CHAUTAUQUA–If you think economics is boring, Stephen Moore proves the opposite.

≤ ≤ ≤

On Aug. 7, the White House chief of staff called Moore, co-founder of the Club for Growth and a Fox News contributor, and asked that he meet with the president, whom he has known since 2016.

“I went over there, and I walked in(to) the Oval Office, and there was nobody there except Donald Trump,” Moore told an Aug. 11 Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua, or ABC, audience.

“I showed him about five of these charts about how much better … the economy had done in his first term versus Biden … , and he got very excited about it. And so he said, ‘Why don’t we have an impromptu press conference?'”

Moore had no idea that was coming.

“So … 40 … reporters come in, 10 cameras. … He put a little easel up and we had the five charts. … He says, ‘Steve, I’ll stand over here, and you stand over there and … then we’ll start this press conference.’ …

“I’m … practically wetting my pants. I’m so nervous. … I got my composure back, (and) after each chart, he would take it off the easel.”

Moore’s point: Trump knows what he wants.

≤ ≤ ≤

Moore is bullish on America: “There’s nowhere better to invest than the USA. There just isn’t. … The United States will remain the … dominant country in the world for the next 50 years. We’re set up to do that because we do believe in freedom and free enterprise, and we have great people and smart people and innovators. No other country can compete with us in that capacity.”

≤ ≤ ≤

Moore rightly cites three factors as being among those that helped Trump win the 2024 presidential election: Inflation, the border, and men playing women’s sports.

He rightly attributes the inflation in part to this: “We spent $4 trillion we didn’t have. … Now, where did that money come from? We printed it. We just printed it. …

“Inflation is too many dollars chasing too few goods, right? And so if you dump $4 trillion in(to) the economy without increasing the nominal goods, prices have to go up.”

≤ ≤ ≤

Citing Florida, Texas, and Tennessee, Moore noted that the states with the highest economic growth have no state income tax: “So it’s … people leaving mostly blue states for the red states.”

And, he recalled that for the first time in American history, America’s economically dominant region is not the Northeast but the Southeast: “The two states with the highest tax rates are California and New York.”

“For the first time in American history, two million people every five years are leaving California,” Moore said. It has “the highest taxes, highest regulation, etc., etc. So, this is what’s really changing America.”

≤ ≤ ≤

Moore rightly calls energy policy “the big one.”

“And by the way, there is probably no country in the world that is more endowed with fossil fuels than the US of A,” he said. “If I had been in this hall 20 years ago and told you that the United States is going to go on the biggest boom in oil production in history, you would have laughed me out of this room. You would have laughed. You would have said that’s absolutely geologically impossible. But it happened.”

≤ ≤ ≤

What Moore sees as a problem is the national debt: “This is the first time in American history we are borrowing massive amounts of money and there’s no crisis. In other words, why are we borrowing $2 trillion a year? It doesn’t make any sense.

So, this is what scares me because in good times, you’re supposed to start paying down your debt and we’re not doing that. And then we need to change that, and we need to grow the economy and put a lid on government spending.”

You, faithful reader of this column, know the response to that: Bingo.

≤ ≤ ≤

On its website, https://www.abcatchq.com, ABC posts videos of most of its speakers.

ABC was formed in 2018. Its mission is “to achieve a balance of speakers in a mutually civil and respectful environment consistent with the historic mission of Chautauqua” Institution. ABC is its own Section 501(c)(3) organization, legally separate from the institution.

≤ ≤ ≤

Dr. Randy Elf’s Aug. 20, 2020, ABC presentation, on “How Political Speech Law Benefits Politicians and the Rich,” is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3ebymA7xOo.

COPYRIGHT 2025 BY RANDY ELF