What Trump Means For: The Economy

Bad news for jobs, economic stability, and the value of the dollar.

Welcome to “What Trump Means For,” a multi-part series I’ll be publishing over the next several weeks as the 2024 election creeps closer. I’ll break down what Donald Trump and his current and probable future teams have said about how they will govern and exactly what they will do while in office. If Trump wins, he may not accomplish everything he pledges to do. But he will no doubt do a lot — and it’s worth taking seriously what he says and plans.

For all of Donald Trump’s talk about how he will save the American economy, his actual plans are set to crush it — perhaps catastrophically.

As part of his planned takeover of independent agencies, Trump wants to get his hands on the Federal Reserve. Doing so would allow him to set or at least influence interest rates. This is a really, really bad idea. All of the incentives would be for Trump to lower rates for his own political benefit — during elections, for example — even if that means pushing the economy off a cliff in the long term. An independent Fed means that the people setting US monetary policy are, at least in theory, trying to keep the American economy stable, not trying to pull particular levers in favor of one party or another. Those running the Fed don’t always get it right, and they should certainly be fair game for critique, but they are operating under a very different mandate than a president either seeking reelection for himself or a victory for his party.