The economy might be thought of as a farm, where seeds are planted, and water, fertilizer, and other nutrients are added as needed. The politician, as the farmer, grows the crop and creates prosperity. Another popular analogy is that of a machine. If only the right people in power with their technical know-how pull the right levers and press the right buttons, the machine will pump out gross domestic product. Both analogies are seriously wrong. The government is not a farmer and GDP is not it’s crop, nor is it a machine to be fined-tuned by experts or politicians.

President Trump is given a lot of credit for growing the economy, in spite of people had been saying it wouldn’t be possible in the new era. Unemployment has been reduced to the lowest levels in decades, the stock market continues to break records, and on and on. The biggest positive thing that Trump got right, though, was emphasizing that he would fight to reduce regulation and taxation, letting the country know that leadership is no longer anti-business. Higher confidence in the business world resulted in increased commerce, but he didn’t grow the economy. He simply reduced the impediments to growth that economies naturally experience when unhampered. Entrepreneurs create jobs, not politicians, and they are much more likely to do so when they are confident their profits won’t be confiscated or frittered away.

The economy grows not because politicians do politics, but rather because individuals want to be better off tomorrow than they are today. They produce some type of value that they trade with others, who also want to improve their lot by producing something different. Economic growth is the increase in wealth of all individual participants, and it comes exclusively from that productivity. That is, at its heart, what makes such an economy work.

The only thing that people need to grow in an economic sense is an environment conducive to productivity, trade, innovation, and competition. That includes the rule of law to protect their rights, including their rights to ownership and use of their property in any way that doesn’t violate the same rights of others. They need protection of those rights, not just from other individuals and private organizations, but also, and as important, from their own government, which potentially carries much more risk than any other organization.

Trump has gotten some things wrong, though, and he is fortunate at this point that some of the other policies have had positive effects that offset some of the negatives from things such as protectionism. Protecting businesses from competition doesn’t grow the economy. It simply redistributes the benefits of trade from one group of participants to another. One domestic party benefits from receiving higher prices and profits, but another party is hurt by having to pay higher prices.

His insistence that the Federal Reserve Bank keep interest rates so artificially low, again, does not grow the economy. The stock and other financial markets benefit from low interest rates, and they have steadily increased with the increasing money supply since the last recession, but they distort the real decision making processes of entrepreneurs. The low rates have created an financial market bubble, and keeping them low might prevent the bust until after the election, at least if he is lucky. The Fed can only dilute the value of money currently in circulation in the process of keeping rates low. Savers, the real foundation of capital in the economy, are hurt by low rates and are forced into the bubble to earn a return.

To the extent that an economy grows, it is fundamentally because politics does not impede it. When politicians get out of the way, good things can happen.

Dan McLaughlin is the author of “Compassion and Truth-Why Good Intentions Don’t Equal Good Results.” Follow him at daniel-mclaughlin.com