Among the virtues most valued by politicians—and conservative politicians in particular—is prudence. In his broadside against leftist neo-Gnosticism, the great political philosopher Eric Voegelin noted that the left, in its Gnostic “Dream World,” interprets “moral insanity as morality, and the virtues of sophia and prudentia as immorality….” The utopians of the left shun the virtues that enable good governance (wisdom and prudence) and instead adhere to principles that breed only chaos and ugliness. The left professes to seek “progress,” yet lacks the self-control to achieve it.
Russell Kirk, the godfather of American conservatism, was even more direct, arguing that prudence is one of the characteristics that distinguish conservatives from all other political actors and the virtue that best enables those conservatives to govern well:
Burke agrees with Plato that in the statesman, prudence is chief among virtues. Any public measure ought to be judged by its probable long-run consequences, not merely by temporary advantage or popularity. Liberals and radicals, the conservative says, are imprudent, for they dash at their objectives without giving much heed to the risk of new abuses worse than the evils they hope to sweep away. As John Randolph of Roanoke put it, Providence moves slowly, but the devil always hurries. Human society being complex, remedies cannot be simple if they are to be efficacious. The conservative declares that he acts only after sufficient reflection, having weighed the consequences. Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery.
It would be unfair, not to mention inaccurate, to say that President Donald Trump is thoroughly not conservative. By adopting conservative positions as “common sense” and adapting his personal belief system to those positions, the president has learned, over time, to approach political action more cautiously and judiciously. His second term is, in many ways, far more conservative than his first was. That said, it is also abundantly clear that he is not instinctively or temperamentally inclined toward conservatism. Conservatism did not come naturally to him. It was not always his default political position; it had to be learned.
In almost every circumstance, even acquired conservatism is superior to radicalism, liberalism, progressivism, or whatever else the left chooses to call itself. The occasional application of prudence is far preferable to the heedless abandonment of it. As Voegelin wisely noted, the contemporary left tends to treat prudence as “immoral” and to believe that all political matters should be addressed with that which the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the fierce urgency of now.” King was right about the urgency of civil rights, but most of what the left advocates fails this urgency test, making the application of it and the eschewing of prudence both dangerous and destructive.
Unfortunately, the occasional application of prudence still leaves room for blunders. Unless prudence is applied consistently, policies may be enacted that have serious unintended consequences—often undermining other policies and accomplishments that might otherwise be successful. As Kirk said, “Any public measure ought to be judged by its probable long-run consequences, not merely by temporary advantage or popularity.” Measures that produce long-term negative consequences are, by definition, imprudent and should, therefore, not have been enacted in the first place.
Twice recently, President Trump and his team have failed the prudence test. They have acted or spoken imprudently, threatening to undo excellent work they had already done.
In the first case, President Trump decided to move aggressively on tariffs against India. The president is rightly upset with India for enabling Russian President Vladimir Putin by buying oil in contravention of international sanctions. As a result, he has slapped a 25% tariff on Indian goods and has threatened to double that at the end of the month, which would equal his tariff on Chinese goods. And while that might cause the Indian government to have second thoughts about buying Russian oil, it is giving companies that were moving manufacturing from China to India (or contemplating doing so) second thoughts as well. Rohin Malhotra, “the chief technology officer of Posha, a Silicon Valley-based maker of countertop cooking robots that had been working to shift production from China to India,” told The Wall Street Journal that his company’s efforts are “up in the air” and amount to “just wasted effort.” And he’s hardly alone.
The irony is that convincing companies to diversify their manufacturing and to move much of it out of the increasingly hostile environs of the People’s Republic of China was one of the Trump team’s biggest successes. Dating from the end of his first term, President Trump has—rightly—sought to convince corporate America that China’s government is untrustworthy and the American balance of trade with the PRC creates huge problems at home. For the most part, Trump has won that argument, convincing manufacturers to offshore from China. The knee-jerk tariffs on India, however—in addition to tariffs on other “China-plus-one” beneficiary countries, like Vietnam—now threaten that victory.
Likewise, President Trump and, lately, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have been pressuring the Federal Reserve to lower rates. Bessent even suggested this week that the Fed consider a radical 150 basis-point cut.
Again, while the immediate desire for interest rate cuts is understandable, given their presumptive effect on economic growth, the long-term consequences of cuts could be disastrous and would threaten other Trump victories.
Obviously, rate cuts would increase the likelihood that inflation would tick back up, perhaps significantly. Inflation, in turn, would make the president’s trade policy even more controversial than it already is and would threaten everything he has done so far in this term. It would also make it far more likely that the Democrats would regain control of Congress in 2026.
Additionally, cutting interest rates would likely undo many of the gains that President Trump has made in the battle against “woke capital.” As I have argued elsewhere (and repeatedly), ESG, stakeholderism, debanking, and all the other political manipulations of business and capital markets are a form of corruption or, at the very least, luxury beliefs, enabled in large part by the Federal Reserve’s interest rate suppression. The entire catalog of “woke capital” theories and endeavors was the unintended byproduct of more than a decade of artificially low interest rates that enabled left-leaning political actors to masquerade as capitalists and to make enough money doing so to convince others that their corruption was somehow legitimate.
As things stand today, the Fed Funds Rate is below its 70-year average. Artificially lowering interest rates now, under the pretense that they are unreasonably too high, could do incalculable damage, not just to the economy, but to the long-term health of American business and capital markets as well.
The current moment (and all moments, frankly) calls for the application of prudence by political leaders. Anything less could be calamitous.