White House officials have argued repeatedly in recent months that Donald Trump’s economic plans would make inflation worse, not better. As Axios reported, President Joe Biden’s team is now getting some backup from a highly credible group of economists.
Sixteen Nobel prize-winning economists are jumping into the presidential campaign with a stark warning: Former President Trump’s plans would reignite inflation and cause lasting harm to the global economy if he wins in November. … The Nobel laureates are lending their academic prestige to a political argument the Biden administration has been making for weeks: Inflation would be worse under Trump.
This comes on the heels of a recent New York Times report that noted that “several” of the former president’s proposals “would instead put new upward pressure on prices, according to interviews with half a dozen economists.”
When it comes to the presumptive GOP nominee and inflation, there are three core truths to keep in mind. The first is that Trump doesn’t seem to know what inflation is or how it works.
As my MSNBC colleague Hayes Brown explained last month, the former president spoke at some length about the issue in his April interview with Time magazine, and presented a “truly maddening” understanding of Economics 101. Trump soon after claimed that the “real” inflation rate is “probably 40% or 50% when you add things up,” which didn’t make any sense at all.
Two weeks ago, at a campaign event in Michigan, the Republican insisted that President Joe Biden doesn’t know the meaning of the word “inflation.” It was the latest in a series of every-accusation-is-a-confession moments.
The second fact to remember is that the GOP candidate doesn’t even pretend to have a plan to address the problem. In 2022, for example, as post-pandemic inflation emerged as a leading public concern, Trump appeared on Fox News and was asked what he’d do to address inflation if he were in the White House. The Republican gave a long, meandering, and wildly dishonest answer, which didn’t even try to address the underlying question.
It was a two-minute exchange that made a simple truth unavoidable: The former president wants to complain about inflation, but he doesn’t have the foggiest idea how he’d go about making it better.
Finally, you don’t need a post-graduate degree in economics to know that the Nobel laureates are right in their assessment of Trump’s agenda.
If, for example, Trump gets a second term and launches the largest mass-deportation program in modern history, this would inevitably push prices higher. The Republican’s plan for sweeping and ambitious tariffs would also be inherently inflationary.
While we’re at it, Trump is also eyeing more tax breaks for the wealthy, which — you guessed it — would likely make inflation worse. And did I mention that Team Trump wants to devalue the U.S. dollar, too? Because that’s also a key part of the vision for a second term.
The combination of a smaller workforce, trade tariffs, wildly unnecessary deficit-financed tax cuts, and a deliberately devalued currency is effectively a case study in what an administration would do if it wanted to make it harder for consumers to afford things.
In a recent column, The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell, taking note of these underappreciated truths, asked, “Remind me again why Americans think Donald Trump would be so much better on inflation and the economy?”
That need not be a rhetorical question.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
