I’m old enough to remember when Republicans were so wedded to the free market that they believed the federal government shouldn’t criticize industries, let alone individual companies, for unsafe products and practices. When Democrats made arguments for environmental or health regulations based on rigorous science, Republicans went to enormous lengths to challenge the science and resist government action.
But now we’re living in the upside-down. Republicans apparently believe that the President of the United States and the Secretary of Health and Human Services should use the power of their offices to kneecap individual companies based on science that’s half-baked at best.
Republicans have filed for divorce with the free market, in favor of a threesome with authoritarianism and quackery.
Earlier this September, I reviewed how Donald Trump has erased the traditional conservatism that once defined the GOP:
In the past month alone, the Trump administration has unilaterally imposed severe global tariffs despite court rulings challenging his authority to do so … pressured two American microchip companies to cough up 15 percent of revenue from sales to China which may amount to an unconstitutional export tax, took a 10 percent ownership share in another microchip company, militarized policing in the District of Columbia and threated to do the same in other cities, decimated the leadership of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and put the nation’s vaccination system at risk based on New Age-y vibes not scientific data, fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for publishing employment data that didn’t serve Trump’s political purposes, and moved to fire a member of the Federal Reserve board on the grounds she committed a crime despite not being charged let alone convicted for a crime.
Part of that record involves Trump directing the federal government to effectively control some companies. On Monday, Trump directed the federal government to tar the pain reliever acetaminophen, more commonly known by the brand name Tylenol, as the cause of autism. In doing so, Trump drove the stock price of Tylenol’s manufacturer, Kenvue, to a record low.
Why is Trump doing this? It’s not because Kenvue—spun off three years ago from the Johnson & Johnson healthcare conglomerate—is an avatar for wokeness. It’s because Trump appears to believe the survival of his MAGA coalition requires accommodating all of America’s strains of conspiracy theorists, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s like-minded left-ish skeptics of the health care industry, dubbed Make America Healthy Again or MAHA.
Moreover, Trump loves ribbon-cuttings, literally and figuratively. He loves declaring he did something—from opening a new factory to ending a foreign war—even if he didn’t really do it yet. Given the opportunity to declare victory over autism, however illusory, Trump took it. At the Charlie Kirk memorial service, he oversold, “I think we found an answer to autism.”
Trump and Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services quickly glommed onto a scientific review of epidemiological research into the effects of acetaminophen use by pregnant women that was only released last month. Slightly more than half of the studies reviewed showed a connection between acetaminophen use and risk of autism in offspring, but the lead researcher told The Washington Post, “We show that acetaminophen is associated with a higher risk, but not causing it. Those are very different things.” Far more study is needed to prove causation, but waiting doesn’t serve Trump’s ribbon-cutting impulses. “Taking Tylenol is not good. I’ll say it,” Trump said at yesterday’s press conference (perhaps unwittingly courting a lawsuit), “Don’t take Tylenol.”
Trump is also pouncing on early research showing promise for leucovorin—a form of folate—by fast-tracking the relabeling of the drug for autism treatment. But as the Post reports, “Most of the leucovorin studies involved only a few dozen participants each, and numerous compounds appear promising early on but fail when subjected to large-scale trials.”
It’s hard to come up with a cruder example of the federal government “picking winners and losers” on flimsy grounds. Trump is single-handedly boosting the fortunes of leucovorin manufacturers and wrecking the value of Kenvue so he can bask in personal political glory and maintain his MAGA/MAHA alliance.
Republicans of the past—the very recent past—routinely slammed Democrats for “picking winners and losers” when pursuing government subsidies, tax incentives, or regulations designed to promote renewable energy. But Democrats were driven by an overwhelming scientific consensus that the world needs to slash carbon emissions, and government action was needed so low-carbon and zero-carbon energy sources could compete with long-standing (and often, government-supported) fossil fuel industries.
A principled economic conservative could still argue that the government shouldn’t prop up any industry and that, regardless of climate science, consumers should still have the choice between energy sources. But to adhere to that principle would require applying it to the health care industry, including when a Republican controls the White House. If there are any principled conservative Republicans left, here’s your chance to prove it.
