'Econ 101': Here’s what Trump gets painfully wrong about inflation

01 May 2024

Much of the discussion of former President Donald Trump's late April interview with Time Magazine's Eric Cortellessa has criticized him from a civil liberties standpoint, noting what he had to say about abortion rights and immigration.

Slate's Molly Olmstead was especially troubled by Trump being open to the possibility of individual states monitoring pregnant women to make sure that they don't have abortions. And Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) called out Trump's promise of mass deportations.

But MSNBC's Hayes Brown, in a column published on May 1, focuses on the economic policies proposed during the Time interview — and warns that a second Trump term is a recipe for higher inflation.

"Trump's latest love letter to tariffs came early in a lengthy interview with Time Magazine reporter Eric Cortellessa," Brown explains. "For months now, he's floated a potential 10 percent tariff across the board on all imports. In other words, companies that are importing goods from places like Mexico or China would need to pay 10 percent of their cost to the U.S. Treasury Department. Now, though, he says the actual amount under his watch could be even higher."

Trump, Brown adds, fails to realize that "tariffs are paid by the importers as the goods enter the U.S., not by the exporting country" — and doesn't acknowledge "the inflation that would come with those tariff increases."

"For a former president to be so stubbornly wrong about an Econ 101 concept is bad enough," Brown laments. "What makes Trump's lack of basic economic understanding truly maddening, though, is how little it's reflected in public polling."

Brown continues, "A recent NBC News poll found that Trump holds a 22-point lead among registered voters when asked whether he or President Joe Biden would be better at dealing with inflation and the cost of living…. Another survey last month from CNBC found similar results: 54 percent of respondents said Trump would do better on inflation, compared with 27 percent who gave the edge to Biden."

Trump and his supporters have been blaming incumbent President Joe Biden's economic policies for the inflation the United States has been experiencing. But Trump, Brown emphasizes, clings to ideas that would conducive to inflation.

"Biden and other Democrats have begun to craft their messaging to highlight the absurdity of Trump's policies and the economic pain they would cause," Brown observes. "He's also taken to calling out corporate greed for rising costs and the tax cuts for the wealthy that Trump signed into law. Unfortunately, trying to sway voters is about the best he can do to try to protect them from the damage that Trump would unleash."

Hayes Brown's full MSNBC column is available at this link.

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