Inflation will soar once again if former President Donald Trump wins back the White House, a group of 16 Nobel prize-winning economists have predicted in a letter obtained by Axios.
President Joe Biden’s economic agenda is “vastly superior” to that being put forward by presumptive GOP presidential nominee Trump, argued the Nobel laureates.
A second Trump term would “have a negative impact on the U.S.’s economic standing in the world, and a destabilizing effect on the U.S.’s domestic economy,” and his “fiscally irresponsible budgets” would reignite inflation that has “come down remarkably fast” in recent weeks, they warned.
The letter was signed by Joseph Stiglitz, George A. Akerlof, Sir Angus Deaton, Claudia Goldin, Sir Oliver Hart, Eric S. Maskin, Daniel L. McFadden, Paul R. Milgrom, Roger B. Myerson, Edmund S. Phelps, Paul M. Romer, Alvin E. Roth, William F. Sharpe, Robert J. Shiller, Christopher A. Sims and Robert B. Wilson, per Axios.
Inflation, a key political talking point ahead of the 2024 election, has leveled off following its peak in 2022.
Trump’s proposals to extend tax cuts and introduce higher tariffs, including 10% on all imports and between 60% and 100% for products from China and Mexico, could hike it once again, though, the economists claim.
Earlier this month, Clinton-era Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said there has “never been a presidential platform so self-evidently inflationary as the one put forward” by Trump.
“I have little doubt that with the Trump program,” he warned, “we will see a substantial acceleration in inflation, unless somehow we get a major recession first.”
