Steve Forbes just dropped a straight-shooting memo to the White House about how to get America roaring again in 2026, and Republicans would be fools to ignore it. In a recent Spotlight episode of his What’s Ahead series Forbes lays out a short, surgical playbook for President Trump’s economic team to juice growth and hand the GOP momentum going into the midterms. The prescription is classic conservative medicine: cut the tax burden on work and investment, encourage capital formation, and strip away the regulatory weeds choking small businesses.
First among Forbes’ priorities is unleashing private investment through tax reforms that reward capital formation — think immediate expensing and lower rates that put cash back into the hands of job creators. That isn’t academic theory; it’s the same pro-growth agenda that drove the tax debates of the last decade and that Forbes and other conservative economists have championed as the quickest way to spark hiring, raise wages, and expand the tax base. We don’t need more government stimulus checks that disappear on takeout and streaming bills — we need permanent incentives that make investment pay.
Forbes also rightly warns that a strong dollar is an underappreciated pillar of American strength and prosperity, and he connects sound currency policy to national security. Weak-dollar cheerleading from the left amounts to economic surrender: it makes inputs costlier, rewards runaway inflation, and undermines the purchasing power of every hardworking American. A confident, stable dollar attracts capital, keeps interest rates reasonable in the long run, and strengthens the United States’ leverage on the world stage.
On monetary policy and the Federal Reserve, Forbes doesn’t mince words — he urges creative, hard-nosed tactics to restore discipline, including unconventional ideas like Treasury-issued gold-linked securities to provide a market check on monetary mismanagement. Conservatives should be comfortable challenging a Fed that too often plays politics and destabilizes expectations; markets and entrepreneurs deserve rules that are transparent and predictable. If Washington wants investment to flood back in, policymakers must stop treating inflation as an acceptable cost of doing business.
There are also fast-acting tax levers that can deliver immediate relief: suspending payroll taxes for a period and cutting the effective tax on labor would put more money in American paychecks right away and revive consumer confidence. Steve Forbes has advocated payroll-tax relief as a blunt but effective tool to encourage hiring and increase take-home pay, and it remains one of the quickest ways for the White House to show results. Democrats will try to brand any pro-growth move as a giveaway to the rich, but everyone who works benefits when employers can hire more and invest in expansion.
If Republicans want to win the next round, they should stop tinkering and start delivering what actually lifts living standards: lower taxes on work and investment, honest monetary rules, and a ruthless rollback of needless regulation. President Trump and his economic team have a clear road map in Forbes’ memo — now is the time for bold action, not cowardly compromise; the voters who built this country expect no less.
