Former President Donald Trump is inheriting an economy with low unemployment, falling inflation, and a record-high stock market.
Regardless, the Washington Monthly's Bill Scher thinks it's a good bet that he will royally screw it up in the coming years.
While the economy performed reasonably well for the first three years of Trump's presidency, Scher argues that is because many of his economic advisers stopped him from implementing some of his truly destructive ambitions such as starting global trade wars.
Trump will face even fewer constraints in his second term, which makes the likelihood of a significant policy error even higher, according to the analysis.
"Despite the bravado, Trump is no economic mastermind," Scher contends. "If he follows through on his across-the-board tariff plan, he may jack up prices high enough to cause a major political backlash, which happened to his beloved William McKinley. An immigration crackdown or mass deportation can also disrupt the labor market, causing negative economic consequences."
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He also thinks that Trump's personal characteristics make a massive misstep exceedingly likely.
"Considering that Trump can never run for president again, doesn’t care about anyone but himself, doesn’t have to worry about the future of the Republican Party, and rarely listens to sane advice, I see the chances of Trump implementing self-indulgent, economically foolish policies to be high, especially with a cowed GOP-controlled Senate and, possible, a GOP House, to boot," he writes.
However, Scher also thinks that Democrats cannot simply wait for Trump to foul things up. Rather, they have to go all-out to correct public perceptions about President Joe Biden's economy, which voters never warmed to even as inflation cooled and unemployment remained low.
"Democrats can and should tell the true story of the Biden-Harris economic record, how they cleaned up Trump’s mess and handed him back a humming economy—just as Barack Obama cleaned up George W. Bush’s mess and handed it to Trump in the first place," he writes. "They should start now and repeat it often to help regain lost credibility."