'He's Irrational And Delusional': Economist Hammers President Trump Over His Handling Of The Economy

yesterday

Clifford Winston, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, joined "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss his article, "Let's Not 'Sanewash' Donald Trump's Policies Toward Markets."

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Transcript

00:00Markets have continued to tumble in the United States, signaling that they are not a fan of the tariff whiplash.

00:07President Trump ran for his second term for president largely on a platform of,

00:12I am going to save the economy, I am going to steer this ship, I am going to fix the economy.

00:18Now he hasn't been doing much to quell economic fears in recent days.

00:22He's said that we are in a period of transition. He's even unable to rule out a recession.

00:27You wrote an article entitled this, Let's Not Sanewash Donald Trump's Policies Toward Markets.

00:33Talk about it for us.

00:35First explain, given the inflammatory nature of the title and the contents,

00:41really sort of what the main goal of the piece is.

00:45And that's really a conceptual one.

00:47That is, you know, think of any practitioner, whether it be a policymaker,

00:53whether it be a doctor, whether it be a refrigerator repair person.

00:58Okay.

00:59They all sort of have the same rational approach to their practice.

01:04That is, you first start off with a theory or a framework.

01:09Here's a problem.

01:11What do we know about it? What do we think is wrong?

01:14And how could we approach it to improve things?

01:17Right. First step.

01:19Second step.

01:20Then you turn to the evidence.

01:22What do we know about the method we want to use to address the problem?

01:28Is there any evidence it works?

01:30Do we have, in the case of the U.S., evidence from the states,

01:35if we want to think about a federal policy, or evidence from abroad?

01:39You know, have we learned anything from other countries that could guide us?

01:43Then finally, you go ahead and say, okay, I have a good theory.

01:48Yes, there's some evidence in other cases that my theory is right about how to fix the problem.

01:54Let's do it.

01:55Then you look and see how you're doing.

01:59And is the evidence consistent with what you think your policy,

02:03or with what your policy is doing, or what you thought it would do?

02:07And then you say, okay, should I keep it, or do I need to reform it?

02:12Okay.

02:13So, this is really, I think, a reasonable methodology for anybody,

02:18in any line of work, who is a practitioner that has to solve problems.

02:22The point of my piece is that in the case of policymaking,

02:27which is what Trump as president is doing,

02:30he doesn't employ this methodology.

02:34It's hard to say what he does, but whatever it is, it isn't that.

02:39And my point is, by being that way, he's irrational and delusional.

02:44And it really amounts to a crazy approach toward markets for policymaking.

02:50And I think in a number of areas, we're seeing this bad way of doing things,

02:56which I think in the long run is going to be very harmful.

'He's Irrational And Delusional': Economist Hammers President Trump Over His Handling Of The Economy

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