These Days Before the Vote: Property Rights

Whitewater, Wis. — This hazy Tuesday evening in Wisconsin continues These Days Before the Vote, a series addressing, each day before the November election, a principle or position on which our liberal democratic tradition rests.

Libertarians are the defenders of private property. We see private property rights as necessary for people to make choices without official permission over their bodies, jobs, homes, savings, and possessions. Strong property rights are also a bulwark against private coercion: people rightly possess their earnings from their work, deciding for themselves where and when to spend those earnings.

Trump has shown himself time and again to be an enemy of others' property rights that conflict with his desires.

Trump's border wall was both a failed effort against productive immigration and also a transgression against landowners' property rights. The project's reliance on eminent domain and inadequate compensation for private property makes it an objectionable taking:

The federal government has sweeping authority to force the project through. But a judge has now paused construction across the region, giving a major boost to landowners who have sought to impede the wall by refusing to cooperate with government surveyors, protesting at county meetings and gearing up for court battles.

“Landowner resistance has slowed this project to a crawl,” said David Keller, a landowner suing to stop the Big Bend border plans. The administration, he added, was “woefully unprepared for the hornet’s nest they stirred up.”

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Opponents say the fight reaches beyond whether a wall makes sense in Big Bend. They see it as a test of how far the federal government can go when landowners stand in the way of one of its priorities.

“We’re a pretty tough bunch,” said [Republican rancher Laura] Allen. “But if we’re going to be run over and have our land taken by our own government, what makes anybody else in this United States think that they’re exempt?”

See Rebecca Santana, How Texas landowners are fighting back against Trump’s border wall, Associated Press, October 9, 2026.

Trump has ordered duties on private Canadian, Mexican, and Chinese goods that burden American purchasers. White House, President Trump Imposes Tariffs on Imports from Canada, Mexico and China (Feb. 1, 2025).

He has imposed steel and aluminum tariffs that increase the prices of imported steel and aluminum to the detriment of American manufacturers and consumers. See Proclamation, Adjusting Imports of Steel into the United States (Feb. 10, 2025) and Proclamation, Adjusting Imports of Aluminum into the United States (Feb. 10, 2025). 

He has imposed tariffs on private imports of automobiles, automobile parts, copper, timber, lumber, and pharmaceuticals. See Proclamation, Adjusting Imports of Automobiles and Automobile Parts into the United States (Mar. 26, 2025), Proclamation, Adjusting Imports of Copper into the United States (July 30, 2025), Proclamation, Adjusting Imports of Timber, Lumber, and Their Derivative Products into the United States (Sept. 29, 2025), and Proclamation, Adjusting Imports of Pharmaceuticals and Pharmaceutical Ingredients into the United States (Apr. 2, 2026).

Unwilling to confine himself to impeding freely chosen market transactions in commodities and goods, Trump has sought to abrogate lawful, existing contracts with a private university and to impede the ability of private law firms to represent clients under mutually beneficial agreements between those firms and their clients. See Michael Casey, Trump Administration Freezes $2.2 Billion in Grants to Harvard University, Associated Press, April 15, 2025 and Exec. Order, Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie LLP (Mar. 6, 2025).

Where private markets once worked efficiently to bring Americans the best goods at the best prices, Trump now burdens America with higher prices with no greater justification than his own ignorant caprice.

One man, often by little more than edict, has sought to dictate how freely millions of people may buy and sell using their own property. Again and again. Donald J. Trump is that man.