When President Donald J. Trump was asked recently who should carry the torch after him, he answered instantly: “J.D.” In that moment, the MAGA movement gained a successor and a strategist. President Trump understands the rot that undermines America: supply-chain fragility, open-border labor dumping, and cultural capture by those who embrace values antithetical to our heritage. Complementing these skills well, Vice President J. D. Vance has proven adept at turning populist instinct into actual policy. The central question for the leader of the MAGA movement will no longer be “Who leads?” but rather “How do we translate Vance-era vision into a governing plan that builds the future and keeps America great?”
The future-oriented Right already has a template in The Techno-Industrial Policy Playbook, released by American Compass, the Foundation for American Innovation, and similar nationalist-minded think tanks. This playbook links industrial power, national security, and frontier innovation, rejecting nostalgia and arguing that world-class production capacity in critical sectors, from semiconductors to shipbuilding, is the precondition for prosperity and sovereignty.
That insight must animate MAGA 2.0. We will not simply re-create the golden age of mid-century America; instead, we will secure the industrial tools that let us shape the 21st century on our terms: clean steel, small-modular reactors, hypersonics, domestic rare-earths processing, and biotech that extends and enriches American lives. This approach will lay the foundation for a new Trump-Vance golden age, one even bolder than the last.
Critics insist that tariffs “never work,” yet steel offers an early case study. Since President Trump restored a full 25 percent tariff on imported steel this February, domestic production has ticked upward, and furnaces are firing again in the Mahoning Valley. Vice President Vance recently toured a Nucor plant, where he declared to workers that Middle-America steel is back because the government finally put Americans first.
Performance of onshore facilities remains uneven; some facilities struggle with labor shortages and outdated equipment. That mixed picture proves the point. Tariffs buy breathing room, but policymakers must capitalize on it by mobilizing investment and labor strategy so that the tariff wall shelters modern, competitive mills rather than museums. This is where the Techno-Industrial Playbook and the Vance mentality converge: use every lever—trade, credit, research, and workforce policy—to turn a short-term reprieve into a durable advantage.
The Old Right once talked about shrinking Washington. The New Right talks about making Washington serve the nation. While many federal entities must shut down, abolishing every alphabet agency is politically impossible. We must set achievable goals rather than chase pipe dreams. Nevertheless, we cannot neglect the remaining machinery of the state; the Left will weaponize any institution that conservatives abandon. The answer is not naïve libertarianism but strategic institutional capture.
- Stock the civil service with patriots who want the country to win.
- Rewrite agency charters so performance is measured by domestic production, secure supply chains, and median-worker prosperity, not abstract efficiency metrics.
- Use authorities such as the Defense Production Act, the Federal Financing Bank, and a revamped Export-Import Bank to channel long-term, low-cost capital into strategic industries.
- Replace “diversity, equity, and inclusion” offices with “innovation, productivity, and national strength” mandates, staffed by talented, native-born engineers instead of equity consultants.
Building these principles into each department and agency does not expand bureaucracy for its own sake; rather, it repurposes the state machinery toward nationalist ends.
Free-trade fundamentalists proclaim the virtue of unilateral openness. In reality, cartelized mercantilists abroad and globalist profiteers at home abused the post-Cold War system to take a sledgehammer to American industry. MAGA’s answer is neither blanket protectionism nor a return to Clinton-era naïveté. We need calibrated, tech-savvy instruments:
- A foreign-pollution fee that equalizes carbon, sulfur, and slave-labor differentials at the border. If Beijing wants to dump coal-fired steel, they must pay for the privilege.
- Snapback sectoral tariffs triggered by import surges or currency manipulation.
- Accelerated expensing and investment tax credits for reshoring equipment in critical supply chains—pharmaceutical precursors, high-voltage transformers, and advanced tooling.
Such tools simultaneously reward domestic innovation and punish environmental and labor arbitrage.
Tariffs are meaningless without skilled Americans to staff modern facilities that adopt best practices for efficient production. Washington must lead a cultural pivot that dignifies technical work. It is time to break the monopoly of credentials issued by woke universities and empower workers of more varied academic backgrounds. A MAGA workforce agenda includes federally funded apprenticeships and a “GI Bill for Makers” that pays mid-career workers to retrain in robotics, welding, or biotech lab operations.
Even the smartest playbook fails if projects die in regulatory purgatory. MAGA must replace the labyrinth of NEPA studies and serial court challenges with a single 12-month shot clock for critical-infrastructure approvals. Financing should rely on a new Industrial Development Corporation empowered to take minority equity stakes in large-scale facilities whose development serves the national interest. These reforms ensure that America’s innovators have all the tools and the funding they need here at home, allowing them to maintain competitiveness on the global economic stage.
Policy lives downstream from culture. The movement must reclaim the word “progress” from technocratic liberals and remind the public that real progress is tangible: steel in Cleveland, reactors in Appalachia, broadband fab lines in rural Tennessee, and wages strong enough for a family to thrive on a single income. The MAGA story is not backward-looking; it is a builder’s creed, a bright future defined by American economic prepotency.
Vice President Vance gave the America-First coalition a leader who can seamlessly move from the factory floor to the Senate hearing room to the White House Situation Room. The Techno-Industrial Playbook gives him and President Trump a manual ready for action. Grassroots supporters must now insist that every Republican congressional candidate, every administration appointee, and every conservative policy expert pledges to execute it.
The Old Right wanted to be left alone; the New Right intends to win. Winning means using every lawful instrument of state power to secure sovereignty, rebuild the industrial base, and unleash the inventiveness that once made the United States the workshop of the world. The path is clear with Vice President Vance at President Trump’s side and a nation hungry for renewal. We must seize it and forge an American future worthy of our past, because making America great again is only the beginning.
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