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      Trump Says He Hopes Any Economic Crash Happens in 2024 Under Biden

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      Former President Donald J. Trump said in an interview on Monday that he believed the economy would crash — and that he hoped it would happen in the next year so the blame would fall on President Biden’s administration.“We have an economy that’s so fragile, and the only reason it’s running now is it’s running off the fumes of what we did,” Mr. Trump told the conservative commentator Lou Dobbs in an interview broadcast Monday evening on the MyPillow founder Mike Lindell’s platform. “It’s just running off the fumes. And when there’s a crash, I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months, because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover.”President Hoover presided over the 1929 stock market crash that started the Great Depression.Mr. Trump is hoping to capitalize on voters’ economic concerns, as a number of polls have shown that voters trust him and other Republicans more than they trust Mr. Biden to handle the economy. In the interview, he criticized Mr. Biden’s and congressional Democrats’ spending on infrastructure and renewable energy.The Biden campaign has been frustrated by a disconnect between positive economic indicators — including strong G.D.P. growth, increasing jobs and higher wages — and negative public opinion. Many Americans are still struggling to get by, mortgage rates are high, and while inflation has fallen significantly from the peaks of 2022, those price increases still weigh heavily on voters’ minds.Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, condemned Mr. Trump’s comments hoping for a downturn and said the former president’s policies “would worsen inflation with tax giveaways to rich special interests.”“A commander in chief’s duty is to always put the American people first, never to hope that hard-working families suffer economic pain for their own political benefit,” Mr. Bates said. “Republican officials should welcome the economic progress President Biden is delivering, instead of revealing twisted true colors that would shrink the American middle class in the name of their own cynical self-interests.”Peter Baker More

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      Why Donald Trump Will Soon Be Attacking the Fed

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      Interest rates are heading down. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of this year (at least).Why? Because there are very good reasons for the Federal Reserve, which controls short-term interest rates — that’s how it makes monetary policy — to start reversing the sharp rate hikes it carried out beginning in March 2022. There’s a vigorous debate about whether those rate hikes were excessive, which I’m not going to litigate here. Whatever you think about past policy, the case for cuts going forward is very strong, and I hope the Fed will act on that case.What I don’t know is whether the Fed is ready for the political firestorm it’s about to face, and whether it will stand up to the pressure to keep rates too high for too long. Because it’s a safe prediction that Donald Trump and his supporters will scream that the coming rate cuts are part of a deep-state conspiracy to re-elect President Biden.Let’s talk first about the economics, which should — but might not — be the only thing guiding the Fed’s decisions.The Fed raised rates in an attempt to rein in inflation, which was running hot at the time — its preferred measure of underlying inflation was running far above its target rate of 2 percent. It kept raising rates until the middle of 2023, trying to cool off the economy and ensure that inflation came down.As it turns out, the economy still hasn’t cooled much, at least by the usual measures; the unemployment rate remains near a 50-year low. But inflation has plunged. Over the past six months, the core personal consumption expenditures deflator — try saying that five times fast — has risen at an annual rate of only 1.9 percent, below the Fed’s target, and more complex measures are close to 2 percent. Basically, the war on inflation is more or less over, and we won.So why keep interest rates this high? Right now the labor market looks a lot like it did on the eve of the pandemic, with both unemployment and other measures of market heat, like the rate at which workers are quitting, similar to what they were in late 2019. The Fed is projecting higher inflation over the next year than it was in 2019, but only slightly higher.Back then, however, the federal funds rate — the interest rate the Fed controls — was 1.75 percent. Now it’s 5.5 percent. It’s really hard to come up with a good reason it should stay that high.True, high rates haven’t produced a recession — yet. But there are hints of economic weakness, and the Fed is supposed to try to get ahead of the curve. So it’s time to start cutting rates.But rate cuts will have political implications. They will be good for Biden, although not exactly for the reasons you might think.I don’t know what the unemployment rate or the rate of economic growth will be in November, but because monetary policy works with a lag, what the Fed does in the next few months won’t have much effect on these numbers.Biden, however, is already presiding over a very good economy by normal standards, with solid job growth and plunging inflation. What he needs is for more Americans to accept the good news. And Fed rate cuts will help him with that. They will signal to the public that inflation really is under control; they will lead, other things being equal, to higher stock prices and lower mortgage rates.So we can expect howls from Trump and his allies that politics, not economics, is driving the coming rate cuts — even though Trump himself appointed Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chair.Why do we know this will happen? Partly because paranoia is MAGAworld’s normal condition: It sees sinister conspiracies everywhere.Beyond that, Trump and his allies constantly engage in projection, assuming that their opponents are doing or will do what they themselves would do or have done, like weaponizing the Justice Department for Trump’s own political ends.And when it comes to interest rate policy, Trump has a track record of doing exactly what I’m sure he will accuse Biden of doing: trying to manipulate the Fed. Ever since Richard Nixon pressured the Fed to keep rates low in 1972, possibly helping to set the stage for the stagflation that followed, it has been traditional for the White House to respect the Fed’s independence. But in 2019 Trump attacked Powell and his colleagues as “boneheads” and demanded that they cut interest rates to “ZERO, or less.”So we know that Trumpist attacks on the Fed for cutting interest rates are coming. What we don’t know is how the Fed will react.In a recent dialogue with me about the economy, my colleague Peter Coy suggested that the Fed may be inhibited from cutting rates because it’ll fear accusations from Trump that it’s trying to help Biden. I hope Fed officials understand that they’ll be betraying their responsibilities if they let themselves be intimidated in this way.And I hope that forewarned is forearmed. MAGA attacks on the Fed are coming; they should be treated as the bad-faith bullying they are.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      What Biden Needs to Tell Us

