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Edited by: James Desio and Carter Hutchinson

Happy Thursday! In today’s newsletter, we examine Americans' faith in congressional legislative power, the ways Americans use social media, and the value of the dollar in the aftermath of Trump’s tariff announcements.

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1. A Congressional Knowledge Problem?

Topline: Only 34 percent of Americans trust Congress as an institution. In a new video, AEI’s Kevin Kosar and Philip Wallach explain that the US is now largely governed by technocrats in regulatory agencies—creating asymmetrical power sharing that undermines Americans' faith in democracy and increases distrust in expertise.

Diminishing Power of Congress: Elected officials in Congress are supposed to be generalists entrenched in their community, but policymaking has become increasingly complex. Kosar and Wallach suggest that, for Congress to keep up with the increasingly specialized aspects of policymaking, Congress needs to get smarter and increase in-house policy expertise.

Regulatory Rigmarole: Without the necessary knowledge to write the details into legislation, Congress often puts forward open-ended statutes. Unelected, unaccountable field-matter experts drawn from academia and the private sector at regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Environmental Protection Agency fill in the gaps. The executive branch oversees these agencies, giving the president even more power over the federal government.

“There are those on the right who say, 'Well we could fix the situation if we just get rid of all those agencies,' but getting rid of them is really tough because all of them have constituencies and supporters and voters who like them and interest groups and lobbyists. Cutting government is hard. But you know what’s easy? Strengthening Congress, because we have a complete free hand to build up Congress as a countervailing force to whatever extent we like.”—Kevin Kosar

2. “Social” Media

Topline: Less than half of Americans use social media to connect with friends, with many interacting only passively on the apps. AEI’s Dan Cox analyzes data to explain the lack of real social activity online.

• 46 percent of Americans who use social media say they connect with close friends often when using it.
• Only 15 percent of Americans use it to connect with people they know but are not close with, such as old high school friends or former work colleagues.
• Younger adults tend to use social media as more of a social tool than older users. Sixty percent of young adults say they use it to talk with friends.

“While there are plenty of people who still connect with their friends on Instagram, social media has become a vehicle for selling content—both people and products—to the masses. The way Americans use social media may be more important than we realized. Passive social media use is associated with a variety of negative social and emotional outcomes.”—Dan Cox

3. Dollar Dominance at Risk

Topline: In the wake of Trump’s tariff announcement, both financial market volatility and Treasury bond yields spiked. AEI’s Steve Kamin warns that this financial turbulence is different from similar patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic because this time the value of the US dollar fell by the greatest margin in the past four years.

A Diminished Dollar? Kamin cautions that if the US abandons these strengths by engaging in reckless trade and fiscal policy with our allies, this will encourage other countries to seek more stable alternatives to the US dollar. While this recent episode likely does not mean the end of the world’s reliance on the dollar, it is clear that a pullback from the dollar may reflect concern about Trump’s economic policy.

Dollar Dominance: The US dollar is the world’s most important currency. Kamin suggests that the dollar’s dominance comes from the strength and dynamism of the US economy, the unchallenged stature of our rule of law, the prudence of our economic policymaking, and our close cooperative relations with our allies.

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