President Trump travelled to Iowa last Thursday to kick off a year-long celebration of the coming 250th anniversary of the United States on July 4, 2026. On Friday, this year’s Fourth of July, he signed his Big (almost 1,000 pages) Beautiful Bill, passed by a tiny majority of senators and representatives.]
The law will produce deficits of $3 trillion (£2.2 trillion) over ten years, or a budget surplus after tariff revenues, deregulation and accelerated economic growth are factored in. Choose your number cruncher. Healthy Americans who will not work will lose healthcare benefits, illegal aliens will lose all benefits, and poor Americans will lose some federal supplements to their food budgets. Wealthier Americans will benefit.
By the time Donald Trump signed the bill, Americans were consuming 150 million hot dogs and 375 million burgers, had spent $4 billion on the accompanying wine and beer, and were shooting off some $3 billion worth of fireworks — 99 per cent of them made in China, our trade enemy No 1. All this to celebrate the Continental Congress’s 1776 Declaration of Independence, a sort of rap sheet listing the “injuries and usurpations” inflicted on his previously loyal subjects by King George III.
About 72.2 million Americans took to the air, roads and rails — 2.4 per cent more than last year — with the 61.6 million drivers receiving the benefit of the lowest petrol price since the pandemic: $3.16 per gallon, $0.32 cheaper than last year. The 5.84 million who chose to fly put their lives in the hands of an understaffed safety regulator that runs on Windows 95 and floppy discs.
It was not until 1790 that the last of the 13 states (Rhode Island) signed the constitution that constrains presidential power. Those constraints are now being tested by Trump, the man who would be King according to his critics. When asked what type of government the constitution established, the fabled founding father Benjamin Franklin replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.” So far, so good. We remain a republic, and if the courts do their job, we can keep it.
The nation born in 1776 has become the world’s acknowledged superpower. Powerful enough to broker shaky ceasefires in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Powerful enough to unilaterally upend the post-Second World War trading order and, in effect, begin eliminating its anti-American tilt.
It has developed an economy in which Americans have $35 trillion in equity in their homes, about $315,000 per mortgage holder, and share prices are at record highs. Almost 60 per cent of Americans own more than one car, every household has a fridge, more than 90 per cent own a microwave oven, 80 per cent have a clothes dryer, 88 per cent use air conditioning, 66 per cent of homes are owned by their occupants, and all have television sets, with 54 per cent of homes having three or more.
The widespread distribution of the stuff of a comfortable life is made possible in part by a progressive income tax system that transfers purchasing power from rich to poor.
On the day before we fired up our patio grills, the government reported that the economy is earning its much-touted description: resilient. It added 147,000 jobs in June, 47,00 of them in state and local governments. The unemployment rate dropped from 4.2 to 4.1 per cent, the lowest in a year. “Pretty soft [but] not concerning” according to Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs.
The president, for whom ugly invective is a policy tool, calls Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell a “fool”, “stupid” and a “numbskull” for not cutting the benchmark Fed interest rate of 4.25-4.5 to 1.0 per cent. Right before the holiday, he called for Powell’s resignation, a few days after the Fed chairman had received a standing ovation from fellow central bankers at a meeting in Portugal, before returning home for the Fourth. Rumours that Trump ordered for him to be detained at the border on his return remain unsubstantiated.
• US jobs growth beats expectations in June
Not all is for the best in this best of all possible countries. The midnight whims of an insomniac determine much of economic policy. Trade “deals” are announced, which turn out to be “frameworks”, which are to “trade deals” as acorns are to oak trees. The ever-wily Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, calls such deals “finalised in principle”.
Then there is massive uncertainty, not all created by the prospect of midnight decisions at Mar-a-Lago. The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon is employing almost one million robots in its warehouses, almost as many as the humans on its payroll. And Bank of New York Mellon’s AI-powered “digital workers” will soon have their own email accounts. Sooner, perhaps, than many college graduates will find entry-level jobs.
About 88 per cent of Americans are satisfied with their jobs. But only 31 per cent of largely home-owning, multi-car, job-satisfied Americans are also satisfied with the way things are going in the US. Proving that there’s more to life than a house, cars, appliances and a decent job.
Never mind, the Declaration of Independence did not promise happiness, only the right to pursue it.
Irwin Stelzer is a business adviser