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      Sometimes social revolutions emerge from ordinary ideas. In the 17th and 18th centuries, thinkers like William Petty, David Hume and Adam Smith popularized a concept called “division of labor.” It’s a simple notion. If I specialize in doing what I’m good at, and you specialize in what you’re good at, and we exchange what we’ve each made, then we’ll both be more productive and better off than if we tried to be self-sufficient.It seems banal, but division of labor was part of a constellation of ideas that liberated our civilization from the savage grip of zero-sum thinking. For millenniums before that, economic growth had been basically stagnant. Many people simply assumed that the supply of wealth was finite. If I’m going to get more of it, it will be the result of conquering you and stealing what you have. In a zero-sum mind-set, the basic logic of life is dog-eat-dog, conquer or be conquered. Property is theft. Predators win.Division of labor, on the other hand, and the other principles that underlie modern capitalism, encouraged a positive-sum mind-set. According to this way of thinking, the good of others multiplies my own good. Steve Jobs got to enjoy a fortune, but I get to enjoy the Mac I’m now typing on and tens of thousands get to enjoy the jobs he helped create.In this kind of society, life is not about conquest and domination but regulated competition and voluntary exchange. Not about antagonism but interdependence. In this kind of marketplace, Walter Lippmann wrote in the late 1930s, “the vista was opened at the end of which men could see the possibility of the Good Society on this earth.”In other words, a dry economic concept like “division of labor” helped inaugurate a moral revolution. A positive-sum society is a more pluralistic and tolerant society because all its members are encouraged to pioneer their own specialty. People are rewarded for their skills and imaginations, not their ability to intimidate. Competition for comparative advantage unleashes untold human creativity, drive, innovation and ambition.The errors and scandals of the early 21st century (Iraq, the financial crisis, etc.) produced a crisis of legitimacy for this brand of liberal democratic capitalism. People lost confidence that the elites knew what they are doing or were serving anybody but themselves. This disillusion led to a concomitant rise in global populism. In 2002 only 120 million people lived in countries governed by what The Guardian called “at least somewhat” populist leaders. By 2019, more than two billion did.Populism thrives on a zero-sum mind-set. The central story that populists tell is: They are out to destroy us. Populist leaders invariably inflame ethnic bigotry to mobilize their own supporters.America’s populist in chief, Donald Trump, exemplifies this mentality. Trump grew up in a zero-sum world. In the world of New York real estate, there’s a fixed amount of land. Trump didn’t have to invent a new concept, just screw the other side. In 2017, the Vox writer Dylan Matthews and his colleagues read all of Trump’s books on business and politics, and concluded that zero-sum thinking is the core of his mind-set. “You hear lots of people say that a great deal is when both sides win,” Trump and his co-author wrote in “Think Big and Kick Ass.” “That is a bunch of crap. In a great deal you win — not the other side. You crush the opponent and come away with something better for yourself.”MAGA is the zero-sum concept in political form. What’s good for immigrants is bad for the American-born. What’s good for Black people is bad for whites. Trade deals are exploitation. Our NATO allies are out to screw us. Every day for Trump is an Us/Them dominance game.Zero-sum thinking is surging on the left as well. A generation of college students has been raised on the dogma that life is a contest between groups — oppressor versus oppressed, colonizers versus colonized.This thinking is rising across the globe. Despots are trying to grab territory to increase wealth and glory. According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, state- and nonstate violence was higher in 2022 than it was a decade before.Vladimir Putin doesn’t seek to recapture Russian greatness by leading a nation that cures cancer or produces technological innovations; he seeks glory by conquering Ukraine: You lose, I win. Xi Jinping no longer talks of the U.S. and China as friendly competitors; he describes a world in which we are locked in a zero-sum war for supremacy: He wins, we lose. As my colleague Thomas Friedman has noted recently, Hamas could have turned Gaza into Dubai — a land of capitalism, growth and opportunity. But Hamas rejects the whole ethos of modern capitalism for a more primitive ethos: Jews die, we dominate.We all have complaints about the age of go-go globalization, but what’s followed is far worse — global economic competition being replaced by political and military confrontation. And the thugs are winning. Russia now has the momentum in Ukraine. China is growing increasingly aggressive in the waters around Taiwan. Trump is leading in many polls.Many of us greet 2024 with a sense of foreboding. We need Joe Biden to be as big as this year demands. We need a leader who shows that he grasps the scope of global crisis and has a vision for how to return to a positive-sum world of growth, innovation and peace.Personally, I’d ask Team Biden to take a look at Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign. A lot of people thought Reagan was too old that year. But he told a bracing story about the global threat and he had a vigorous vision for America’s future. Team Biden is not going to go all Reaganite, but it could promote a liberal version of two of his themes — law and order and the spirit of enterprise.Law and order. We are in the middle of a multifront conflict that pits the forces of civilization against the forces of barbarism. In a civilized world, people create rules and norms to make competition fair, whether it’s economic, intellectual or political competition. Barbarians seek to tear down those rules so thuggery can prevail. Biden needs to position himself as the candidate for law and order — in Ukraine, against Hamas, at the ballot box, on America’s streets and, yes, on the southern border. He has to stand for the rule of law against growing chaos.The spirit of enterprise. One of the great achievements of Biden’s first term is that America is once again a nation that builds things. Manufacturing employment is up. More broadly, the American economy is surging, with fast growth, plummeting inflation, real wage increases. Far from being in decline, the U.S. economy is driving the world.Biden needs to paint a portrait of America’s future not with statistics but with a vision of a way of life. Liberal capitalism involves a set of concrete social actions: starting a business; building better schools; working together with people in companies; rising from poverty to buy a house; raising children not to be culture warriors but workers and innovators.This liberal dream is still ingrained in the nation’s bones. It’s been covered over by several years of bitterness, disillusion and pessimism. Maybe Biden can reach something deep in every American and revive the optimism that used to be our defining national trait.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Want to Understand 2024? Look at 1948.

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      Americans were angry with Truman because of high prices in the aftermath of World War II, even as other economic signals looked promising.President Truman and his wife, Bess, during his 1948 whistle-stop campaign.Associated PressIn the era of modern consumer confidence data, there has never been an economy quite like this recent one — with prices rising so high and unemployment staying so low.But just a few years before the consumer sentiment survey index became widely available in 1952, there was a period of economic unrest that bears a striking resemblance to today: the aftermath of World War II, when Americans were near great prosperity yet found themselves frustrated by the economy and their president.If there’s a time that might make sense of today’s political moment, postwar America might just be it. Many analysts today have been perplexed by public dissatisfaction with the economy, as unemployment and gross domestic product have remained strong and as inflation has slowed significantly after a steep rise. To some, public opinion and economic reality are so discordant that it requires a noneconomic explanation, sometimes called “vibes,” like the effect of social media or a pandemic hangover on the national mood.But in the era of modern economic data, Harry Truman was the only president besides Joe Biden to oversee an economy with inflation over 7 percent while unemployment stayed under 4 percent and G.D.P. growth kept climbing. Voters weren’t overjoyed then, either. Instead, they saw Mr. Truman as incompetent, feared another depression and doubted their economic future, even though they were at the dawn of postwar economic prosperity.The source of postwar inflation was fundamentally similar to post-pandemic inflation. The end of wartime rationing unleashed years of pent-up consumer demand in an economy that hadn’t fully transitioned back to producing butter instead of guns. A year after the war, wartime price controls ended and inflation skyrocketed. A great housing crisis gripped the nation’s cities as millions of troops returned from overseas after 15 years of limited housing construction. Labor unrest roiled the nation and exacerbated production shortages. The most severe inflation of the last 100 years wasn’t in the 1970s, but in 1947, reaching around 20 percent.According to the historian James T. Patterson, “no domestic issue of these years did Truman more damage than the highly contentious question of what to do about wartime