Former US president Donald Trump speaks in support of candidates Doug Mastriano and Mehmet Oz during a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, September 3, 2022.
Andrew Kelly Reuters
Former President Donald Trump on Friday shared an ambitious plan to build 10 new “Freedom Cities” and beat China in the development of flying cars.
Saying that the US has “lost a lot,” the top Republican 2024 presidential candidate called for a national contest to design cities as a way to push for a “quantum leap in the American Standard of Living.”
Another part of Trump’s plan, detailed in a less than four-minute video posted by the campaign, is for the federal government to increase investment in private flying vehicles.
“I want to make sure that America, not China, leads this revolution in air mobility,” Trump said in the video.
The policy light plan represents a vision of America’s future that in some ways resembles “The Jetsons,” the classic cartoon that depicts a high-tech utopian society where commuters travel to work in flying cars.
Efforts to build electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles, or eVTOLs, are well under way – although flying taxis and air roads are not expected, with carmakers still working on self-driving technology for locked cars.
In a press release, the Trump campaign asserted that 10 cities the size of Washington, DC, could be built using less than one-tenth of 1% of the hundreds of millions of acres of government-owned “vacant” land. The land will never become part of a US national park, the campaign said.
As Trump places housing and car ownership at the center of his vision for an ideal American future, urban planners and politicians are increasingly championing the concept of urban infrastructure that increases density and reduces car dependence.
Trump’s video also teased “major initiatives” to lower the cost of living, with a focus on reducing the cost of buying a car and building a single-family home.
And they are calling on Congress to approve a “baby bonus” for young parents, a proposal that appears similar to the “baby bond” legislation proposed by Democrats that would give each child $1,000 at birth.
The “Quantum Leap” plan follows other policy announcements from Trump’s 2024 campaign. The day before, Trump revealed a protectionist trade agenda that featured “universal” tariffs to encourage domestic production.
The latest plan comes a day before Trump is set to address the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Correction: This article has been revised to reflect that Democrats’ proposed “baby bond” legislation would give each child $1,000 at birth. The previous version mischaracterized the proposal.