Trump’s Economic Team of Rivals
The incoming president’s advisers are all over the ideological map.
Summing up his life lessons, he encouraged the students to lean in: “Everything I’ve done in my career, and everything that most of you have done to this point, is to take risks.”
.. During an interview on CNBC the day of his appointment, Mnuchin said his top priorities were tax reform and rolling back the Dodd-Frank Act – not exactly what all those voters demanding the return of lost industries in middle America were clamoring for.
.. Seeing China as an economic paper tiger (or dragon as the case may be), he also believes that the Beijing government is weaker than it seems and susceptible to pressure and coercion. Hence he is supportive of retaliatory tariffs and other measures designed to “level the playing field.”
.. The plan has four pillars: “tax cuts, reduced regulation, lower energy costs, and eliminating America’s chronic trade deficit.” But trade is their real passion: They honed in on the entry of China into the World Trade Organization, which they said “opened America’s markets to a flood of illegally subsidized Chinese imports, thereby creating massive and chronic trade deficits” and “rapidly accelerated the offshoring of America’s factories
.. “Either you believe in markets, or you believe in government,” Kudlow has said.
.. Something’s got to give. How to square deregulation with abiding by environmental standards, as Cohn favors? How to square tariffs on imports designed to boost domestic production (Navarro and Ross) with the free flow of capital (Kudlow)? How to balance deconstructing Obamacare without price gouging and chaos in the health-care system that will surely hurt the working class that supported Trump? How to balance punitive tariffs with affordable goods? How to start mini-trade wars without the costs falling on, say, Walmart shoppers? How to juxtapose tax cuts that will benefit the 1% with the need to boost wages and employment for millions of disgruntled workers and unemployed who see Trump as a best last chance to turn things around?
The answer is that you can’t. If Trump’s goal is to create tension and conflict and see who emerges bloodied but victorious from the fighting, he’s setting up one hell of a battle.
.. Faced with competing and irreconcilable voices, it will be up to Trump to play the referee. That can take the form of active deliberation with his advisers, or passively waiting it out until someone emerges on top of the bureaucratic scrum. It’s certainly a recipe for a White House of conflict; whether it’s a recipe for sound and coherent economic policy is entirely another matter.