restraints on prices.”Mr. Truman’s popularity collapsed. By spring in 1948, an election year, his approval rating had fallen to 36 percent, down from over 90 percent at the end of World War II. He fell behind the Republican Thomas Dewey in the early head-to-head polling. He was seen as in over his head. The New Republic ran a front-page editorial titled: “As a candidate for president, Harry Truman should quit.”Hubert Humphrey, mayor of Minneapolis and later a vice president and Democratic presidential nominee, spoke before a Senate committee on anti-inflation controls in 1948.Associated PressIn retrospect, it’s hard to believe voters were so frustrated. Historians generally now consider Mr. Truman one of the great presidents, and the postwar period was the beginning of the greatest economic boom in American history. By any conceivable measure, Americans were unimaginably better off than during the Great Depression a decade earlier. Unemployment remained low by any standard, and consumers kept spending. The sales of seemingly every item — appliances, cars and so on — were an order of magnitude higher than before the war.Yet Americans were plainly dissatisfied. Incomes in 1948 were twice what they were in 1941, but statistically their dissatisfaction is probably best explained by the decline in real incomes in 1947, just as real incomes declined in 2021-22. The polling in the run-up to the 1948 election — archived at the Roper Center — bears the hallmarks of voter dissatisfaction:Despite the extraordinarily positive developments of the last decade, voters were pessimistic about the future. They believed a depression was likely in the next few years. As late as summer 1948, they were likelier to think things in America would get worse in the years ahead than to get better. They expected prices to keep rising.In November 1947, Gallup found that more than two-thirds of Americans said they were finding it harder to make ends meet than the year before, while almost no one said it was easier.In polling throughout 1947 and 1948, a majority supported reinstating wartime rationing and price controls.In December 1947, more than 70 percent of adults said they would want their own wages to decline in order to bring prices down.Prices seemed to weigh heavily on Americans heading into the election. Voters said that if they got a chance to talk with Mr. Truman about anything, it would be the cost of living and getting the economy back to normal. Ahead of the conventions, voters said a plan to address high prices was the No. 1 priority they wanted in a party platform. More voters said they wanted prices to be addressed over the next four years than any other issue.A rally for equal rights outside the 1948 Democratic convention in Philadelphia.Bettman/Getty ImagesThe Dixiecrats, a breakaway segregationist party, held a convention of their own in Birmingham, Ala.Bettmann/Getty ImagesThe importance of the economic issue faced stiff competition from the rising Cold War, the enactment of the Marshall Plan, the Berlin airlift, the formation of Israel and the subsequent First Arab-Israeli War, Mr. Truman’s decision to desegregate the military and the rise of the Dixiecrats.The Cold War, civil rights, Israel and other domestic issues combined to put extraordinary political pressure on an increasingly fractured Democratic coalition. On the left, the former vice president Henry Wallace ran against Mr. Truman as a Progressive; he also ran as someone who was unequivocally pro-Israel, threatening to deny Mr. Truman the support of Jewish voters who had voted all but unanimously for Franklin D. Roosevelt. On the right, the segregationist South defected from the Democrats at the convention over the party’s civil rights plank, again threatening to deny him the support of an overwhelmingly Democratic voting bloc.Truman and the Republican nominee, Thomas Dewey, in August 1948. Dewey led in the polls.Nat Fein/The New York TimesHe won, actually.Frank Cancellare/United Press InternationalIn the end, Mr. Truman won in perhaps the most celebrated comeback in American electoral history, including the iconic “Dewey Beats Truman” headline and photograph. He had barnstormed the country with an economically populist campaign that argued Democrats were on the side of working people while reminding voters of the Great Depression. You might well remember from your U.S. history classes that he blamed the famous “Do Nothing Congress” for not enacting his agenda.What you might not have learned in history class is that Mr. Truman attacked the “Do Nothing Congress“ first and foremost for failing to do anything about prices. The text of his speech at the Democratic convention does not quite do justice to his impassioned attack on Republicans for failing to extend price controls in 1946, and for their platform on prices. Finally, he called for a special session of Congress to act on prices and housing shortages (the links correspond to the YouTube video of those parts of his convention speech, for those interested). In short, congressional failure to act on prices was central to his critique of Republicans.In this respect, Mr. Truman was probably in a stronger position than Mr. Biden. Mr. Truman could blame Republicans for inflation; he could argue he had a solution for inflation; and he could link his position on inflation to his broader message about the Democrats as a party for working people. Polling at the time suggested that voters supported price controls, supported his special session, and did not necessarily blame Mr. Truman for inflation. In fact, more voters blamed Congress, business and labor than the president himself.Where Mr. Biden can still hope to match Mr. Truman is in economic reality, as inflation today is falling just as it was in the run-up to the 1948 election.In January 1948, inflation was 10 percent; by the end of October, it had fallen by half, and would reach one percent by January 1949. At election time, only 18 percent of voters expected prices would be higher in six months; just a few months earlier in June, a majority did so. It seems reasonable to wonder whether Mr. Truman might have lost the election had it been held a few months earlier.Despite those excellent conditions for a comeback, Mr. Truman’s electoral weakness was still stark. He had a powerful message and an improving economy, but he won by just 4.5 percentage points. The third-party candidates Mr. Wallace and Strom Thurmond succeeded in denying Mr. Truman key elements of the Democratic base that the party might have imagined it could take for granted just a few years earlier. He lost much of the Deep South without the support of the Dixiecrats and even lost New York, thanks to considerable defections on the left and among Jewish voters. No Democratic presidential would ever again reassemble the so-called New Deal coalition.But if 1948 is a mixed precedent for Mr. Biden, it’s a good precedent for today’s sour economic mood. It might betray a simple fact about public opinion: Voters hate inflation so much that they won’t ever like the economy if prices go up. There is no precedent in the era of consumer sentiment data for voters to have an above-average view of the economy once inflation cracks 5 percent — the recent high was 9 percent in June 2022 — even when unemployment is extremely low. It may just be that simple; indeed, consumer sentiment has begun to tick up over the last year, as inflation has declined to 3 percent.Alternately, 1948 and this era may suggest a more complex lesson about public opinion in the wake of pandemic or war, as high postwar and post-pandemic expectations quickly get dashed by the reality that the world isn’t returning to “normal” quite so quickly. Not only are high hopes dashed, but they also yield many kinds of economic dysfunction beyond high prices, from supply chain problems and housing shortages to “help wanted” signs and rising interest rates.Indeed, the famous “return to normalcy” election in 1920 — the largest popular vote landslide in American history — followed World War I and the 1918-1920 flu pandemic, which brought a recession and even higher inflation than in the 1940s.Normalcy did not come fast enough to save the party in power in 1920, the Democrats, but in retrospect it wasn’t too far off. The Roaring Twenties were just around the corner. And normalcy was just beginning to arrive in 1948, when Mr. Truman won re-election. The country was at the dawn of the prosperous, idealized 1950s “Leave It to Beaver” era that still lingers in the public imagination.If something similar is almost at hand, it can’t come soon enough for Mr. Biden. More

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      Is the American Economy on the Mend?

