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'Beware The Trump Inflation Bomb!': New 'Experts Agree' Narrative Just Dropped, Nobel Laureate Edition

Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
Authored...

16 Nobel Prize-winning economists, who've heretofore been silent as a group over the brazen bull of inflation cooking Americans alive under President Biden, have teamed up for a pre-election collab to let us know that former President Trump 'could stoke inflation if he wins.'

"Many Americans are concerned about inflation, which has come down remarkably fast [oh?]. There is rightly a worry that Donald Trump will reignite this inflation, with his fiscally irresponsible budgets," reads the letter, signed by the 51 former intelligence plucky pocket protector vanguard of Biden's reelection campaign, CBS News reports.

Of course, they ignore the fact that Biden has kept the Trump tariffs from 2018 and added specific tariffs on "strategic" imports from China.

Speaking of ignoring inflation under Biden...

Trump's plan, however, is to impose a universal tariff on goods imports, and even higher tariffs on China, while pairing it with an extension of his 2017 tax cuts.

The notion that inflation will intensify under Trump's tariff proposal isn't new - even the CATO institute says his plan won't work as advertised... it's that the Nobel Economists willfully ignore the fact that America is screwed under either candidate. The intent appears to be a distraction from what Biden has actually done over the past three-plus years relative the last 40 years of inflationary policies by US presidents.

Signatories of the letter include Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz, Yale's Robert Shiller, and 14 other Nobel laureates who are probably a blast at parties.

The warning comes as the U.S. continues to battle sticky inflation, with the Federal Reserve maintaining the highest interest rates in more than two decades with the goal of cooling the economy and driving inflation down to a 2% annual rate. Even though inflation has cooled from a recent peak of 9.1% in June 2022, inflation-weary Americans are glum about the economy, with 6 in 10 rating it as either bad, fairly bad or very bad, according to the latest CBS News poll.

It's not just these economists, CBS News notes. Other, less cool, non-Nobel prize economists also say Trump's policies could be inflationary - particularly his proposal for a 10% across-the-board tariff on all imports, as well as his plan to deport immigrants.

According to the report, Trump's tariff plan would add $1,700 in annual costs for the typical US household.

That said, here's what happened with inflation under 40 years of US Presidents and Fed Chairs... and what happened under Biden/Powell/Yellen...

Yet, as Philip Marey of Rabobank noted earlier this week;

The empirical evidence on the Trump tariffs of 2018 showed that the tariffs were mostly paid by US importers and US consumers, rather than foreign exporters. Going from specific tariffs to a universal tariff in 2025 would broaden the impact and likely have a substantial upward impact on consumer price inflation. This would also reduce the scope for policy rate cuts by the Fed. We already incorporated this in our previous (Q1) forecasting round with a rebound in US inflation in 2025, complicating the Fed’s mission to get inflation back to its 2% target in a sustainable manner. Ceteris paribus, this should reduce the amount of rate cuts that the Fed has in mind for 2025.

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Without a universal tariff, the inflation trajectory will be lower and the damage to international trade and economic growth will be more modest. This would reduce the inflationary impact and allow for more Fed rate cuts in 2025 than we are assuming in our current baseline with a Trump victory.

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When it comes to trade policy, both Republicans and Democrats have become protectionist, especially regarding China. This will lead to higher inflation and could slow down economic growth, especially if other countries retaliate against the US.

In closing, "When it comes to trade, both Republicans and Democrats have moved in the same direction, only the approach and the pace are different."

Although this guy seems pretty upset at how things have gone in the last couple of years...

Are these 'Nobel' economists expecting a Fed policy error?

Guess who will get the blame if that happens?

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