President Donald Trump has a mandate to implement populist policies but to make the country better off, he must not repeat President Joe Biden’s impulse to run to extremes.

Inflation Kills

When Mr. Biden assumed office, the economy was wounded by COVID. He overreacted by sending $1.9 trillion in aid to families and the states shortly after Congress had authorized $900 billion additional relief.

He overspent on infrastructure and industrial policies by burdening projects with his social agenda and ultimately pushed the budget deficit to more than 6% of GDP.

The Fed enabled him by printing money to buy bonds and kept interest rates low. Inflation rocketed, ultimately reaching 9.1%.

Mr. Biden’s job approval ratings tanked, Democrats lost the House in 2022 and despite a strong economy and inflation winding down, the Republicans accomplished a Trifecta in November.

Now Mr. Trump wants to deepen the personal and corporate income tax relief in the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act, boost the military and spend on other initiatives. Elon Musk can’t slash enough waste from federal spending to pay for all that—discretionary programs are only 17% of the budget.

If Congressional Republicans fund too many of Mr. Trump’s promised, the budget deficit and inflation will soar—those would put financial market stability and international confidence in the dollar at risk.

The Fed Is (Almost) Untouchable

Mr. Trump loves to harass the Fed about interest rates, but Mr. Biden is no altar boy.

In 2021 as inflation heated up, the White House argued that temporary, COVID-induced shortages were the culprit, not overspending.

The Fed should have been aware of the perils of monetarizing Mr. Biden’s deficits. But as inflation accelerated in the spring and summer, Mr. Biden delayed his decision on appointing Chairman Jerome Powell to a second term, and the Fed continued printing money—the coincidence is inescapable.

Inflation ultimately proved tough to put back in the bottle, because Mr. Powell played along too long with team transitory.

The statutes and legislative history are clear. With unmistakable intent, Congress established the Fed as an independent body.

Mr. Trump should restrain his impulse to attack the institution, and not set himself for an embarrassing loss in a conservative Supreme Court by trying to subordinate the Fed or oust the Chairman.

The economy, and he would be better off.

Irregular Immigration

On immigration, Messrs. Biden and Trump are inclined to run to opposite extremes.

Mr. Biden reversed virtually all of Mr. Trump’s tough border policies and the resulting rush of illegal immigrants is a matter of public record. But Mr. Trump’s promised deportations would wreck the economy.

The economy was at full employment in the summer of 2023. Yet, it kept on growing at 2.5% by adding monthly about 100,000 irregular immigrants to the workforce for the next 14 months.

Those are mostly employed in agriculture and food processing, construction, cleaning and many other low-wage services.

Mr. Trump can round up criminals, security threats and some illegals with deportation orders. If he goes too far, crops won’t be harvested, grocery prices will soar, familiar faces that clean homes and work at restaurants will disappear, families will be torn apart and remorseful Americans will vote for Democrats in 2026.

Too Much Trust Busting Could Bust Growth

Remarkably, Mr. Biden’s antitrust appointees pursued many of the same policies toward Big Tech as their predecessors.

The Google browser abuse suit was initiated on Mr. Trump’s watch, but Mr. Biden’s Justice Department and FTC appointees also turned their eyes on how Big Tech could potentially monopolize Artificial Intelligence.

AI agents in the workplace have the potential to raise annual economic growth to 3.5%, but investment in servers, the cloud and software plus the electrical grid will rise well above $1 trillion per year. Big Tech is one of the few, perhaps only, places where that kind of loose change can be found.

Search ads contribute more than half of Google’s revenue. Forced disinvestment of its browser would be chilling. More modest, effective remedies for abuse of its search engine, such as squashing Google tactics that compel the adoption of its other products, make more sense.

If our Big Tech does not finance AI, China will overtake us.

Hyperbole is inevitable in political campaigns but outside of making war, governing well and husbanding the economy are best served by the Golden Mean—Moderation in All Things. For example, boost tariffs on China in a thoughtful way but stop threatening friends with across the board duties. The latter will only retaliate with terrible consequences for U.S. growth, corporate profits and stock values.

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Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.