Trump’s economic message doesn’t reassure anyone

BloombergOpinion Early Returns

Jonathan Bernstein

I have no idea whether the U.S. is headed toward a recession. What's sort of shocking me this week so far, however, is the possibility that President Donald Trump will manage to panic the nation into hard times. Is that possible? I'm no economist, but from the politics side, I would never have thought a president could do such a thing, mainly because the normal instinct for all administrations is to spin the economy in as positive a way as possible, and then some.  But then we had this week. I haven't been taking careful notes, so I'm not sure if I have these in the right order. And I might have missed some. But over the last few days, we've had (in between assurances that everything was fine and dandy): reports that the president in private was extremely concerned about a downturn;  a plan for a new economy-boosting tax cut floated, withdrawn and floated again; pre-emptive casting of blame at the Democrats for "trying to 'will' the Economy to be bad"; the claim of a sudden need for emergency Federal Reserve measures to rescue the economy; spin from the acting White House chief of staff that, well, if there is a recession, it won't be a bad one; and Trump saying that, well, a little "short-run" pain is "irrelevant" because of the long-run supposed imperative of winning a trade war with China.  Does that sound like a president who is confident about the state of the U.S. economy? It sure doesn't to me. If I believed the president was fully briefed on all the relevant information and understood the situation, I'd be convinced that a serious disaster was around the corner. Again: Normal presidents do not do things like this. They try hard to calm the markets, not panic them. They try to reassure the nation (including those making key purchasing and hiring and other decisions), not act as if it's fall 1929.  Jimmy Carter was bad at this. Trump is next-level.  Fortunately, hardly anyone believes the president is fully briefed and understands anything, so perhaps that will help. We also really can't guess what effects this kind of public skittishness will have, since there's no historical record to compare it to. We have lots of cases of presidents whistling past the graveyard — or at least past plunging leading and then concurrent indicators, only finally acknowledging there's a problem when the lagging indicators kick in. But as far as I know, in the whole of U.S. history, we've never had a president do what this one has done over the last few days. Even though it's far from clear there's any cause for serious concern.  So it's a little hard to assess the possible effects.  On the whole, however, I think I'd like to get back to having a president who is at least minimally competent at the job. 1. Jason Brownlee at the Monkey Cage on U.S. public opinion about a potential war with Iran. 2. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Conor Sen on recession signs.  3. Also here at Opinion: Tara Lachapelle on the streaming wars. 4. And Philip Klein on Trump's accusations against U.S. Jews.

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