Nobel laureate Paul Krugman joined other economists Thursday in delivering some harsh words for President Donald Trump’s shifting tariff policies and those who think he’s doing a good job.
“Anyone sounding the all-clear on tariffs, or Trump economic policy in general, should be kept away from sharp objects and banned from operating heavy machinery,” Krugman, one of the country’s top economists, wrote in a Substack post titled “Trump Is Stupid, Erratic and Weak.”
It’s foolish to think Trump’s pivot on tariffs yesterday ― when he announced he was now putting a 10% tariff on every country and a 125% tariff on China for the next 90 days ― has actually improved anything, Krugman said. We’re “still at risk of a major financial crisis” he said, and the rest of the world “now knows that Trump is weak as well as erratic.”
Global uncertainty around Trump’s actions is just as dangerous to the economy as high tariffs, he said.
“So are things settled now? Hardly. The pause is for 90 days. Then what happens? Nobody, Trump included, has the faintest idea,” Krugman wrote.
Paul Krugman speaks at the European Shipping Summit in Brussels on March 20.
″[I]f you were a business owner or executive, would you make any major investments or long-term commitments over the next few months?” he asked. “I wouldn’t.”
Research has found that tariffs lighter than these would “impose a nasty shock on the US economy,” Krugman wrote, pointing to an earlier economic model researchers at the Peterson Institute for International Economics constructed assuming Trump would implement 10% tariffs across the board and just 60% on China.
“Trump’s post-pause tariff regime remains the biggest trade shock in U.S., and I think world history,” Krugman said.
Earlier this week, a top economist said he was was shocked to discover that the Trump administration had cited his research when formulating the tariffs, saying they got it “very wrong.”
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“How on earth did it calculate such huge rates?” University of Chicago economics professor Brent Neiman, who worked for the U.S. Treasury Department under former President Joe Biden, wrote in a New York Times op-ed.
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also had harsh words for Trump’s tariff policy Thursday.
“This is the worst self-inflicted wound that I have ever seen in an administration impose on a well-functioning economy,” she told CNN.
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