Say what you will about President Trump, but it’s hard to suggest that his business acumen is in any way lacking. His return to office and the negotiations that have taken place throughout his first few months back have been directly derived from the business philosophies he outlined nearly three decades ago in the “Art of the Deal”—a book that actually changed my entire mindset and life-view when I read it as a floundering teen.
If you really pay attention, you will understand that Trump’s approach to each and every negotiation is quite artful. There is a method, as they say, to the madness. He’ll come in hot with extreme, sometimes unmanageable demands and tactfully moderates them until each and every party involved feels like they’ve successfully “subdued” the president to a “rational” poaition – one that the President sought out from the start.
While these tactics often work for him internationally, bureaucrats and regulatory ambiguity within his own government threaten to sabotage his negotiations and promises at home. At the present moment, one particular promise Donald Trump made to American voters is on the chopping block.
As we speak, Customs and Border Protection agents are seizing flavored vaping products entering the United States. These products are not illicit, but rather are currently undergoing the years-long PMTA process at the FDA. They are being swept up without a second thought alongside actual illicit contraband products.
The agents facilitating these careless sweeps of products are not only failing to do their due diligence, but also undermining President Trump’s explicit promise to preserve the freedom of flavored vaping in America.
When President Trump made that promise, millions of adult consumers and small business owners took him at his word. They believed that, unlike the freedom-averse Biden administration, Trump would follow through on protecting their choices.
But CBP’s wrongful import refusals are hurting Trump’s ability to deliver on his own promises. Career bureaucrats should not be able to overrule the President by creating a shadow enforcement regime that contradicts his past commitments to voters.
The real victims aren’t just abstract policy principles – they’re the small vape shop owners invested in inventory and adult consumers who trusted President Trump to protect their livelihoods and their freedoms. When CBP refuses to allow their legitimate PMTA-pending products into our country it destroys their livelihoods while forcing adult consumers back to traditional cigarettes.
Trump promised to protect both entrepreneurial freedom and adult choice, yet his own agencies are crushing both. Small business owners who voted for economic freedom are now debating when and how to shut down their businesses, which have been decimated and left with no products to sell to adult consumers.
Trump’s vaping promise is about respecting adult Americans’ right to make their own informed decisions. And to reclaim their health by finally having a mechanism to free themselves from the death sentence that is cigarette smoking. By refusing entry for PMTA-pending products, CBP is essentially implementing the anti-vaping lobby’s agenda without congressional authorization or presidential approval, and worse, giving more power to illicit vape makers, who revel in the confusion. Career bureaucrats are substituting their policy preferences for the explicit will of the elected President. They must be rooted out and sent packing.
President Trump built his political brand on delivering what he promises. His stated commitment on Truth Social to save flavored vaping wasn’t just campaign rhetoric; it was a contract with millions of American adults who chose him specifically because he respected their right to make informed decisions about legal products.
So now is the time for him to act decisively to restore credibility with the voters who trusted in that promise. Every flavored vaping product working through legitimate PMTA channels that was denied entry should be immediately allowed in.
If the president allows his own agencies to sabotage this promise, it doesn’t just hurt vapers and small businesses, it undermines the credibility that makes “The Art of the Deal” possible in every negotiation. When members within his own government defy the President domestically, they harm his credibility globally, and that is just unacceptable.