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      Almost four years have passed since Covid-19 struck. In America, the pandemic killed well over a million people and left millions more with lingering health problems. Much of normal life came to a halt, partly because of official lockdowns but largely because fear of infection kept people home.The big question in the years that followed was whether America would ever fully recover from that shock. In 2023 we got the answer: yes. Our economy and society have, in fact, healed remarkably well. The big remaining question is when, if ever, the public will be ready to accept the good news.In the short run, of course, the pandemic had severe economic and social effects, in many ways wider and deeper than almost anyone expected. Employment fell by 25 million in a matter of weeks. Huge government aid limited families’ financial hardship, but maintaining Americans’ purchasing power in the face of a disrupted economy meant that demand often exceeded supply, and the result was overstretched supply chains and a burst of inflation.At the same time, the pandemic reduced social interactions and left many people feeling isolated. The psychological toll is hard to measure, but the weakening of social ties contributed to a range of negative trends, including a surge in violent crime.It was easy to imagine that the pandemic experience would leave long-term scars — that long Covid and early retirements would leave us with a permanently reduced labor force, that getting inflation down would require years of high unemployment, that the crime surge heralded a sustained breakdown in public order.But none of that happened.You may have heard about the good economic news. Labor force participation — the share of adults in today’s work force — is actually slightly higher than the Congressional Budget Office predicted before the pandemic. Measures of underlying inflation have fallen more or less back to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target even though unemployment is near a 50-year low. Adjusted for inflation, most workers’ wages have gone up.For some reason I’ve heard less about the crime news, but it’s also remarkably good. F.B.I. data shows that violent crime has subsided: It’s already back to 2019 levels and appears to be falling further. Homicides probably aren’t quite back to 2019 levels, but they’re plummeting.None of this undoes the Covid death toll or the serious learning loss suffered by millions of students. But overall both our economy and our society are in far better shape at this point than most people would have predicted in the early days of the pandemic — or than most Americans are willing to admit.For if America’s resilience in the face of the pandemic shock has been remarkable, so has the pessimism of the public.By now, anyone who writes about the economic situation has become accustomed to mail and social media posts (which often begin, “You moron”) insisting that the official statistics on low unemployment and inflation are misleading if not outright lies. No, the Consumer Price Index doesn’t ignore food and energy, although some analytical measures do; no, grocery prices aren’t still soaring.Rather than get into more arguments with people desperate to find some justification for negative economic sentiment, I find it most useful to point out that whatever American consumers say about the state of the economy, they are spending as if their finances are in pretty good shape. Most recently, holiday sales appear to have been quite good.What about crime? This is an area in which public perceptions have long been notoriously at odds with reality, with people telling pollsters that crime is rising even when it’s falling rapidly. Right now, according to Gallup, 63 percent of Americans say that crime is an “extremely” or a “very” serious problem for the United States — but only 17 percent say it’s that severe a problem where they live.And Americans aren’t acting as if they’re terrified about crime. As I’ve written before, major downtowns have seen weekend foot traffic — roughly speaking, the number of people visiting the city for fun rather than work — recover to prepandemic levels, which isn’t what you’d expect if Americans were fleeing violent urban hellscapes.So whatever Americans may say to pollsters, they’re behaving as if they live in a prosperous, fairly safe (by historical standards) country — the country portrayed by official statistics, although not by opinion polls. (Disclaimer: Yes, we have vast inequality and social injustice. But this is no more true now than it was in earlier years, when Americans were far more optimistic.)The big question, of course, is whether grim narratives will prevail over relatively sunny reality in the 2024 election. There are hints in survey data that the good economic news is starting to break through, but I don’t know of any comparable hints on crime.In any case, what you need to know is that America responded remarkably well to the economic and social challenges of a deadly pandemic. By most measures, we’re a nation on the mend. Let’s hope we don’t lose our democracy before people realize that.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Will the Economy Help or Hurt Biden ’24? Krugman and Coy Dig Into Data.

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      Peter Coy: Paul, I think the economy is going to be a huge problem for President Biden in 2024. Voters are unhappy about the state of the economy, even though by most measures it’s doing great. Imagine how much unhappier they’ll be if things get worse heading into the election — which I, for one, think is quite likely to be the case.Paul Krugman: I’m not sure about the politics. We can get into that later. But first, can we acknowledge just how good the current state of the economy is?Peter: Absolutely. Unemployment is close to its lowest point since the 1960s and inflation has come way down. That’s the big story of 2023. But 2024 is a whole ’nother thing. I think there will be two big stories in 2024. One, whether the good news continues, and two, how voters will react to whatever the economy looks like around election time.Paul: Right now many analysts, including some who were very pessimistic about inflation last year, are declaring that the soft landing has arrived. Over the past six months the core personal consumption expenditures deflator — a mouthful, but that’s what the Federal Reserve targets — rose at an annual rate of 1.9 percent, slightly below the Fed’s 2 percent target. Unemployment is 3.7 percent. The eagle has landed.Peter: I question whether we’ve stuck the soft landing. I do agree that right at this moment things look really good. While everyone talks about the cost of living going up, pay is up lately, too. Lael Brainard, Biden’s national economic adviser, points out that inflation-adjusted wages for production and nonsupervisory workers are higher now than they were before the Covid pandemic.So let’s talk about why voters aren’t feeling it. Is it just because Biden is a bad salesman?Paul: Lots of us have been worrying about the disconnect between good numbers and bad vibes. I may have been one of the first people to more or less sound the alarm that something strange was happening — in January 2022! But we’re all more or less making this up as we go along.The most informative stuff I’ve seen recently is from Briefing Book, a blog run by former White House staffers. They’ve tried to put numbers to two effects that may be dragging consumer sentiment down.One effect is partisanship. People in both parties tend to be more negative when the other party controls the presidency, but the Briefing Book folks find that the effect is much stronger for Republicans. So part of the reason consumer sentiment is poor is that Republicans talk as if we’re in a depression when a Democrat is president, never mind reality.Peter: That is so true. And I think the effect is even stronger now than it used to be because we’re more polarized.Paul: The other effect affecting consumer sentiment is that while economists tend to focus on relatively recent inflation, people tend to compare prices with what they were some time in the past. The Briefing Book estimates suggest that it takes something like two years or more for lower inflation to show up in improved consumer sentiment.This is one reason the economy may be better for Democrats than many think. If inflation really has been defeated, many people haven’t noticed it yet — but they may think differently a little over 10 months from now, even if the fundamentals are no better than they are currently.I might add that the latest numbers on consumer sentiment from several surveys have shown surprising improvement. Not enough to eliminate the gap between the sentiment and what you might have expected from the macroeconomic numbers, but some movement in a positive direction.Peter: That makes sense. Ten months from now, people may finally be getting over the trauma of high inflation. On the other hand, and I admit I’m not an economist, I’m still worried we could have a recession in 2024. Manufacturing is soft. The big interest rate increases by the Fed since March 2022 are hitting the economy