Trump paying price 'for telling Americans not to believe their own eyes': Nobel economist
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Economist Paul Krugman at FIDES 2023 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on September 25, 2023 (A. Pael/Shutterstock.com)
When there’s a Republican in the White House, nobody cheers harder than a Republican voter, said Nobel economist Paul Krugman. Only now they’ve stopped cheering.
“People’s reported perception of the economy is strongly affected by whether their preferred party is in power,” said Krugman. “This is true for both parties, but historically Republicans have tended to cheer harder and boo louder than Democrats. So other things equal we would have expected average sentiment to improve under [President Donald] Trump II.”
“Now, things aren’t equal,” Krugman said. “Objectively, the economy is worse in important ways than it was a year ago. Still, the extent of the plunge in perceptions is remarkable.”
Krugman earlier reported that the “Biden era vibecession — people feeling bad about an economy that looked good by standard measures — has persisted under Trump,” but he added that “public perceptions of the economy appear to be plumbing new depths” based upon a Fox News poll exploring Republican attitudes toward Trump’s economic policies.
In that poll, Republicans’ concern about the cost of groceries had “increased a lot” for 60- percent of surveyed respondents, while 40 percent were equally concerned about the cost of utilities. Add that to the group who felt their concern “increase a little” and you’re looking at roughly 80 percent of Republican respondents increasingly bothered by groceries and utilities.
“Honestly, I’m surprised,” said Krugman. “… It may be that Trump is … actually paying a price for telling Americans not to believe their own eyes.”
Biden and company similarly told Americans that their incomes were outpacing inflation, which was true but not what people wanted to hear, said Krugman. However, Trump keeps “insisting that grocery prices are way down, which is simply a lie. And people may be noticing.”
“The absolute absurdity of the Trump team’s efforts to explain away bad economic news may also be taking a toll. Remember when [U.S. Secretary of the Treasury] Scott Bessent was supposed to be the adult in the room? Now he’s blaming migrants taking diseased cattle with them for high beef prices,” said Krugman.
Krugman also wondered if Trump’s other problems, including the Epstein implications and ICE persecutions, were “bleeding over to economic sentiment.”
“Political consultants like to imagine that the public makes clear distinctions between issues: ‘kitchen table’ versus democracy versus corruption. In reality public opinion is much more of a gestalt in which bad or good feelings on different issues merge,” said Krugman.
Read Krugman’s full report on his substack at this link.