Saturday, March 17, 2018

Larry Kudlow Begins to Kiss the Trump Ring


Fortune reports that the new director of the National Economic Council, Larry Kudlow, on Wednesday backed off earlier criticism of Trump’s tariff plans, saying he is “on board” with the steel and aluminum duties Trump imposed.

Kudlow knows better. Tariffs always lower the standard of living for countries that implement them.

In Kudlow, we may be getting the second coming of Herbert Stein on steroids.

Stein, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, knew that price controls would only mess up the economy, but in his book, Presidential Economics, he attempted to justify his support for Nixon price controls when he wrote he was caught up in the "excitement" of the moment:
I had spent much of my career arguing against wage and price controls, even in World War II. And here I was, economic adviser to the President ...I was an active participant in the most exciting event in the record of economic policy...

-Robert Wenzel 

UPDATE

Now Kudlow is tweeting out nonsense about Trump's tariff "strategy":

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