificial intelligence, quantum computing or plain vanilla financial services, the 45-year-old South Florida Republican and possible presidential candidate believes that going full tilt on a pro-business agenda — even if it yields some major bummers — will leave him and his constituents better situated than his peers in New York, Chicago and San Francisco."
Politico goes off key by minimizing Suarez's agenda as merely "pro-business." A pro-business Republican? Dog bites man!
Suarez is pro-tech. As I previously wrote here, "per the Honorable Norman Augustine, 'numerous studies including those that won Robert Solow and Paul Romer Nobel Prizes in Economics, demonstrate that as much as 85% of the long-term growth in America's economy is attributable to advancements in science and technology.'"
No point in rerunning a zombified piece, cutting tax rates, of the prosperity formula.
Yes, that helped propel America and the world to new heights of prosperity.
Cutting the top rate from 70% to 28%. Big deal.
Cutting the top rate from 39.6% to 37%? Not so much.
Suarez, uniquely, grasps the key to unleashing the next wave of great prosperity: technological innovation.
Bonus! Suarez is a maverick, a sweeter-tempered John McCain. Politico: "Suarez is a Cuban Republican, but he doesn't match some of the usual headlines surrounding Cuban American voters. For one, he didn't vote for Trump in the 2020 election. He doesn't have a great relationship with DeSantis, either, and has criticized him openly and done little to support him politically. He even voted for DeSantis' 2018 Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum."
Politico recently rounded up those hats already in or headed for the presidential ring.
Declared: Donald Trump, the GOP's clear front-runner.
Undeclared likelies: Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence. Declared unlikelies: Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Larry Elder, Perry Johnson, Vivek Ramaswamy. Maybes: Kristi Noem, Mike Rogers, Tim Scott, Chris Sununu. Unlikelies: Greg Abbott, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Glenn Youngkin.
Yawn.
When I first entered politics, back in the stagflationary '80s, I was entranced by a young congressman named Jack Kemp. This "phys-ed major from Occidental College" became the successful thought leader of American and world economic policy for almost two prosperous decades.
How prosperous? As I wrote here: "The supply-side formula of lower marginal tax rates on a robust base, a steady currency that serves as good money and moderate regulation drove the Dow, which stood at 814 on the day in November 1979 on which Reagan declared for the presidency to its current commanding heights. ...
"Americans are now almost twice as wealthy than we were in 1979, real per capita GDP rising from $30,000 to nearly $60,000. U.S. GDP for 1979, per the St. Louis Fed, was then about $2.7T. It's now, not inflation or population adjusted but you get the drift, at $24T.
"Other nations followed Reagan's lead in cutting tax rates. Everyone benefited from the stabilization of the dollar, the world's reserve currency.
"World nominal GDP soared, also not adjusted for inflation or demographics but you get the picture, from $11T then to $96T today."
Since my political inspiration, Kemp, left the Capitol in 1989, I have searched in vain for a successor champion of prosperity policies. Among my most recent disappointments?
Former Florida Gov. Jeb! Bush announced for president in 2015 on a platform of 4% economic growth. Huzzah!?! Not really.
Jeb's father, President George H.W. Bush, had dismissed Reagan's supply-side economics as "voodoo." Later, he infamously broke his "no new taxes" pledge, throwing America into recession. Yet with the clan loyalty for which the Bushes are famous, candidate Jeb! went on record as wishing to put Reagan behind us.
Jeb!, again loyal to a fault, built his economics from planks fashioned by the George W. Bush Presidential Center's 4% Economic Growth Project. Problem! Under President George W. Bush America grew by only 1.73% per year.
Thereafter, Jeb! neglected to campaign on his 4% growth claim. No one else did either.
Until down the escalator came Donald Trump, overflowing with lugubrious grievances and grandiose promises, routing his rivals with bluster and dazzle, gliding on promises of prosperity into a presidential term.
After election, President Trump's economic growth rate (before COVID) was 2.5%, almost indistinguishable from Obama's. Still ... Trump sure talked a good game!
America has endured almost a quarter century of economic doldrums. We yearn for the return of equitable prosperity.
Bring on the new champ!
Enter Francis Suarez. ...
Ralph Benko, co-author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and chairman and co-founder of "The Capitalist League," is the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply-Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $94T. Read Ralph Benko's reports — More Here.
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