Trump was never free trade, he campaigned on tariffs both times and loves welding the government over private industry. People always call out the lack of conservative laissez-faire values in their admin as a contradiction, because other GOP pushed those values particularly in the past. But this admin has been pretty honest about their agenda as a populist authoritarian right wing movement.
People are probably just surprised to find out what that means in practice.
The point is that the entire party did a complete 180 on one of their strongest bedrock principles. These people still call themselves conservatives while supporting an administration that holds almost zero "conservative" stances.
Well that's my point. Those are libertarian/small government conservative values which are no longer in vogue. Nothing stops you from being conservative and supporting authoritarianism or believing a strong executive branch over other branches (including the courts).
I would argue it makes them less of a traditional American conservative party though, as values like separation of powers are rooted in the US founding documents of the country. And a core part of being conservative is respecting your established institutions (cultural, legal, etc).
On paper Trump is a centrist in many ways because he doesn't seem to have strong values either way.