with a lag. The extra savings from the pandemic have been depleted. The day after Christmas, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis said the share of Americans in financial distress over credit cards and auto loans is back to where it was in the depths of the recession of 2007-9.Plus, I’d say the labor market is weaker than it looked from the November jobs report. (For example, temp-agency employment shrank, which is an early warning of weak demand for labor.)Also, small business confidence remains weak.Paul: Glad you brought up small business confidence — I wrote about that the other week. “Hard” indicators like hiring plans are pretty strong. “Soft” indicators like what businesses say about future conditions are terrible. So small businesses are in effect saying, “I’m doing OK, and expanding, but the economy is terrible” — just like consumers!I’m not at all sure when the Fed will start cutting, although it’s almost certain that it eventually will, but markets are already effectively pricing in substantial cuts — and that’s what matters for the real economy. As I write this, the 10-year real interest rate is 1.69 percent, down from 2.46 percent around six weeks prior. Still high compared with prepandemic levels, but financial conditions have loosened a lot.Could there be a recession already baked in? Sure. But I’m less convinced than I was even a month ago.Peter: The big drop in interest rates can be read two ways. The positive spin is that it’ll be good for economic growth, eventually. That’s how the stock market is interpreting it. The negative spin is that the bond market is expecting a slowdown next year that will pull rates down. Also, what if the economy slows down a lot but the Fed doesn’t want to cut rates sharply because Fed officials are afraid of being accused by Donald Trump of trying to help Biden?Paul: I guess I think better of the Fed than that. And always worth remembering that the interest rates that matter for the economy tend to be driven by expectations of future Fed policy: The Fed hasn’t cut yet, but mortgage rates are already down substantially.Peter: Yes.Paul: OK, about the election. The big mystery is why people are so down on the economy despite what look like very good numbers. At least part of that is that people don’t look at short-term inflation, but at prices compared with what they used to be some time ago — but people’s memories don’t stretch back indefinitely. As I said, the guys at Briefing Book estimate that the most recent year’s inflation rate is only about half of what consumers look at, with a lot of weight on earlier inflation. But here’s the thing: Inflation has come way down, and this will gradually filter into long-term averages. Right now the average inflation rate over the past 2 years was 5 percent, still very high; but if future inflation runs at the 2.4 percent the Fed is now projecting, which I think is a bit high, by next November the two-year average will be down to 2.7 percent. So if the economy stays where it is now, consumers will probably start to feel better about inflation.Peter: Except that perceptions of inflation are filtered through politics. Food and gasoline are more expensive for Trump supporters than Biden supporters, if you believe what people tell pollsters. That’s not going to change between now and November.The Obama-Biden ticket beat the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008 because voters blamed Republicans for the 2007-9 recession. Obama-Biden had a narrower win in 2012 against Romney-Ryan, and I think one factor was the so-called jobless recovery from that same recession. That’s why Biden is supersensitive about who gets credit and blame for turns in the economy.For the record, Trump might be president right now if it hadn’t been for the Covid pandemic, which sent the unemployment rate to 14.7 percent in April 2020. The economy was doing quite well before that happened. A lot of Republicans are nostalgic for Trumponomics, although I think the economy prospered more in spite of him than because of him. Thoughts?Paul: Most of the time, presidents have far less effect on the economy than people imagine. Big stimulus packages like Barack Obama’s in 2009 and Biden’s in 2021 can matter. But aside from pandemic relief, which was bipartisan, nothing Trump did had more than marginal effects. His 2017 tax cut didn’t have much visible effect on investment; his tariffs probably on net cost a few hundred thousand jobs, but in an economy as big as America’s, nobody noticed.Peter: Just speculating, but I wonder if when people say they trust Trump more than Biden on the economy, they’re feeling vibes more than parsing statistics. You know, “We need a tough guy in the White House!”Paul: People definitely aren’t parsing statistics. Only pathetic nerds like us do that. And while Trump wasn’t actually a tough economic leader, he literally did play one on TV.But we don’t really know if that matters, or whether people are still reacting to the shock of inflation and high interest rates, which they hadn’t seen in a long time. Again, the best case for Biden pulling this out is that voters get over that shock, with both inflation and interest rates rapidly declining.Oh, and falling interest rates mean higher bond prices, and often translate into higher stock prices, too — which has also been happening lately.Peter: True, Paul. But cold comfort for people who don’t own stocks and bonds. Or who do own stocks and bonds in their retirement plans but don’t think of themselves as part of the capitalist class. To win in November, Biden and his team are going to need to be perceived as doing something for the working class and the middle class. That’s why you see the White House talking about eliminating junk fees and capping insulin prices.Paul: For what it’s worth, I think a lot of people judge the economy in part by the stock market, even if they don’t have a personal stake. That’s why Trump boasted about it so much, and has lately been trying to say that Biden’s strong stock market is somehow a bad thing.Finally, there are some indications that Democrats in particular are feeling better about the Biden economy. The Michigan survey tracks sentiment by partisanship. The numbers are noisy, but over the past few months Democratic sentiment has been slightly more positive than it was in the months just before the pandemic struck.Peter: Paul, how important do you think the economy will be to voters compared to other issues, such as Trump’s fitness for office, Biden’s age, abortion access, et cetera? I mean, if it’s not important, why are we even having this conversation?Paul: The economy surely matters less than it did when Republicans and Democrats lived in more or less the same intellectual universe — everyone agreed that the economy was bad in 1980 or 2008; now, Dems are fairly positive while Republicans claim to believe that we’re in a severe downturn. But there are still voters on the margin, and weak Democratic supporters who will turn out if they have a sense that things are improving.Peter: Democratic strategists think the election might come down to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, assuming that Biden holds Michigan and New Hampshire and loses Arizona and Georgia. Any thoughts about the economic outlook for Pennsylvania and Wisconsin?Paul: No strong sense about either state. But one little-noticed fact about the current economy is how uniform conditions are. In 2008, so-called sand states that had big housing bubbles were doing much worse than states that didn’t; now unemployment is low almost everywhere.Of course, all political bets are off if we have a recession. But there’s a reasonable case that the economy will be much less of a drag on Democrats by November, as the reality of a soft landing sinks in.Oh, and my subjective sense is that for whatever reason, media coverage of the economy has turned much more positive lately. I have to think this matters, otherwise, what are we even doing? And until recently, media reports tended to emphasize the downsides — “Great jobs numbers, and here’s why that’s bad for Biden” has become a sort of running joke among people I follow. These days, however, we’re starting to see reports acknowledging that we’ve had an almost miraculous combination of strong employment and falling inflation.Peter: Paul, what economic indicators will you be paying the most attention to in the next few months with regard to the election? I’ll nominate inflation and unemployment, although those are kind of obvious.Paul: Unemployment, for sure. On inflation, I’ll be watching longer-term measures: Will inflation be low enough to bring down two- or three-year averages? And especially highly visible stuff, like groceries. Thanksgiving dinner was actually cheaper in 2023 than in 2022. Will grocery prices be subdued enough to reduce the amount of complaining?Oh, and I’ll be looking at consumer sentiment, which as we’ve seen can be pretty disconnected from the economy but will matter for the election.Peter: Happy New Year!Source photographs by Caroline Purser and Anagramm/Getty ImagesThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Wall Street strategists’ bull and bear scenarios for 2024.

