OPINION:
America has thrived on risk-taking, immigration and competition, but our politics are increasingly dominated by extreme personalities on the right and left who either blame foreigners for our problems or villainize billionaires.
Capitalism was the nation’s founding impulse.
George Washington led the Colonial contingent in Britain’s Seven Years’ War with France in hopes of securing a fortune through expansion into what became the American Midwest.
After the war, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 prohibited the Colonies from expanding beyond the Appalachian Mountains. That turned Washington and others who had anticipated prospering in the growing British Empire into revolutionaries.
Ultimately, Americans established a government that could not exercise arbitrary power to unnecessarily limit their enterprise or seize their property.
Slavery was another issue. It was resolved by the Northern states abandoning the institution, industrializing to build an economy that surpassed Europe’s and then ending the cruelty through a bloody Civil War.
To be clear, the Founders wanted a society based on merit and individual responsibility so that their enterprises could thrive.
It was wildly successful.
At the time of the Revolution, the 13 Colonies had primarily agricultural and extractive economies with supporting commercial and financial activities clustered in small cities.
That framework fit inside the British mercantile system.
The total population was less than 3 million, stretched along the Atlantic Coast.
Over the next 60 years, the Founders established a federal government that hardly led economic development.
The private sector created a mighty industrial empire.
At the London Exposition of 1851, Europeans were particularly impressed by American technical achievements in agricultural science and the American system of manufacturing: interchangeable parts, precision components, quality control and mass production.
In the 19th century, the vast internal market, mostly free of government regulation and interference, powered intense competitive rivalries.
Our vast resources were developed by embracing, not stifling, new technologies, by internal westward migration and by immigrants from Europe and Asia.
Immigration promoted openness to foreign ideas that our protectionist trade policies would not permit.
Where America leads today is the place tariffs cannot impede: ideas.
Enterprise software, artificial intelligence, semiconductor design, space exploration and development.
These days, development is as important as exploration.
Nearly 80 countries have space programs, but one American firm, SpaceX, launches 10,000 satellites. That is two-thirds of the working equipment in orbit from all nations.
In 2025, the United States attracted 64% of global venture capital. The risk-taking and opportunities that are created for ordinary Americans are made possible by billionaires, not bureaucrats.
Yet Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, warns the wealthy that she is coming for their Rembrandts, stock portfolios, diamonds and yachts.
Arbitrarily taxing wealth is nothing more than stealing the fruits of risk-taking — from trees that would be planted elsewhere if socialists got the wealth taxes they want.
To the MAGA movement on the right, that is bent on shutting the golden door of opportunity to foreign aspiring Americans, we should ask where all this would be without immigrants such as Elon Musk at SpaceX, Sundar Pichai at Alphabet and Jensen Huang at Nvidia.
We cannot predict who among the young people seeking to build lives here will one day stand among such superstars.
Instead, we must throw open the golden door and admit, in large but measured numbers, those who can complement our workforce with skills and tastes suited to occupations that our native population lacks, at least in sufficient numbers.
Where we have failed is in the sectors most protected from foreign competition.
The automobile industry is the poster child.
Neither Ford nor General Motors can make an electric vehicle or even a moderately priced sedan at a profit. Hyundai can do both here.
Now the extreme right (the Trump administration) and the extreme left (insurgent socialists within the Democratic Party who align with Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani) threaten American capitalism.
President Trump has concentrated too much power in the executive branch.
Moderation and consistency in government regulation — to promote safety and competition — are essential.
That was the genius behind agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, where the president could appoint a chairman and the majority of members, but the party out of power maintained some representation that the sitting president could not dislodge.
By firing such Democratic appointees with the blessing of the Supreme Court, Mr. Trump has negated that practical necessity except at the Federal Reserve.
Globalization permits Americans to grow rich by selling our innovations to a market four times the size of our $32 trillion gross domestic product.
Still, globalization has left many American workers vulnerable to unfair competition, in particular from China’s subsidized exports.
That is no reason to shut America off to the world, especially our neighbors in Mexico and Canada. Nor is it reason to do what Mr. Sanders would: have Washington confiscate half the ownership of AI enterprises.
America needs moderate leaders, not extremists with fixes that would destroy the essential genius of American democracy.
• Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.
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