Chapter 26 Endnotes: A Trade Chapter That Isn't About Trade
Project 2025's Trade chapter (pp 775-776) is composed almost entirely of endnotes promoting Federal Reserve deregulation, free-banking theory, and a return to the gold standard, citing libertarian monetary scholars and containing zero substantive trade policy proposals. The absence of any mention of enforceable labor standards, supply-chain traceability, or the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act reveals that the chapter's purpose is to advance a deregulatory monetary agenda, not to craft fair trade policy.
The Trade chapter of Project 2025 is a bait-and-switch. Turn to pages 775-776 and you find not a single tariff proposal, not a single labor standard, not a single supply-chain transparency measure. Instead, the endnotes cite F.A. Hayek's 'Denationalization of Money' (endnote 26), George Selgin's 'The Theory of Free Banking' (endnote 23), and the Gold Standard Restoration Act (endnote 28). The chapter is a Trojan horse for monetary deregulation, not trade policy.
This absence is itself the danger. By filling a Trade chapter with anti-Fed monetary theory, Project 2025 signals that the real agenda is removing the Federal Reserve's ability to manage the economy and replacing it with rigid gold-standard rules that would suppress employment and favor creditors over workers. Meanwhile, the chapter includes zero references to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, zero enforceable labor standards, and zero supply-chain traceability requirements. The workers and communities who depend on trade enforcement are treated as expendable, their concerns erased in favor of a libertarian monetary fantasy.
As of this writing, the Trump administration has implemented trade tariffs that raised the average effective tariff rate to 7.7% in 2025 (Tax Foundation), yet these tariffs impose no labor or environmental conditionalities. The administration has also fired pro-worker NLRB members and agency leaders (American Progress), weakening enforcement. The result is the worst of both worlds: tariffs that raise consumer prices but fail to protect workers, paired with a deregulatory philosophy that would further strip economic governance. To reverse this course, the Treasury Department must increase scrutiny of Fed governance reforms, and Congress must reject any Gold Standard Restoration Act while passing enforceable labor standards in trade agreements.
Original source — excerpted
project2025 Project 2025 ch. 26: Trade (pp 775-776)"— 742 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise ENDNOTES 1. U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, https:/ /www.law.cornell.edu/constitution (accessed January 23, 2023). 2. For example, Alexander Salter and Daniel Smith (2019) show that Federal Reserve Chairs become more favorable toward monetary discretion once they are confirmed compared to previous stances. Alexander William Salter and Daniel J. Smith, “Political Economists or Political Economists? The Role of Political Environments in the Formation of Fed Policy Under Burns, Greenspan, and Bernanke,” Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Vol. 71 (February 2019), pp. 1–13. 3. Sarah Binder, “The Federal Reserve as a ‘Political’ Institution,” American Academy of Arts and Sciences Bulletin, Vol. LXIX, No. 3 (Spring 2016), pp. 47–49, https:/ /www.amacad.org/sites/default/files/bulletin/ downloads/bulletin_Spring2016.pdf (accessed January 23, 2023). See also Charles L. Weise, “Political Pressures on Monetary Policy During the US Great Inflation,” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, Vol. 4, No. 2 (April 2012), pp. 33–64, https:/ /www.haverford.edu/sites/default/files/Department/Economics/ Weise_Politica…"