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      Wall Street’s forecasts mostly missed this year’s bull market rally. Here’s what strategists are saying about 2024.Last November and December, veteran stock market watchers forecast that 2023 would be a year to forget. They saw high inflation, a looming global recession and rising interest rates as sapping households’ buying power and denting corporate profits. For investors, they penciled in paltry gains and one of the worst performances for the S&P 500 in the past 15 years.But the market pros got the story only partly right. While interest rates did climb to a near two-decade peak, the S&P 500 has surprisingly soared to a near record high. Fueled partly by a rally in the so-called Magnificent Seven megacap tech stocks, it’s risen nearly 25 percent this year, as of Thursday’s close, shaking off a banking crisis, wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and slowing growth in China’s economy.Crypto managed to do even better. Bitcoin bulls have swept aside a legal crackdown against the industry’s biggest players to fuel an impressive rally. The digital token has gained more than 150 percent this year, making it one of the best performing risky assets.“Twenty twenty-three was a great year for the contrarians,” David Bahnsen, the founder and chief investment officer of the Bahnsen Group, a wealth management firm, told DealBook. “You had macroeconomic concerns a year ago that didn’t come to bear, and you had valuation and financial concerns that didn’t come to bear. And it’s particularly ironic that it didn’t, because actually everything investors feared a year ago got worse.”Wall Street’s outlook for 2024 is rosier. Analysts see lower borrowing costs, a soft landing (that is, an economic slowdown that avoids a recession) and a pretty good year for investors.But if 2023 taught the market pros anything, it’s that forecasts can look out of date pretty fast. A slew of things could disrupt the markets in the year ahead — inflation creeping up again, or not, is one big factor to watch. And there are wild cards, too, with voters expected to head to the polls in over 50 countries next year, including the U.S.Here’s how Wall Street sees 2024 playing out:The bull caseThe median year-end 2024 forecast for the S&P 500 is 5,068, according to FactSet. Such a level would imply an annualized gain of roughly 6 percent for 2024.Bank of America’s equity strategists, led by Savita Subramanian, are among those in the bullish camp. In their annual forecast, they said that the S&P 500 would be likely to close out next year at 5,000, helped by a kind of “goldilocks” scenario of falling prices and rising corporate profits.Goldman Sachs is even more upbeat. Its analysts upgraded their year-end 2024 call on the S&P 500 to 5,100. They made the change after the Fed’s surprise statement on Dec. 13 that the equivalent of three interest-rate cuts were on the table for next year. Lower borrowing costs tend to give consumers and businesses more spending power, which could help Corporate America’s bottom line.Another catalyst: Investors this year put far more money into safe interest-rate sensitive assets, like money market funds, than they did into stocks. That logic could be flipped on its head in 2024. “As rates begin to fall, investors may rotate some of their cash holdings toward stocks,” David Kostin, the chief U.S. equity strategist at Goldman Sachs, said in a recent investor note.The bear caseOn the more pessimistic side is JPMorgan Chase, which carries a 2024 year-end target of 4,200. Its analysts team, led by Marko Kolanovic, the bank’s chief global market strategist, sees a struggling consumer with depleted savings, a potential recession and geopolitical uncertainty that could push up commodity prices, like oil, and push down global growth.The year ahead will be “another challenging year for market participants,” Kolanovic said. (Most strategists are even more downbeat on Europe, where recession fears are more acute. On the flip side, equities in Asia could show another year of solid growth, especially in India and Japan, Wall Street analysts say.)Lee Ferridge, the head of multi-asset strategy for North America at State Street Global Markets, is more optimistic about the American consumer, but points to a different challenge for investors. “If I’m right, the economy stays stronger. But then that’s a double-edged sword for equities,” he said. The prospect of robust consumer and business spending poses an inflation risk that could force the Fed to hold rates higher for longer, and even pause cuts, he said. “That’s going to be a headwind for equities.”“I wouldn’t be surprised to see a fairly flat year next year,” he added. “If we are up, it’s going to be the Magnificent Seven that are the drivers again.”The wild card: politics and the electionsPresidential elections are not rally killers, according to market analysis by LPL Financial that looks at the past 71 years. In that period, the S&P has risen, on average, by 7 percent during U.S. presidential election years. (The market tends to do even better in a re-election year, the financial advice firm notes.)Even with some uncommon questions swirling over next year’s contest — Will a mountain of legal troubles derail the Republican front-runner, Donald Trump? Will President Biden’s sagging polling ratings open the door for a strong third-party challenger? Will the election result be disputed, causing a constitutional crisis? — that’s unlikely to add much volatility to the markets, Wall Street pros say.“The election will not be a story in the stock market, up until November 2024, for the simple reason that the stock market will not know who’s going to win the election until November 2024,” Bahnsen said.His advice: Don’t even try to game out the election’s impact on the markets. More

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      Esta es la agenda comercial que planea Trump, si gana las elecciones

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      El expresidente Donald Trump está planeando una ampliación contundente de las iniciativas de su primer periodo para reformar las políticas comerciales de Estados Unidos si regresa al poder en 2025; por ejemplo, al aplicarle un nuevo impuesto a “casi todas las mercancías importadas”, lo que tendría el riesgo de distanciar a sus aliados e iniciar una guerra comercial a nivel mundial.Aunque el gobierno de Biden ha mantenido los aranceles que el expresidente le impuso a China, Trump iría mucho más lejos e intentará desvincular las dos economías más grandes del mundo, las cuales intercambiaron 758.000 millones de dólares en mercancías y servicios el año pasado. Trump ha dicho que iba a “aplicar otras restricciones contundentes a la participación china” en una amplia variedad de activos en Estados Unidos, prohibiría a los estadounidenses invertir en China e introduciría de manera gradual una prohibición total a las importaciones de categorías importantes de mercancía hecha en China, como artículos electrónicos, acero y productos farmacéuticos.“Impondremos fuertes sanciones a China y a todos los demás países cuando quieran abusar de nosotros”, aseveró Trump en un mitin reciente en Durham, Nuevo Hampshire.En una entrevista, Robert Lighthizer, quien fue el principal negociador comercial en el gobierno de Trump y que lo más probable es que tenga una gran participación en un segundo periodo, ofreció la explicación más amplia y detallada hasta el momento sobre la agenda comercial de Trump. Para este artículo se le hicieron preguntas referidas a la campaña del exmandatario y los integrantes del equipo de campaña estuvieron al teléfono para comentar al respecto.En esencia, la agenda comercial de Trump busca dar marcha atrás a la integración de Estados Unidos en la economía global y hacer que el país se vuelva más autónomo: producir un mayor porcentaje de lo que consume y ejercer su poder a través de acuerdos individuales con otros países.Trump, quien se autodenomina como un “hombre de aranceles” dio algunos pasos en esa dirección cuando fue presidente, por ejemplo, al imponer aranceles a diversas importaciones, obstaculizar a la Organización Mundial del Comercio e iniciar una guerra comercial con China. Si lo vuelven a elegir, tiene planeada una injerencia mucho más audaz con la esperanza de eliminar el déficit comercial y fortalecer el sector manufacturero, lo que traerá consecuencias potencialmente trascendentales para el empleo, los precios, las relaciones comerciales y el sistema de comercio mundial.Sus planes —que ha calificado como “una reforma radical de nuestra política comercial y fiscal en favor de los estadounidenses”— supondría una apuesta de alto riesgo con la salud de la economía debido a que el desempleo ha bajado a 3,7 por ciento, la inflación ha disminuido sustancialmente de su repunte posterior a la pandemia, cada mes se generan cerca de 200.000 empleos y la bolsa de valores está por llegar a un nivel sin precedentes.Robert Lighthizer, en el centro, fue el principal negociador comercial del gobierno de Trump, incluso para el el Acuerdo entre Estados Unidos, México y Canadá que reemplazó al TLCAN.Gesi Schilling para The New York TimesLos planes de Trump han hecho que especialistas en comercio con ideas más tradicionales estén en alerta. Daniel M. Price, un alto asesor en materia de economía internacional durante el gobierno de George W. Bush, calificó esos planes como “erráticos e irracionales”. Afirmó que los costos correrían a cargo de los consumidores y los productores estadounidenses y que esos planes tendrían el riesgo de alejar a los aliados.