Tag Archives: Trumponomics

Posting has been slow. Last weeks of classes and too many things to do. At any rate, this is the tax plan (below Trump's, above Laffer's infamous napkin plan; no big difference though). Nothing much to say. It's vague, as his campaign promises. The only certain thing is lower taxes for the wealthy. As I noted before, there is no big stimulus in his budget (the big infrastructure spending he promised), and most of the stimulus comes from tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy (which...

By Thomas Palley A key element of Trump’s political success has been his masquerade of being pro-worker, which includes posturing as anti-globalization. However, his true economic interest is the exact opposite. That creates conflict between Trump’s political and economic interests. Understanding the calculus of that conflict is critical for understanding and predicting Trump’s economic policy, especially his international economic policyAs part of maintaining his pro-worker masquerade,...

The figure from the New York Times shows the changes in spending by category. More defense and less social spending. Not a surprise there. Schumpeter long ago (in his The Crisis of the Tax State) suggested that it is the fiscal history of a society that explains the spirit of the people and the character of the government, since it is there plain to see by those that can read it what they are trying to achieve. The surprise to me, at least so far, is that the increase in defense seems to...

I can already see some of the cuts ;) The Hill suggests that we should expect a huge decrease in government spending. According to them: Overall, the blueprint being used by Trump’s team would reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years. The proposed cuts hew closely to a blueprint published last year by the conservative Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has helped staff the Trump transition. In all fairness, I am not, or at least was not until now, expecting big...

Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge, and others, are discussing Bill Gross's recent rant on his monthly letter to investors about the yield curve and the possibility of a Trump recession. Bill Gross sees in the decline of the 10-year bond rate since the early 1980s a secular (like Summers and his secular stagnation, it seems everything is secular now) trend, and concludes that the long term rate cannot go above 2.6% or so. In his words: "So for 10-year Treasuries, a multiple of influences obscure a...

Deficit vultures A few days ago, Trump announced South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney to be the director of the Office of Management and Budget. He is a Tea Party nut (he was for Rand Paul, and might have libertarian tendencies), and more importantly a fiscal hawk, and for a balanced budget amendment. Mulvaney is really for cutting spending, including, somewhat surprisingly, military spending, even if he thinks that defense is the first priority of the federal government. So this has...

Not by much. To 0.75%, and yes it wasn't necessary because we're not at full employment yet (Krugman thinks we're; his point is that wages are increasing again, but not that much and participation rates remain low). Two things worth mentioning. One is that Yellen agrees with Krugman, and that signals that the Fed doesn't get what's the current state of the economy. She said: "I believe my predecessor and I called for fiscal stimulus when the unemployment rate was substantially higher than...

See Trump’s call for at least a $500 billion program of government spending on US infrastructure here and here, without raising taxes. See the video here.Yes, it’s massive deficits for the US if Trump wins, and massive Keynesian stimulus, even if his tax cut plan is regressive like that of Reagan.

If Trump is elected president, his economic policies will either (1) crash America or continue its economic stagnation, and accelerate its catastrophic decline under neoliberalism (because Trump will impose an extreme form of neoliberalism, albeit maybe with some trade or labour protectionism) or(2) turn America around and actually impose big Keynesian stimulus, and trade and labour market protectionism. (2) will make Trumponomics nothing more than Reaganomics Mark II.Why? We know why. It’s...