“La última vez que Trump impuso aranceles de forma abusiva a nuestros aliados (por razones de seguridad nacional inventadas), varios socios comerciales importantes, como Japón y Corea del Sur, se abstuvieron de tomar represalias contra las exportaciones estadounidenses pensando que Trump pronto regresaría a la cordura”, señaló Price. “Esta vez no consentirán esa fantasía”.Resulta complejo evaluar los méritos de la visión comercial de Trump porque podría haber múltiples repercusiones y él está buscando cambios a largo plazo. Pero muchos estudios económicos concluyeron que los aranceles que impuso cuando era presidente le costaron a la sociedad estadounidense más de los beneficios que generaron.La investigación de los economistas de la Reserva Federal y la Universidad de Chicago encontró que los aranceles que Trump impuso a las lavadoras en 2018 crearon alrededor de 1800 empleos al tiempo que aumentaron los precios que los consumidores pagaron por nuevas lavadoras y secadoras en 86 y 92 dólares por unidad. Ese gasto significó alrededor de 817.000 dólares por empleo.Lighthizer descalificó los estudios que criticaban los aranceles de Trump, los tachó de sesgados en favor del libre comercio y alegó que la inflación se había estabilizado durante su gobierno. También afirmó que, aunque la eficiencia, las ganancias y los precios bajos eran importantes, la prioridad debería ser fomentar la creación de más empleos en el sector manufacturero para los estadounidenses que no cuentan con un título universitario.“Si lo único que quieres es eficiencia —si crees que la gente está mejor en la fila del desempleo con tres televisores de 40 pulgadas de lo que estaría si estuviera trabajando, y con solo dos televisores—, entonces no vas a estar de acuerdo conmigo”, comentó Lighthizer. “Hay un grupo de personas que cree que el fin es el consumo, pero mi idea es que el fin sea la producción y que haya comunidades seguras y felices. Debemos estar dispuestos a pagar un precio por eso”.En 2017, Trump comenzó su presidencia contratando a asesores económicos con puntos de vista diversos, incluidos defensores de políticas proteccionistas, como Lighthizer y Peter Navarro, así como veteranos de Wall Street orientados hacia el libre comercio y escépticos respecto a los aranceles, como el expresidente de Goldman Sachs Gary D. Cohn.Pero los asesores económicos con los que mantiene una estrecha relación son, en su inmensa mayoría, de ideología pro-arancelaria, como Lighthizer. Lo más probable es que sus planes más agresivos para un segundo mandato se enfrenten a una oposición interna mucho menor que en su primer mandato.Aranceles universalesMuchos estudios económicos concluyeron que los aranceles, incluidos los del acero, que Trump impuso como presidente le costaron a la sociedad estadounidense más que los beneficios que produjeron.Damon Winter/The New York TimesEntre los planes más ambiciosos de Trump en materia comercial para 2025, el de consecuencias más globales es imponer un presunto arancel universal de base, es decir, un nuevo impuesto para la mayoría de las mercancías importadas.La campaña de Trump no ha especificado cuán elevado sería este arancel. En una entrevista de agosto con Fox Business, Trump mencionó una cifra del 10 por ciento y dijo: “Creo que debemos trabajar mucho” en la economía estadounidense.Trump no ha precisado otros detalles. Por ejemplo, no ha explicado si concibe el arancel universal como un nuevo piso o como un complemento de los aranceles existentes. Es decir, si un producto importado tenía un impuesto del cinco por ciento, ¿ahora aumentaría al 10 o al 15 por ciento? Lighthizer mencionó que sería esto último.El exmandatario tampoco ha dicho si el nuevo arancel se aplicaría a las importaciones de las dos decenas de países con los que Estados Unidos tiene acuerdos de libre comercio, entre ellos México y Canadá, los que juntos representan casi una quinta parte del déficit comercial total de Estados Unidos en mercancías y con los cuales el gobierno de Trump renegoció el acuerdo comercial casi libre de aranceles que sustituyó al Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte.El equipo de campaña señaló que Trump no ha anunciado ninguna decisión al respecto. Pero la embajadora de Canadá en Estados Unidos, Kirsten Hillman, dijo en una entrevista que su país cree que sus exportaciones deberían estar exentas de cualquier nuevo arancel universal.“Acabamos de concluir este acuerdo con el 99 por ciento de los aranceles a cero bajo la gestión anterior de Trump, por lo que es nuestra expectativa que estas políticas propuestas no se apliquen a Canadá”, dijo.Trump tampoco ha dicho si cree que podría imponer de manera unilateral el agresivo nuevo arancel según la ley actual o si tendría que autorizarlo el Congreso.Clete Willems, que fue asistente adjunto del presidente Trump para los temas de economía internacional, dijo en una entrevista que simpatizaba con el deseo de reciprocidad del exmandatario, pero agregó: “La autoridad del presidente para promulgar aumentos arancelarios generalizados no está clara, y soy escéptico de que el Congreso vaya a respaldarlo”.Sin embargo, Lighthizer afirmó que, dada la magnitud del déficit comercial de EE. UU. y su impacto en la economía estadounidense, un presidente tendría “clara autoridad” para imponer aranceles de manera unilateral en virtud de dos leyes, la Ley de Poderes Económicos de Emergencia Internacional y la Sección 338 de la Ley Arancelaria de 1930 .Sin embargo, dijo que, dependiendo de las condiciones políticas, Trump podría optar en cambio por pedir al Congreso que promulgue una nueva legislación para que un sucesor no pueda revocarla fácilmente. “Él tiene la autoridad legal para hacerlo y tiene dos rutas”, dijo Lighthizer. “Hasta donde yo sé aún no ha tomado una decisión al respecto”.Independientemente del fundamento jurídico, se levantaría un torbellino de pérdidas y ganancias confusas derivadas de esa política de aranceles universales. Por un lado, repuntarían algunas manufactureras nacionales puesto que los fabricantes nacionales de mercancías rivales podrían incrementar los precios y ampliarían la producción. Ahí es donde está la atención de Trump: “Rápidamente nos convertiremos en una potencia manufacturera como ninguna otra que se haya visto en el mundo”, prometió en un video de campaña.Como algo básico de la economía, también habría inconvenientes. La medida supondría un aumento de impuestos que los consumidores tendrían que pagar cuando se incrementen los precios, y este se dejaría sentir más en la población de pocos recursos, puesto que son los consumidores que emplean una parte mayor de su ingreso en la compra de mercancías.Esta política también podría ocasionar una presión descendente sobre otras manufacturas nacionales. Los productores que compran insumos del extranjero pagarían costos más elevados, lo que haría que sus productos fueran menos competitivos en el mercado mundial. Los aranceles de represalia disminuirían la demanda de exportaciones estadounidenses.La desvinculación de ChinaTrump ha dicho que intentará separar las economías estadounidense y china, que intercambiaron unos 758.000 millones de dólares en bienes y servicios el año pasado.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesTrump también ha dicho que iría más lejos al imponer “una serie audaz de reformas para eliminar por completo la dependencia de China en todas las áreas esenciales”. En 2022, Estados Unidos importó 536.300 millones de dólares en mercancía procedente de China y le exportó a este país mercancías por un valor de 154.000 millones de dólares.Entre otras cosas, Trump ha mencionado que aplicaría “un plan de cuatro años para eliminar gradualmente todas las importaciones de productos esenciales chinos, desde artículos electrónicos hasta acero y productos farmacéuticos”, junto con reglas nuevas para evitar que las empresas estadounidenses inviertan en China e impedir que ese país compre bienes estadounidenses.No obstante, Trump se protegió al decir, sin dar mayores detalles, que permitiría “todas las inversiones que sirvieran de manera manifiesta para los intereses de Estados Unidos”.El gobierno de Biden también ha trabajado para imponer más restricciones a los intercambios económicos con China, pero de una manera más reducida y adecuada. El gobierno prohíbe exportar a China determinada tecnología que tenga aplicaciones militares y, en agosto, el presidente Joe Biden firmó una orden para prohibir que los estadounidenses realicen nuevas inversiones en empresas chinas que estén tratando de desarrollar algunas cosas como semiconductores y computadoras cuánticas.Ahora Trump está proponiendo llegar aún más lejos y pedir que se anule la categoría comercial de “país más favorecido” con la que cuenta China, lo cual implica cesar las relaciones comerciales normales permanentes y los aranceles reducidos que Estados Unidos le otorgó a China después de que esta se uniera a la Organización Mundial del Comercio en 2001. Concretamente, este mes, un comité de la Cámara de Representantes publicó un informe bipartidista que también solicitaba esa medida.De acuerdo con un estudio publicado el mes pasado por Oxford Economics que fue encargado por el Consejo Empresarial Estados Unidos-China, hacer esto trastornaría de manera importante la economía estadounidense. Este estudio estimaba que el aumento resultante en aranceles conllevaría una pérdida de 1,6 billones de dólares para la economía estadounidense y 774.000 empleos menos en cinco años.En sus memorias de 2023, tituladas No Trade Is Free, Lighthizer reconoció que las empresas estadounidenses que operan en China y las que dependen de las importaciones chinas se opondrían a esa idea, pero afirmó que “con el tiempo” la fabricación de más productos como computadoras y teléfonos móviles regresaría a Estados Unidos o a sus aliados, lo que beneficiaría a los trabajadores estadounidenses y al país.También escribió que las inevitables represalias chinas para perjudicar las exportaciones estadounidenses “contribuirían aún más al desacoplamiento estratégico” de las dos economías. “Cualquiera que admita que China es un problema pero insista en que existe una solución mágica y sin perturbaciones para el problema que representa China es muy probablemente un mentiroso, un tonto, un bribón, un globalista irredimible, o alguna combinación de ellos”, escribió.Décadas de lucha contra el déficitUn edificio industrial abandonado en Rockford, Illinois. Los críticos han señalado el deterioro social ocasionado por el cierre de fábricas en todo el país como una desventaja del comercio.Jamie Kelter Davis para The New York TimesEl nacionalismo económico de Trump le ha ayudado a cambiar el Partido Republicano. Ha reunido a una coalición más obrera que la que solían atraer los republicanos antes de que fuera el abanderado del partido.Sus puntos de vista son un retroceso a un enfoque mercantilista del comercio, en el que los países utilizaban aranceles elevados para proteger y desarrollar sus capacidades de fabricación nacionales. El sitio web de la campaña de Trump afirma que su política comercial “está firmemente arraigada en la historia estadounidense” porque Estados Unidos “solía imponer aranceles a más del 95 por ciento de todas las importaciones”. Esa estadística es de antes de la Guerra Civil, cuando los aranceles constituían la gran mayoría de los ingresos del gobierno federal.A lo largo del siglo XX, muchos economistas llegaron a considerar eso como un planteamiento miope. En la década de 1990, a pesar de la oposición de los sindicatos, se formó un consenso bipartidista a favor de un comercio más libre. La idea era que la reducción de aranceles y el aumento del comercio aumentarían la prosperidad material general de la sociedad al mejorar la eficiencia y bajar los precios.Pero esas ganancias no se han distribuido equitativamente y, con el tiempo, han surgido diversas formas de desilusión con la reducción de las barreras comerciales.En Estados Unidos, los críticos tanto de izquierda como de derecha han señalado cada vez más las desventajas del comercio para las comunidades obreras. La decadencia social se extendió a medida que las empresas cerraban fábricas cuya producción podían trasladar al extranjero, para bajar costos, lo que contribuyó —junto con otros factores, como el aumento de la automatización— al estancamiento de los salarios de la clase trabajadora. Las interrupciones de la cadena de suministro durante la pandemia centraron la atención en otro riesgo de la globalización.Y existe una creciente ansiedad sobre las implicaciones de seguridad de la dependencia de Estados Unidos de China para ciertos bienes y recursos críticos, y la indignación por las prácticas de China de obligar a las empresas a compartir tecnología y su robo descarado de secretos comerciales.Políticamente, Trump se adelantó al centrarse en los aspectos negativos del libre comercio. Durante más de 30 años, ha arremetido contra los déficits comerciales, que considera, al igual que los balances de las empresas, una simple cuestión de beneficios y pérdidas. Se queja de que los países extranjeros que exportan más a Estados Unidos de lo que importan están estafando a Estados Unidos.En 2017, Trump hacía sistemáticamente una pregunta sencilla a sus informadores antes de sus llamadas con líderes extranjeros, según una persona con conocimiento directo: “¿Cuál es el déficit comercial?”. A menudo, la respuesta establecería el estado de ánimo de Trump para la llamada y cuán amistoso sería con el jefe de Estado.Trump retiró a Estados Unidos del Acuerdo Transpacífico, el tratado comercial más importante del presidente Barack Obama. Su gestión paralizó la capacidad de la OMC para resolver disputas comerciales entre países al bloquear su capacidad para sustituir a los miembros de un órgano de apelación.Trump impuso aranceles a determinadas importaciones, aumentando los precios de las lavadoras y los paneles solares, así como del acero y el aluminio. E inició una guerra comercial con China, imponiendo aranceles a más de 360.000 millones de dólares de productos chinos.A pesar de los agreivos aranceles de Trump, los datos de la Oficina del Censo muestran que el déficit comercial anual de bienes creció de 735.000 millones en 2016 a 901.000 millones de dólares en 2020. Pero Lighthizer señaló una ligera disminución en el déficit comercial en 2019 en comparación con 2018, argumentando que los aranceles estaban empezando a tener su efecto previsto antes de la agitación del año pandémico.Las guerras comerciales de Trump fueron costosas. Después de que China —que se ha convertido en el mayor mercado de exportación para los agricultores estadounidenses— tomó represalias aumentando los aranceles sobre los productos agrícolas estadounidenses como la soya, el gobierno de Trump comenzó un rescate gubernamental de 28.000 millones de dólares para mantener a los agricultores a flote. Un estudio de febrero de 2020 calculó que el mayor coste del metal para los fabricantes estadounidenses debido a los aranceles sobre el acero había causado la pérdida de unos 75.000 puestos de trabajo.Por muy agresivas que fueran las políticas comerciales de Trump en su primer mandato, no siempre llegó tan lejos como quería. A pesar de amenazar con retirarse de la Organización Mundial del Comercio, por ejemplo, nunca lo hizo. Aunque detestaba el TLCAN, su administración negoció un sustituto que, aunque modernizaba varios términos, mantenía un mercado casi libre de aranceles con México y Canadá.Lighthizer, que dirigió esas negociaciones, escribió en sus memorias que, independientemente de si el Congreso debería haber aprobado el TLCAN en 1993, retirarse abruptamente de él después de décadas de integración económica habría causado “una catástrofe económica y política”, enviando “ondas de choque a través de la economía” y perjudicando a “los votantes de Trump en Texas y en todo el cinturón agrícola”.Ana Swanson More